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The Railroad Man's

COMPLETE INDEX

FOR

VOLUME X

October, 1909, to January, 1910

NEW YORK

THE FRANK A. MUNSEY CO., PUBLISHERS

175 FIFTH AVENUE

1909

^S^^sa

tm^'l^)

Index for Volume X.

SERIALS.

COURAGE CLUB, THE (Nos. 5, 6) -
DAM-BUILDERS, THE (Parts I, II, III, iyj .
DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL, THE (Parts I, II, III >
SPIDER OF PALERMO, THE (Parts III, IV, A,
TREASURE OF THE WORLD (Parts I, II, III, IV)

Johnston McOulley
bannister meewin
t^iin Mack Stone
Edwaed Bedingee Mitchell
Stephen Chalmers -

Page

- 130

79, 3.35, 510, 693

- 229, 412, 641

175, 365, 557, 749

27. 309, 454, 605

SHORT STORIES.

BO AND A BULLDOG, A (Illustrated)
CAMPBELL'S WEDDING RACE (Illustrated) -
CARRYING THE BOODLE TO CASEY (Illustrated)
DISAPPEARING DIAMONDS, THE (Illustrated)
FRASER-FLAXMAN FIGHT, THE (Illustrated)
FREEZING TO DEATH! (Illustrated)
GENERAL BURKETT'S DISCIPLE (Illustrated)
GOLDEN SERPENTS, THE -

HE OMITTED THE " EXTRA " (Illustrated) -
HIGGSY'S SPEED-DEVELOPER (Illustrated) -
HORRIGAN'S MEDAL (Illustrated) -
JIMMY COLLINS AND THE 442 (Illustrated) -
KITTEN CARROLL'S BOOK-LEARNING (Illustrated)
LEAP OF OLD 637, THE (Illustrated)
MABEL ON A MOUNTAIN (Illustrated) -
MCALLISTER'S GROUCH (Illustrated)
NOT ALWAYS TO THE SWIFT (Illustrated) -
"OH, YOU BUTTINSKY! " (Illustrated)
PUMPKIN-VINE SPECIAL, THE -
TELEGRAPHIC TWINS, THE (Illustrated)

TEN-THIRTY CALL, THE

THEY CALLED HIM " ARTIE " (Illustrated) -
TWO-TWENTY LOCAL, THE -

VANISHED FREIGHT, THE

WHAT DID DUGAN DO TO HIM? (Illustrated)
WHO'S GOT THE TURKEY? (Illustrated)

Emmet F. Haete 159

Harry Bedwell ------ 10

E. Florence ------- 525

Arthur M. Chase 670

Frank Condon ------- 49

William Ivory Irvine 587

J. R. Stafford - - - ' - - - - 205

George E. Hall ........ 727

James Norman Sheeve ----- 397

James Feancis Dwyer - - - - - 73

Robert Fulkeeson Hoffman - 291

A. E. Cooley ------- 433

Keene Abbott - - - - - : - 111

Emmet F. Haete ------ 354

Cromwell Childe ------ 479

Charles Wesley Sanders - - - - - 266

M. J. Phillips 469

F. M. Richardson - 657

Miles McKeecher 20

Cbomwell Childe ------ 735

Percy Wilson ------- 541

Chaeles Wesley Sandees ... - 627

Edgae Welton Cooley ----- 123

E. Florence ------- 255

E. Florence - - - - - -'.'■- 715

Percy Wilson ------- 323

SPECIAL ARTICLES.

$56,000,000 A YEAR FOR TIES -

BEING A BOOMER BRAKEMAN (Illustrated) -

No. 1. Breaking Into the Game ...
No. 2. On the Smoky End -
No. 3. Things Which Break the Monotony
No. 4. Hard Luck on the In and Out

CHRISTMAS. ON A FLOODED TRACK (True Story
No. 39) (Illustrated)

CLOSE CALLS OF THE RAIL (Illustrated) -

DYNAMITE DIVISION, THE

FIGHTING THE TICKET-SCALPERS (Nos. 1, 2, 3)
(Illustrated) -

FINDING THE SECRET OF THE AUTOMATIC
COUPLER

GREAT AMERICAN TRAIN ROBBERIES -

No. 15. The Lone Bandit of the " Pennsy."
(Illustrated)

HARRIMAN (Illustrated)

nELP FOR MEN WHO HELP THEMSELVES -
No. 26. Men Who Hunt for Costly Trifles
No. 27. Speed and Power of the Locomotive -
No. 28. Making Passenger-Cars Comfortable -
No. 29. Pressing Problems of Rolling Stock -

Richard Maxwell Winans
Horace Here.

Clara Morris
Olin Crawford -
Dennis II. Stovall

H. A. Koach

42, 220,

E. L. Bacon
John P. Duster.

101
300
531
635

466
616
394

442

259

Arthur B. Reeve
C F. Caetee.

213
193

154
273
520
679

767

768

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

SPECIAL ARTICLES— Continued.

HOW RAILROAD MEN BALKED A PLAN TO AS-
SASSINATE LINCOLN (Illustrated)

KING OF THE FREIGHT-TRAINS -

LETTERS OF AN OLD RAILROAD MAN AND HIS

SON (Illustrated)

No. 1. Jim Gets a Job in the General Mana-
ger's Office on His Dad's Old Line
No. 2. Jim Grips a Few Live Wires

LOVETT — HARRIMAN'S SUCCESSOR (Illustrated) -

MAKING THE LIGHTNING HUSTLE

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT
(Nos. 17, IS, 10, 20) (Illustrated) -

PATHWAYS OF THE WHEEL

PERPETUAL MOTION — THE GREATEST OF DELU-
SIONS (Illustrated)

RAILROAD AND COMMUTERS IN BATTLE OF
JOKES (Illustrated) ------

RAILROAD MAN'S WATCH, THE -

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST (Illu, »»
trated) - - - - . - - - - ■

No. 8. Tales of the Oregon Short Line -
No. 9. On the Latest Desert Railroad -
No. 10. Romances of the Golden State -
No. 11. Out in the " Great Hot " -

SILENT HEROES OF THE RAIL (Illustrated) -

SPENDING A RAILROAD'S MONEY - - - -

STUFF THAT HELPS THE WHEELS GO ROUND,
THE

TOLD BEFORE "HITTING THE HAY" (Illustrated)

TRACK-WALKER'S DEVOTION, A (True Story No.
38) (Illustrated) - -.

UNCLE HOLLY'S RECORD RUN (True Story No. 40)

WHAT THE HOBOES COST YEARLY (Illustrated)

WHEN THE RULES WERE BROKEN (Illustrated)

" WINDY " DODGES THE BOSS (True Story No. 37)
(Illustrated)

Bertram Adler
William Clinton Court

Herman Da Costa.

Page

- 329

- 653

Arno Dosch
Charlton C. Andrews

J. E. Smith

George Hebard Paine

E. L. Bacon

Georoe Jean Nathan
II. F. Meddril -

SON WlLLETS.

Robert H. Rogers
T. S. Dayton -

Horace H. Smith
Olin Crawford -

Edmund G. Kinyon -
Sam Henry
Charlton C Andrews
Charles F. Anderson

- 4 SO

- CC1

- 403

- 423

m, 240, 003, 684
- 1C9

743

119

280

545

447

497
385

- 2G3

- 724

- 357

- 577

Howard Graham

VERSE AND DIVERSE.

BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN

LOVE-SONG OF THE RAIL (Poem) -

MY SWEETHEART'S AN ENGINEER (Poem)

NINE OF ENGINEERS, A (Poem)

OUR THIRD MILE-POST -

PAYMASTER, THE (Poeml

RAILROAD MAN'S BRAIN TEASERS, THE

RECENT RAILROAD PATENTS

TALLOW-POT'S LAMENT, A (Poem)

WITH COMPASS AND CHAIN (Poem)

George Foxhall
Kitty Spargur Hulse
Frederick Sanders
The Editor
Frederick Sanders

92, 248, 427,

Forrest G. Smith
John C. Russell
Edgar Welton Cooley

122, 364,
10S, 351,

C22
540

- 346

- 704
570, 75S
537. 732

- 228

MISCELLANEOUS.

ANOTHER TRAMP KING - - - - 151

BEES TIE UP A RAILROAD - - - - 186

BIG SHIPMENT OF BUFFALOES - - - 121

DOUBT ABOUT HUDSON BAY RAILROAD - 258

ENGINE FOR SHARP CURVES, AN - - - 378

FAMOUS FLYING SCOTCHMAN - - - 586

FRANCE'S FAMOUS RECORD RUNS - - 476

FRESH AIR FOR THE HUDSON TUBES - 363
FULL SPEED AHEAD - - - 70, 278, 477

GREATEST LITTLE RAILROAD - - - 185

GROWING RECORD FOR SAFETY, THE - - 299

HOLLAND'S " CONTROLLED " RAILWAYS - 350

HOW A TUNNEL IS BORED - - - - 107

HOW RAILROADS ARE BUILT IN CHINA - 660

INDUSTRIAL ROLL OF HONOR - - - 128

INVENTING AS AN OCCUPATION - - - 306

LARGE SALARY TOO SMALL - - - - 748

LARGEST ELECTRIC ENGINE - - - - 722

LAST YEAR'S RAILROAD EARNINGS - - 47S

LOUNGING LIBRARIES ON WHEELS - - 742

MAILING BY THE TRAINLOAD - - - 64

MOST UNIQUE RAILROAD STATION - - 8

NEW " WASTE " FOR OILING WHEELS, A - 253

NEW YORK'S ABANDONED RAILWAY - - 530

WHY HE DOESN'T LIKE

NEW YORK'S MILLIONS -
NOT ENOUGH SLACK -

ON THE EDITORIAL CARPET, 1S7, 379, 571
OVERWORKED ENGINE, AN -
PENNSY GOES TO FARMING -
RAILROAD IN YOUR BACK GARDEN -
RAILROAD OPERATED BY HORSES
RAILROAD SCHOLARSHIPS -
REST-ROOMS FOR SUBWAY MEN -
ROLL-CALL OF VETERANS
ROUNDHOUSE FOREMAN, THE
SANTA FE GIANT, A -

SPECIAL CARS FOR AUTOS AND FISH -
STEEL TIES IN EUROPE - - - -

STEEL TRUST'S RAILROADS -
STRAINING OLD EAGLE-EYE' S NERVES -
SUNNY SIDE OF THE TRACK, THE
THIRTY-SEVEN MILES OF CARS -
TRAINS FORBIDDEN TO RUN BACKWARD
TROLLEY MASCOT. A - - - -

UP-TO-DATE RAILROAD DISCIPLINE -
VALUE OF SCRAP -----
WHEN ARMOUR WAS A SHACK -
WHEN DOES A JOURNEY BEGIN? -
' UPPERS " - - 265

345
759

168
723
334
46S
757

20
691
656
615
239
4>s
174
468

72
4.i2
24 7

432

604

345

THE

MAGAZINE

OCTOBER.

FRANK AMUNSEY COMPANY NEW YORK AND LOl

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From a woman's point of view,
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THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

.=£V

Keep your home at an even,
winter long by

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healthful temperature all
installing a

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WITH CLOCK ATTACHMENT

It automatically regulates the draft and damper on your heating plant —
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out, no mattter how the weather changes. It saves so much coal that it

SOON PAYS FOR ITSELF

If you wish to keep the house at a lower temperature at night than
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HOWARD THERMOSTATS ARE SOLD BY HEATING
MEN AND ELECTRICIANS EVERYWHERE

If you will kindly send us the name and address of your furnace
man, steam fitter or electrician.we will send you our booklet No.
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Write to-day. Don't wait until cold weather sets in.

HOWARD THERMOSTAT CO., 334 W. 1st St., Oswego, N. Y.

New England Office, 188 Franklin St., Boston, Mass.

New York City Office, 143 Liberty St., Wm. A. Kitts, Jr., Mgr.

Canadian Representative, The Gurney Foundry Co., Ltd., Toronto, Can.

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In answering this advertisement it is desirable that yon mention The Railkoad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

RUNDEL

AUTOMATIC STROPPER

KEEPS A PERFECT EDGE
ON ANY SAFETY BLADE

A CHILD can work it. Just push
* *■ and pull the stropper up and
down the strop. Blade is held at
correct angle and reverses automat-
ically— can't cut the strop. Then you
always have sharp blades without
buying new ones. Very economical
and convenient— no safety razor com-
plete without it.

Sold on Approval By All Dealers

Try one for 1 0 days. If you don't wish to
keep it, your money is promptly returned. Complete outfit consists
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Rundel Automatic Stropper

costs more than its imitations, but it's the only stropper

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Free Book on Art of Correct Shaving

Tell us the name of a dealer that sells razors, and we will send free " Hints for
Shavers " — a valuable book just written by an expert barber. Every man who shaves him-
elf should have a copy. Send for it to-day.

RUNDEL MFG. CO., 176 Main St., Rochester, N. Y. J|

In answering this advertisement it is desirable that you mention The Railkoad Man's Magazine.

THE RAJLROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE

CONTENTS FOR OCTOBER

Stephen Chalmers
Bannitr lV!erv\in

Campbell's Wedding Race.
The Pumpkin- Vine Special
The Fraser-Flaxman Fight.
Higgsy's Spe=d-Developer

SERIALS

Treasure of the World. Part I

The Dam-BuilJers. Parti .

The Courage Club. Nos. 5 and 6 P< rks Conquers His
Peril, and Though Druke Fails to Find Himself, He
Graduates from the College of Odd Jobs .... Johnston McCulley

The Spider of Palermo Part III. Edward Bedinger Mitchell

SHORT STORIES.

(Illustrated ) Harry Bedwell .... 10

. Miles McKercher . . 20

(Illustrated.) Fran'c Condon .

(Illustrated.) James Francis Dvvycr

Kitten Carroll's Book-Learning. (Illustrated.) .... Keene Abbott .

The Two- I wenty Local Edgar Welton Cooley

A Bo and a Bulldog. (Illustrated.) Emmet F. Harte

SPECIAL ARTICLES.

Silent Heroes of the Rail. (Illustrated.) Robert H. Rogers

Fighting the Ticket-Scalpers. No 1 (Illustrated ) . . HA. Koach .
Observations of a Country Station- Agent No 17 (Illustrated) J.E.Smith ....
"Windy" Dodges the Boss. Trie Story. No. 37. (Illus-
trated.) Howard Graham .

Being a Boomer Brakeman. No. 1 . Breaking Into the

Game. (Illustrated.) Horace Herr

The Railroad Man's Watch H. F. Meddril . .

Riding the Rail from Coast to Coast. No. 8. Tales of the

Oregon Short Line. (Illustrated.) Gilson Willets .

Help for Men Who Help Themselves. No. 26. Men

Who Hunt for Costly Trifles C F. Carter 154

Pathways of the Wheel George Hebard Paine . 169

VERSE AND DIVERSE.

Our Third Mile-Post The Editor I

By the Light of the Lantern ' 92

Recent Railroad Patents Forrest G. Smith .... 108

The Railroad Man's Brain Teaser 122

With Compass and Chain. (Poem.) Edgar Welton Cooley . 152

MISCELLANEOUS.

27
79

130
175

49
73
111
123
159

42
57

101
119

139

Most Unique Railroad Station ... 8

Value of Scrap 8

New York's Millions 9

Rest-Rooms for Subway Men ... 26

Mailing By the Trainload 64

Full Speed Ahead 70

The Sunny Side of the Track ... 72

When Armour Was a Shack ... 78
On the Editorial Carpet

How a Tunnel Is Bored 107

Big Shipment of Buffaloes . . . . 121

Industrial Roll of Honor 128

Another Tramp King 151

An Overworked Engine 168

Steel Trust's Railroads 1 74

Greatest Little Railroad 185

Bees Tie Up a Railroad 186

187

ISSUED MONTHLY BY THE FRANK A. MVNSEY COMPANY,

175 Fifth Avenue. New York, and Temple House, Temple Avenue, E. C, London

Frank A. Monrey, President. Richard H. Titherington, Secretary. Christopher H. Pope. Treasurer.

Entered as second-class matter, September 6, 1906, at the Post

at New York, N. T.t under the Act of Congress oj March 3, 1S19.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

4 FAILURE AT FIFTY

C, Out of a job at fifty or reduced to some menial work at small
pay is the history of the untrained man.

d. Business today requires not only promise of ability but training to use that ability.

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Please send me your Bulletin and advise me how I can
qualify for position marked "X. "

. .Book-keeper

. .Stenographer

. . Accountant

. . Cost Accountant

. . Systematizer

. .Cert'f'd Public Acc'nt

. .Auditor

. . Business Manager

. . Commercial Law

. .Draftsman

. . Architect

. . Civil Engineer

. . Electrical Engineer

. . Mechanical Engineer

. .Sanitary Engineer

. . Steam Engineer

. .Fire Insurance Eng'r

. . College Preparatory

NAME

ADDRESS

OCCUPATION

R. R. Man":., 10-'09

In answering this advertisement it is desirable that you mention The Railkoad Man's Magazine.

THE MILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE

Vol. X. OCTOBER, 1909. No. 1.

Our Third Mile-Post.

Reminiscences of an Exciting Run, During Which We Have Nego-
tiated All Grades, Curves, and Rough Track, and on Which We
Are Still Breaking All Previous Records. The Green Light
Shows, the Signal Has Been Given, the Right of Track is
Ours, and We Are Off Again on Schedule Time. All Aboard !

BY THE EDITOR.

HREE years is not a long time in the life of a magazine. Usually it
is only long enough to discover the difficulties in -the way and to
suggest some of the methods by which they can, perhaps, be over-
come— in time. To start a magazine and see it come to full stature
of popularity and influence before it has reached the end of its third
year is something of an achievement. If we were not naturally modest, we would
say that it is unexampled in the history of magazine-making ; but that would be
conceited, and the egotistical tempt Fate. So we shall say only that it is some-
thing quite worj:h doing.

Getting the Right of Way and Opening the Line for Traffic.

In the first number, which appeared three years ago this month, Mr. Munsey
announced The Railroad Man's Magazine as a " new creation," saying fur-
ther: "There, is nothing else in America, or in any other country, just like it.
We have had no examples to follow. Consequently, we may have fallen short
of the mark at which we have aimed. But -perfection is usually a thing of
growth. The important thing is to begin — to make a start."

We have made the start. Now we take the opportunity to pause a moment
and look back at the way we have come — not long, perhaps ; but starred with
places where decisions have been made and problems solved, dotted with reminders
of good friends we have made — and kept. And, after all, that is the great
achievement — to have made friends and kept them. If we have any pride in the
work of our hands, it is chiefly in that. This magazine, has become a great room

2 THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

in which editors and contributors and readers may meet on common footing and
discuss their differences and discover their common likings, tell the old stories
and sing the almost forgotten songs, listen to accounts of great deeds and laugh
over the recital of comical experiences — perhaps grow a little sad over the trage-
dies that must creep into such a gathering.

A Glance at the Service and the Operating Force.

We cannot hope to call you all by name — you are too numerous and too
widely scattered. All that we can do here is to reintroduce those who have been
among us most frequently — to whose work no small part of the success of the
magazine is due. No magazine ever had a more loyal and intelligent corps of
contributors, and never was a magazine more appreciative of their work. It is
impossible to name all. To do so would be to call the roll of the men in the
United States who are writing about the railroad from almost every conceivable
angle. The fiction, the drama, the poetry, the humor, the tragedy of the railroad
— all have had a place in this magazine, and will continue to have so long as rail-
roads exist. We can call up only a few which you know best, and recall to mind
some of the work which they have done for us who edit and for you who read.

The first purpose of this magazine — and one which it will never relinquish —
has been to cover the railroad field of the United States to the remotest nook and
corner. For this reason, plans were at once made to place a special traveling
correspondent in the field. Gilson Willets was the man selected. In the last
three years he has traveled nearly twenty thousand miles in your behalf, visiting
every important railroad center in the districts which he reached, talking with
railroad men of every grade and experience, gathering stories, old and new, soak-
ing up the essence of railroad "work and life.

His first venture was over the Union Pacific and part of the Southern Pacific
as far as Sacramento, California. We started him out in October, 1906, and the
first result of his work appeared in January, 1907, under the title. " Fighting
Fire in the Sierra Snowsheds." This was the first authentic account that has
ever appeared in any magazine of the precautions taken by the Southern Pacific
to protect the great line of snowsheds on the Avestern slope of the Sierra Nevada
Mountains. Its stories of close calls and thrilling experiences was an earnest of
that which was to come in later instalments from Mr. Willets.

In February of that year we printed the first number of the real thing,
" Campaigning With a Railroad. Army." The title describes the articles better
than any amplification could possibly do. It is a fight every day and every night
that the railroaders of the mountains and plains are carrying on with water and
wind and snow, with fire and with animals and with animal-like men who crave
the treasure carried in the roaring expresses.

With Willets On Everybody's Main Line.

Eight* numbers there were in all, and when Mr. Willets finished that first
series he was in Chicago hobnobbing with the men of the Union Station there.
Perhaps you remember the story of the fight of " Big Jim Ashley " to put the
new Toledo and Ann Arbor tracks across the line of the Michigan Central at
Howell, Michigan? That was the one with which the series ended. It was
picked up by Mr. Willets in Chicago, and was typical of the forgotten yarns
which he raked out of the memories of the many men with whom he talked.

So much for the first trip. • No sooner was he home than we started him

OUR THIRD MILE-POST. 3

off again, after the fashion of Strickland Gillilan's old railroad rime, " Off ag'in, on
ag'in " — you know the rest of it. It was in January, 1908, that we gave you the
first number of his new series, " Around the Union by Rail," and for fourteen
months he poured out the contents of his note-books, filled during his ten-thou-
sand-mile trip from Chicago to the coast over the Great Northern, clown the
coast to Los Angeles, thence back to St. Louis on the rails of the Santa Fe, down
to New Orleans by the Illinois Central, across to Jacksonville, following the Gulf
coast, and so up to Washington and home. It was the first time any correspond-
ent for a magazine had " bounded the United States by rail," and the length of
the series is proof of the richness of the material he gathered, for every article
was pruned clown to the very heart of its best anecdotes.

In February of the present year that series ended, and prompt on the follow-
ing month Mr. Willets was ready to pick up the thread with " Riding the Rail
from Coast to Coast," which is still running. For this series Mr. Willets made
his way to Boston, collecting the cream of the stories that have risen to the sur-
face of the New England district. Thence he swung westward to Chicago, gath-
ering a bundle of anecdotes told him by the railroaders of the Great Lakes on the
way. In Chicago he paused again, and then he was off to St. Paul to set foot
on a train of the Northern Pacific, which carried him still westward. To describe
in detail the points which he touched would be to anticipate. Butte gave up her
best ; the new line of the St. Paul was represented in the August number ; in
September you had the romantic story of Salt Lake.

In later numbers you will follow Mr. Willets over the Oregon Short Line,
thence to Los Angeles over the line of the " newest desert railroad, " to linger a
while among the railroaders of the Golden State. Then you will make your way
eastward again over the Southern Pacific through the last of the Territories to
El Paso. The next step will take you into a new series, in which you will tour
Texas and Oklahoma, a veritable " railroad empire." That must suffice for the
twenty-thousand-mile wanderings of the special traveling correspondent of The
Railroad Man's Magazine.

Small wonder that " Watch for Willets ! " the slogan of the men along the
routes he travels, has become also a foreword of good things to come to the readers
of the magazine.

Gripping Stories of the Men Who Held Up Trains.

The first number of the magazine contained the first instalment of a series that
ran for a year, " The Great American Train Robberies." Over forty years ago
the first train robbery occurred near the little town of Marshfield, Indiana. Since
then the record has been a long and sometimes a gory one. " The Marsh-
field Affair," "The Younger Gang," "Rise and Fall of Jesse James," and "The
Mysterious Thirteen " were the subtitles in the first volume. Hedgepeth, Oliver
Perry, Evans and Sontag, Morgan and Searcey — these were some of the names
that have been made famous for their infamy . and have found a place in these
chronicles.

Here is the complete list of the Great American Train Robberies series :

THE MARSHFIELD AFFAIR. THE MYSTERIOUS THIRTEEN.

Charles Francis Bourke. Charles Francis Bourke.

THE YOUNGER GANG. THE CHICAGO AND ALTON AFFAIR.

Charles Francis Bourke. Charles Francis Bourke.

RISE AND FALL OF JESSE JAMES. THE " INSIDE JOB " OF THE C. R. I. & P.

Charles Francis Bourke. Charles Francis Bourke.

4 THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

WITRECK, THE LONE HIGHWAYMAN. THE EVANS AND SONTAG AFFAIR.

Charles Francis Bourke. Frederick Lawrence.

THE SOUTHERN PACIFIC DYNAMITERS. TWO MEN ON BICYCLES.

Charles Francis Bourke. Frederick Lawrence.

WIPING OUT THE HEDGEPETH BAND. THE DAYLIGHT TRICK ON THE MIN-

Charles Francis Bourke. ERAL RANGE. Arthur B. Reeve.

OLIVER PERRY, THE LONE-HAND THE MORGAN-SEARCEY HOLD-UP.

PLAYER. Burke Jenkins. Arthur Wallace Dunn.

It is pleasant to turn from train robberies to more peaceful matters, such,
for example, as the " Observations of a Country Station-Agent." Thought you
would remember that. Yes, the author is a real station-agent — a plain, ordinary
railroad man — and his name is Smith. The anecdotes he tells are of things that
really happened. For years he has been working daily in a small station of a great
railroad, observing the foibles and weaknesses of the people who patronize railroads,
and now and then of those who run them : and these»observations are the result.

The Interesting Observations of One Smith.

Do you remember what he said in his first number, 'way back in July, 1907?
" Long since, without analysis or philosophy, the great public has fixed the status
of the average agent as a grouch. The. timid approach him tentatively and apolo-
getically, and are unduly thankful for intelligence handed out in homeopathic
doses. The bold and brave demand, in strong and insistent voice, information
that often comes with the joyousness of a boy parting with a tooth."

Pretty nearly true, isn't it? And that is a sample of the homely wit and
philosophy that our station-agent has been handing out for the last two vears —
and the end is not yet. His fund of well-timed illustration and apt moralizing
is apparently inexhaustible, to the great joy of those of you who have had ex-
perience with the practical side of railroading.

Speaking of practical things, there are the articles on HELP FOR MEN
WHO HELP THEMSELVES. We aim not only to amuse and interest, but
also to instruct, as the circus posters say. Early in our career we came to the
conclusion that a magazine which did only the first two would have difficulty in
finding an abiding-place in the hearts of railroaders. Therefore, we determined
to do what we could to add to the knowledge of those who are anxious to be better
railroaders and to climb higher on the ladder.

To that end we have given practical expert instruction in subjects that bear
directly on the daily work of those of you who are running trains or selling tickets
or checking freight or walking track or doing any one of the multitudinous duties
that make up the sum total of railroad work. We have described in detail the
process of building a railroad from the preliminary survey to the laying of the
last rail.

Training Young Men for Future Railroad Presidents.

We have told how the track is kept in order, how the trains are run, what
are the duties of the motive-power department, where the trainmaster and his
minions come into the game, how a man may become an engineer and what he
does after he reaches that proud eminence ; we have pointed the way, step by step,
to the chair of the division superintendent ; we have described in detail the work-
ing of foreign railroads as compared with the methods in use on our own lines,
and last month we illustrated the working of the air-brake, probably the most
important in the long list of railroad inventions.

OUR THIRD MILE-POST. 5

The complete list of this important series is as follows :

THE MAKING OF AN ENGINEER. RAILROADS' RACE WITH TIME.

Robert H. Rogers. Robert H. Rogers.

HOW A LOCOMOTIVE BOILER WORKS. MAKING A DIVISION SUPERINTENDENT.
Robert H. Rogers. One of Them.

INSIDE HISTORY OF A LOCOMOTIVE. THE MAN WHO PULLS THE FREIGHT.

Robert H. Rogers. Robert H. Rogers.

THE WORKING OF BLOCK SIGNALS. RAILROADS OF THE OLD WORLD.

Robert H. Rogers. Thomas Benton Connor.

THE MAKING OF A MASTER MECHANIC. RAILROAD MEN OF THE OLD WORLD.

Robert H. Rogers. John Elfreth Watkins.

HOW A RAILROAD BUYS ROLLING IN THE RAILROAD COURT.

STOCK. Robert H. Rogers. Robert H. Rogers.

HOW A LOCOMOTIVE IS BUILT. SURVEYING FOR A RAILROAD.

John Elfreth Watkins. Charlton C. Andrews.

FEELING A LOCOMOTIVE'S PULSE. BUILDING A RAILROAD TRACK.

C. T. Rommel. Charlton C. Andrews.

ELECTRICITY FOR TELEGRAPHERS. Part I. KEEPING A RAILROAD TRACK IN ORDER.

J. H. Gingrich. Charlton C. Andrews.

ELECTRICITY FOR TELEGRAPHERS. Part II. THE MEN WHO HANDLE THE ENGINES.

J. H. Gingrich. Charlton C. Andrews.

ELECTRICITY FOR TELEGRAPHERS. Part III. GETTING THE TRAILS OVER THE ROAD.

J. H. Gingrich. Charlton C. Andrews.

RAILROADS FOR TO-MORROW. IN THE TRAIN SERVICE.

John Elfreth Watkins. Wyatl Ellerton.

HOW THE AIR-BRAKE WORKS. C. F. Carter.

Then there were those articles on " Electricity for Telegraphers," which,
we' are assured, were the best and most useful of their kind that had ever been
published. We could go on citing examples of what has been done in this direc-
tion for a full page, and each sentence would only confirm our hopes that we
could bring together in readable form a vast amount of valuable information for
the young and the ambitious among our readers. The popularity of this depart-
ment, as evinced in the letters from our readers, is the best proof of its success.

Trials and Triumphs of the Pioneer Railroad Builders.

Among the numerous untouched fields of railroad literature, that we entered
early in our career was the historical — not only biographical, but what we may
call institutional. Many of the great systems of the country had their birth in
circumstances both unexpected and romantic. The Erie, for example, sprang
from a honeymoon trip over the newly established South Carolina Railroad.
When this fact came to our attention it set us to wondering if similar origins
could not be found for other roads, and we set C. F. Carter to work collecting
the material. In due course you read the early story of the Baltimore and Ohio,
the Erie, the Pennsylvania, the New York Central, the Santa. Fe, the Union
Pacific, the Canadian Pacific, and other systems whose destiny is now closely in-
terwoven with the industrial and social fabric of the country. Later this series
became a book, " When Railroads Were New," and was welcomed as a great
addition to the railroad literature of the United States.

Mr. Carter also wrote for us " The Inside History of Great Inventions," not
strictly railroad perhaps, but bearing so closely on the labor of transportation
and communication that we could hot pass it by. Mr. Carter was also responsi-
ble for the " Men Who Have Made Travel Safe," in which the whole field of

6 THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

railroad improvement was traversed — from Ross Winans, builder of the Baltimore
and Ohio, and first of the long list of railroad inventors, to Plimmon H. Dudley,
inventor of the modern steel rail, who is still laboring to perfect the pathway of
flying limiteds and the pounding freights.- In between these two names we re-
counted the achievements of Baldwin, first of the great locomotive builders ;
Westinghouse, the wizard of the air-brake ; Pullman, who added ease as well as
safety to railroad travel, and Lorenzo Coffin, who brought to pass the safety ap-
pliance law, which has saved thousands of lives and millions of money. And this,
too, was a new thing : parts of the story had been told here and there, but never
before as a related whole.

Biography, the man behind the machine, the personality that makes the thing
a possibility, has always been a strong point with us. Not only THE MEN
AT THE TOP, Sir William Van Home, who began as a telegraph operator, and
is now head of the great -Canadian Pacific; W. H. Newman, who was once a
station-agent, and retired lately from the chair of president of the New York
Central ; Gould, Harriman, the czar of the greatest transportation system in the
world; Moffat, who is amusing himself in his old age by putting a railroad over
the Rocky Mountains; Yoakum, of the Rock Island; James J. Hill, almost the
last of the old school of railroad builders ; C. S. Mellen, one of the greatest of
the new — not only these men have been pictured in our pages, but also the- lesser-
known men, the privates in the • ranks and the non-commissioned officers of the
railroad army.

What Electricity Has Done to Revolutionize All Things.

Our first number had a story of a ride with " Big Arthur " Allen, of the
Empire State. Last month we told you some stories of Charles W. Douglas, onlv
a few months dead, the first train-despatcher in the United States, and also the
first man to take a message by sound. Before that we gave you Lawrence, the
oldest conductor in the Pullman service. Then there was Conductor Jennings,
who saw the first railroad run in the State of Ohio ; Franklin, now assistant man-
ager of the terminal properties of the Grand Central Station in New York, who
knew the first Vanderbilt, and " ran " a train between New York and New Haven
in the stormy clays of the Civil War, and a host of others who have helped to
make railroad history without striving to add luster to their names meanwhile.
It is an illustrious list, that roll of obscure heroes, and only lack of space prevents
our adding more names to it here. ■

Every great event has its story ; and every great movement, however imper-
sonal to outside appearance, has its personal and romantic aspect. Even THE
STORY OF ELECTRICITY, by Earl Mayo, dry and scientific in appearance
as the name is, has its human face, as our readers can testify. It took us seven
numbers to tell that story, and it is only just lately completed; but the narrative
probably commemorates the high-water mark of human invention thus far. What-
ever is done in the future in the mechanical field will relate back in some way to
the work of the men who have tamed the mysterious fluid and set it to work fetch-
ing and carrying for the sons of men. It runs at our behest and awaits our com-
mands as an obedient servant should. It does our menial tasks, and serves our
slightest whims. It also bears our greatest burdens and solves our most perplex-
ing problems in the overcoming of time and space. All this and more we told in
the series on THE STORY OF ELECTRICITY. If any , one doubts the im-
portance of the. subject, he has only to watch the course of railroad development
for the next decade. We are not prophesying — only telling you.

Our fiction is very far from being the least object of our pride. The moun-

OUR THIRD MILE-POST. 7

tain railroaders of Robert Fulkerson Hoffman, with their cool daring and their
warm hearts; the human, care-free tramps of Mr. Emmet F. Harte, to whose
credit lie also the exploits of the inimitable Honk and Horace ; the beautifiers of
the P. and P. ; the wheedling, fiery Irishmen that Mr. E. W. Cooley has given
us ; the quaintly humorous characters of Frank Condon — all these and more have
found a place in these columns to make us laugh and cry.

Life-Throbbing Fiction Full of Smiles and Tears.

The serials have been the best that we could get from the very start. In
our first issue we gave you the opening instalment of " Dan Quixote," which later
appeared in book form as " The* Brass Bowl," and speedily took its place among
the "six best sellers" of the year. Then there was ""The Projectile," that un-
believable but yet enthralling tale of speed, which found longer life between book-
covers as " The Sixth Speed." Last year we had " The Girl and the Bill," also
destined for the more permanent form of a book. Others there have been which
were confined to the pages of this magazine, but yet have made friends by the
thousand. Do you remember " The Onyx Ear " that captivated by its unlikeli-
hood? "Running the Signal" and "The Paymaster's Special," tales of real rail-
roaders, that real railroaders read and approved? "At Bay on the Limited," whose
breathless speed partook of the rush of the transcontinental train on which the
entire action took place? These stories"alone would have justified the existence of
experts has confirmed his accuracy and judgment.

But it. has done more — much more. For example, for the last two years our
railroad expert has answered literally thousands of questions that have reached
him through his department, " By the Light of the Lantern." They have been
sticklers, some of those questions; but our expert has always found the answer,
though the ground covered has ranged from the operation of block signals to the
chances for an American railroader in far-away Brazil, and the opinions of other
experts has confirmed his accuracy and judgment.

Our " Recent Railroad Patents " is another department that has ministered
to the wants of those who wish to know not only the romance of railroading, but
also the sober fact. In the three years of the magazine's existence there has not
been a patent granted at Washington bearing on railroad operation tp any impor-
tant degree that has not been described in that department. It has reflected, step
by step, the forward movement in the mechanical side of the work of transporta-
tion, and«its pages furnish forth an accurate history of three years' progress.

We must not forget our artists. Side by side with ourselves and our con-
tributors, they have labored to make this magazine the highest expression of
railroad life and thought. It has been our ambition from the first to make this
magazine not only interesting, but " right."

The Past Prophesies the Future.

We have come to the end of our retrospect, but the work has only begun.
We have paused for this backward look not in any spirit of brooding over a fin-
ished task, but only to run over with you the steps that we have taken as proof
that we are now ready to go forward to broader results and higher aims. If the
magazine has been good in the past, it will be better in the future. All that time,
money, thought, patience, and persistence will accomplish we shall spread before
you monthly, to the end that The Railroad Man's Magazine may fitly express
the lives and thoughts and deeds uf the 1,500,000 men who spend their days and
nights along the 250,000 miles of railroad track in the United States.

MOST UNIQUE RAILWAY STATION.

The Pennsylvania's New York Structure Is Really a Monumental

Bridge Over the Tracks.

THE Pennsylvania Railroad has placed in
position the last piece of stone in the
exterior of its new station in New York
City. This involved the completion of stone-
work enclosing some eight acres of ground.
To enclose this vast area has necessitated
the building of exterior walls aggregating
2,458 feet, nearly half a mile, in length, and
has required 490,000 cubic feet of pink
granite.

In addition, there have been utilized inside
the concourse 60,000 cubic feet of stone. A
total of 550,000 cubic feet of granite have
thus been utilized in the construction and
ornamentation of this building. It took 1,-
140 freight-cars to transport these 47,000
tons of stone from Milford, Massachusetts.

In addition to the granite, the construc-
tion of this building has called for the use
of 27,000 tons of steel. There have also
been set in place some 15,000.000 bricks,
weighing a total of 48,000 tons. The first
stone of the masonry work on the building
was laid June 15, 1908. The entire masonry
was thus completed in approximately thir-
teen months after the work was begun.

Built after the Roman Doric style of

architecture, the building covers the entire
area bounded by Seventh and Eighth Ave-
nues and Thirty-First and Thirty-Third
Streets. The depth of the property on both
streets is 799 feet 11 14 inches, and the length
of the building is 788 feet 9 inches, thus al-
lowing for extra wide sidewalks on both
avenues. The walls extend for 430 feet 6
inches from Thirty-First to Thirty-Third
Streets, the Seventh Avenue facade signal-
izing the main entrance. .

In designing the exterior of the building,
Messrs, McKim, Mead & White, the archi-
tects, were at pains to embody two ideas :
To express (with the unusual condition of
tracks far below the street surface and in
spite of the absence of the conventional
train-shed) the exterior design of a great
railway station in a generally accepted form:
and also to give to the building the character
of a monumental gateway and entrance to a
great metropolis.

The structure is really a monumental
bridge over the tracks, with entrances to
the streets on its main axes and on all four
sides. In this respect this building is unique
among the railway stations of the world.

VALUE OF SCRAP.

Re-Creating from Things Thrown Away and Saving Money by the
Enforcement of Sale Guarantees.

AN item of considerable importance on a
■-railroad is scrap-iron, and while this
can be easily understood by the general pub-
lic, the outsider can scarcely have an idea
of the care and skill exercised in the hand-
ling of this commodity.

In the Santa Fe Employees' Magazine.
Mr. C. H. Hoinville, of the Santa Fe's pur-
chasing department, gives an outline of the
procedure followed on that road.

" During 1906," he says, " on the Santa
Fe Railroad there was sold 70,847 tons of
scrap-iron for $1,054,724.51, or an average
of 5.904 tons monthly at $14.89 per ton, and
during 1907 there was sold 84,022 tons for
$1,261,882.29, or an average of 7,000 tons
monthly at $15.02 per ton.

" The above is sufficient to show the im-
portance of the scrap department of a rail-
road, and when attention is called to the

NEW YORK'S MILLIONS

fact that much more money is saved by
reason of the rigid inspection at the scrap-
pile than that represented by the above
figures, the position lately assumed by the
various lines with regard to -this department
is shown to be of great importance.

' ' Larry,' of the track gang, does not mean
tb be careless when he throws a bent track
wrench, lining bar, or failed shovel onto the
pile beside the section-house, but he has not
the time nor tools to straighten them, and
he knows nothing of the terms of the con-
tract under which the shovel is supplied.

" A broken coupler means just so much
delay to a freight-train, already behind
time, so the examination for blow-holes is
not made until it reaches a scrap-yard at
the store-house. Failed wheels, defective
tires, cracked bolsters and truck frames are
only a small portion of the many items that
the store and. mechanical departments jointly
inspect.

" The number of tons of bar-iron taken
from old truss rods, etc., and worked over
into bolts and other merchantable iron is
startlingly large, when" we consider that
what would be sold as scrap, without in-
spection, at less than -one cent per pound,
must be purchased at more than that amount.

" The common procedure is for the track-
men to pile all scrap material onto a work-
train, carry it to the nearest section-house,
and hold it until the scrap-train goes through.
Inspection may, and should be, made at these
points by the section foreman or roadmas-
ter to select all usable material for the tool-
house.

The balance is then loaded onto the scrap-
train sent over the division and finds its
way to a storehouse with a scrap-sorting
yard. The Santa Fe has one at each of the
following points : Corwith, Albuquerque,
San Bernardino, Richmond, and Cleburne.

" The car loads are then gone over
thoroughly by experienced sorters, under a
competent foreman, and the material is un-
loaded into the various piles, or bins, as
there are ninety-six different items in the
classification of scrap. The good material
is returned to ' Stock C Material that can
be so handled is reworked.

" That which has failed in service through
defect, or which has not outlived its guaran-
tee, is either returned to the shipper for re-
placement or a credit equivalent to its scrap
value is allowed by the railroad, while re-
placement is made by the shipper or a credit
given for its value as new material."

NEW YORK'S MILLIONS

All Metropolitan Figures Are Huge, but the Transportation Statis-
tics Put All Others in the Shade.

GIGANTIC things which the mind can-
not grasp either appal one or cease to
have any meaning, if repeated year after
year with slight variation. That is why the
wonderful statistics of metropolitan traction
are so little appreciated and so little known
by the general public.

The New Yorker is used to reading about
millions and billions in his local news. The
addition of a few odd millions passes un-
noticed. When he is informed that the
capitalization of the transportation com-
panies of his city is over $533,000,000, he
looks at you in a matter of fact way and
says : " You don't say ! "

If you tell him that Matthewson was batted
out of the box, that is real news, though
hard to believe; but if you tell him that
1,300,000,000 people were carried on the
subway, elevated, and surface lines of the
city during 1908, a miracle of civilization un-
equalled in the history of the world, he may

possibly say, " Gee ! " but that is the highest
tribute he will pay for the information.

It is not lack of civic pride, but a real
tribute to the seeming incomprehensibility
of the ever changing, ever increasing figures
which represent the passenger traffic of the
metropolis.

Up to the close of 1908, $50,000,000 were
spent on subway construction alone, and
between three and four times that amount
is scheduled to be spent for that purpose in
the immediate future. Even -the number of
accidents bears its grim tribute to the in-
credible congestion, there being about fifty
thousand during the year, and about six
hundred lives being lost.

The year's traffic was equivalent to each
man, woman, and child in the United States
taking fifteen trips on one of. the city's
transportation systems, while the income
from it would provide an excellent dinner
for every human being in North America.

CAMPBELL'S WEDDING RAGE.

BY HARRY BEDWELL.

1 Extra, 1127 " Does Some Stunts Trying to Reach
Junction City in Time to Hear the Joy Bells Ring.

AMPBELL, who had for
some time been standing by
the window, knocking holes
in the cupboard with short,
vicious kicks, turned from
his scrutiny of the unpaint-
ed roofs of the little town that nestled
under the sage-brush hill, and addressed
himself to the first trick despatcher, who
sat at a table near the other window.

" I'd like to know what a fellow in
my fix can do," he complained. " What
would you do?" he asked hopelessly.

Racey, the first trick man, completed
an order before answering.

" How do I know what I should do? "
he said languidly. " I've never been in
such a fix, you know, and I couldn't ad-
vise you. Anyhow, you wouldn't take
advice if I'd give it."

Campbell turned back to the window,
and began kicking holes in the cup-
board again, his rough, heavy shoes ma-
king the wood and paper yield easily to
the blows.

" Better cut it out," advised Racey
dispassionately. " The chief will come
in here and fall all over you if you
don't."

Campbell gave another kick. " I wish
some one would try it," he said.

Racey glanced at the big, broad shoul-
ders, and shook his head. " I don't,"
he remarked — " not in here."

As could easily be seen from his ex-
pression and tone of voice, Campbell was
mad — not angry.

For this was his wedding-day. His
bride-elect was one hundred miles away,
and he -had no way of reaching her. All
arrangements had long ago been made
for him to wed Nellie McDonald that
evening at eight o'clock, but it was now

12.30 p.m., and he was far from his
heart's desire.

Mechanically he took out his watch
and ran his thumb over its face as he
counted the exact time there was left.

" I could make it by a scratch, if they'd
only give me a chance," he muttered to
himself.

Campbell was an extra passenger en-
gineer. The day before, in Junction
City, he had asked for a two weeks' lay-
off, that he might marry and take a trip
to the city. But they were short of pas-
senger engineers at the time, and the
trainmaster had all but gone on his knees
to Campbell, begging him to take a train
to Farnham, promising him that he would
get him back to Junction City in time
to marry that night.

But this trainmaster had not counted
on No. 9 trying to knock L-ittle Squaw
Mountain off the map. No. 9's sharp
nose went about two feet into the side of
Little Squaw, and then stopped. When
the smoke cleared away it was found that
the engine and three cars were off the
track, and about one hundred yards of
track torn up. This, of course, blocked
traffic for some time.

That morning Campbell came down to
the despatcher's office and demanded,
in no gentle tone, why he had not been
called to go out. On learning of the
antics of No. 9, and the verdict of the
despatcher that the track could not be
repaired and the wreck cleared away
until some time in the afternoon, Camp-
bell came very near choking the des-
patcher.

Then he deluged the Junction City
telegraph-office with messages to Nellie,
until that young lady knew not whether
Campbell was killed in the wreck or

CAMPBELL'S WEDDING RACE.

merely behind it and unable to get by.
Her father, who was master mechanic at
Junction City, had pointed out the fact
that Campbell could not be dead and
send so many messages, which seemed
logical enough to the girl, and relieved
her greatly.

Campbell paced the despatcher's office
all morning in a rage. For there had
been no trains out going to Junction City,
and he watched from a distance the hour
set for his wedding.

The chief now came out of his office
and leaned over the train-sheet.

" How are they getting along out at
the wreck?" he inquired of Racey.

" They've got a track built almost
around it," answered the trick man,
" and trains will begin to move some time
this afternoon.".

" Suppose we had better call a crew
for that extra east," mused the chief,
with his eyes still on the train - sheet.
" They ought to be ready for her by the
time she gets there. Who's next up? "

Campbell swung round suddenly.

" I am," he cried, joy and relief show-

ing in his voice. " Call me for that ex-
tra east."

" I wish you would quit bothering me.
Campbell," he complained. " That wed-
ding of yours can wait. You're a pas-
senger engineer, and not running
freights. You make me — "

In two strides Campbell crossed the
room, gripped the chief by the collar of
his shirt, swung him clear of the floor,
and spun him around like a top.

" You call me to take that freight-
train out ! " Campbell's voice was about
as gentle as his grip. " I'm an extra
passenger engineer, and you've got to
call me for that train if I say so."

The chief gave a grunt as his feet
touched the floor, and he glared up at
Campbell for a few moments, choking
with wrath.

" Take the freight-train out, and see
if I care," he spluttered, and stalked from
the room.

Campbell turned and leaned over Ra-
cey threateningly.

" I'm going to take that freight-train
to Junction City quicker than any

CAMPBELL CLEARED THE COUNTER THAT SEPARATED HIM FROM THE OFFICE.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

freight-train has ever gone there since
this plug of a road was built," he
growled, " and if you lay me out any,
there'll be a man short and a job over
in this office when I get back."

He turned, stamped to the door and
down the stairs.

Campbell cornered the call-boy in the
baggage-room.

" They want you to call a crew,
quick!" he said. "I'm going to take
the train out, and if you get the rest of
'em around here within half an hour,
I'll buy you enough cigarettes to kill you
in a month."

Campbell strode down into the yard,
where the switch-crew was slowly making
up the train. He knew better than to try
to order these men about, so he swal-
lowed his impatience and called to them
cheerily :

" Get a move on you, fellows, and
there'll be a keg of something cold in
Mother Monohan's wood-shed some of
these nights with my card over the stop-
per."

The switchmen winked at the engineer
and grinned. But the engine suddenly
took on new life.

Campbell disappeared inside the
roundhouse, where he found some lazy
hostlers trying languidly to make steam
in one of the big freight-engines.

" Oh, the dickens ! " he groaned, as
he viewed the big boiler set on little
wheels, looking so top-heavy, that it might
fall over at any moment. " I forgot I'd
have to take a 'leven-hundred engine on
a freight-train," he muttered.

He climbed into the cab, and, snatch-
ing the shovel from the perspiring hostler,
pushed him to one side, and cried:

" Get out of here, you farmer ! "

The hostler slid from the cab and col-
lapsed in a surprised heap on a pile of
hot ashes, only to spring to his feet again
with a muttered curse as he sat down in a
tub of water to put out the fire that was
eating holes in his overalls.

The conductor came out of the freight
office with a handful of bills, and began
checking off the car numbers on his train-
book as he walked slowly down the long
train.

Campbell backed the big engine down
onto the string of cars, and abrakeman
made the coupling and connected the air.

Campbell slid from the cab and looked
over his engine in feverish haste. Then,
seeing the conductor sauntering lazily
down the length of the train, he rushed
a1 him with an angry roar.

" Do you think you've got a week to
make this trip? " he cried. " Didn't*you
know I was in a hurry? "

The conductor looked up into the ex-
cited face of the big engineer with lan-
guid eyes, and then continued checking
off the car numbers without saying a
word. But he increased his speed per-
ceptibly, for he knew that to anger
Campbell further would mean almost
certain destruction.

When they had reached the end of the
train, the conductor closed his book, with
the way-bills folded carefully inside, and
remarked carelessly :

" Better get the orders, hadn't we? "

They crossed the yards and climbed
the stairs to the despatcher's office. Ra-
cey tore off the tissue orders and handed
a copy to each. The two took the or-
ders with all due reverence, and the con-
ductor read them over aloud.

" Now, Campbell," said Racey coolly,
" I don't Avant you tearing up the track
with any of your phenomenal runs.
We've got one eleven-hundred engine in
the ditch now, and it will take two der-
ricks to get her out."

"Who are you?'' snapped Campbell.
" I don't see your name on the time-card.
Anyway, how do you expect me to get to
Junction City with that drag? You've
put three hundred tons more on that train
than the rating calls for."

" Oh," jeered Racey, " did you think
this was a pleasure trip? Well, it's not;
so you run along like a good fellow ! "

It looked for a few moments as though
Campbell was going to do personal harm
to the despatcher, but at last he turned,
and, muttering something under his
breath, stamped heavily from the room,
across the yards, and into the cab.

He tested the air, Avhistled " out-of-
town." and, as the conductor gave a lan-
guid signal, he started the train with a
vicious jerk that made the little caboose
at the rear end bounce and bob like a
rubber ball.

Campbell glanced back over the long
train with a feeling of exaltation, then
suddenlv shut off the steam with a curse

CAMPBELL'S WEDDING RACE.

and a yell as the air-brakes clamped the
wheels. In starting he had pulled out a
coupling, and the train had parted.

-He jumped to the ground and rushed
back to see what had happened. There
on -the ground lay the draw-bar, and a
big hole, in the car showed that- the car
could not be taken along.

fireman one withering look, choked a
little with anger, and then thrust his
head out of the window without saying a
word.

The fireman, still muttering to him-
self, slid down into the gangway.
Bracing himself, he took up a shovelful
of coal, swung open the fire-box door,

The conductor came forward
and glared malevolently at
Campbell.

" Now, you see what you've
done, you hoghead ! " he cried
angrily.

" We'll have to kick her in
the bad-order spur, and leave
her," said Campbell, as he
turned on his heel and strode
toward his engine.

Quickly the disabled car was
switched out, the train coupled
up, and this time the start was
made with more caution. As
they rattled over the last switch
and swung out into the open country,
Campbell glanced at his watch.

"Accident number one," he muttered;
"and. it's one-forty-five. We'll have to
ramble some if we get there in time. Any-
how, that car makes us lighter. Budd,"
he called to the fireman, " this is my wed-
ding march, and I'm going to make it a
record-breaker ! "

The engine rocked and reeled as the
train gathered speed. The fireman's
eves opened wider and wider as the speed
increased. At the end of the first few
miles they were sticking far out of his
head. When he could stand it no longer,
he slid carefully from his seat and made
his way over to the engineer's side. He
clutched Campbell by the sleeve, and
shouted hoarsely in his ear:

" For Heaven's sake, man, don't you
know this is a 'leven - hundred engine,
and that it will fall over on you if you
don't slow down? "

Campbell drew in his head, gave the

NOW, YOU SEE WHAT YOU'VE DONE, YOU HOGHEAD !

and threw the coal at the blazing furnace
with all his might. But just as he threw
it, the door seemed to dodge to one side,
and the coal went high over the boiler-
head, deluging the engineer.

Campbell took his eyes off of the track
long enough to give the astonished fire-
man another withering look, then thrust
his head out of the window again.

Overcome with surprise, the fireman
sank down upon the coal, and gaped at
the open furnace door. At last he arose,
took up another shovelful of coal, and
braced himself for another try. He was
not to be fooled again, so he waited un-
til he was sure of his mark, then heaved
the coal at the fire-box with all his
might.

But this time he more than half ex-
pected to see the door dodge him again.
When it did not, he was taken by sur-
prise, and let the shovel go in the fur-
nace with tlie coal.

Not sure just what had happened, he

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

stood for some time gazing at his empty
hands vacantly, then at the roaring fire.
When he did comprehend the dread truth,
most of his shovel had by that time gone
curling out of the smoke-stack.

Again he clutched at the engineer's
sleeve, and this time his face was white
with horror.

" I've thrown the shovel into the fire-
box!" he shouted in Campbell's ear.

Campbell turned, and this time there
was the ghost of a grim smile curling
his lips as mechanically he reached for
his watch.

" Accident number two," he said, and
his eyes focused on the track ahead.
" And the wedding march has just start-
ed. Let the band play on! "

The fireman stumbled back into the
gangway with white, scared face. There
was but one thing to do now, and he set
to work at once throwing coal into the
fire-box with his hands. There was not
another shovel on the train that he knew
of, and he had no chance to get one until
they reached the first stop. It was a
hard task, but there was no help for it.

The train rushed on at maddening
speed, taking the hills with a rush and
seeming to fall down on the other side.

A brakeman started forward over the
top of the train. He gave up before he
had crossed the first car, and crawled
back. The little caboose seemed to be
trying to do four or five things at once,
but it was a safer place than on top
of the box cars.

Every few minutes the white - faced
conductor swore that they were off the
track, but the speed increased rather
than slackened.

" I'll pay him up for this when we get
to Little Grade," muttered the conduc-
tor once when the caboose stayed in the..
air longer than usual.

The fireman still toiled at throwing
coal into the furnace, but he had to keep
the door open so much of the time that
it was doubly hard to keep up steam.

But the engineer opened the throttle
wider.

The blind sidings and the telegraph-
offices flew by in quick succession, and
at all points there was a clear signal.

They were out of the hills now, and
the desert was before them, where the
track was straight and level. There were

no trains to meet, as none had cleared
the wreck.

The speed seemed to increase. The
miles were reeled off in quick succession.
The fireman became almost frantic with
the heat and his cramped position. But
Campbell sat immovable on his seat, his
eyes ever on the track ahead. Merciless-
ly he kept the throttle open wide.

The afternoon shadows were begin-
ning to lengthen when at length they
pulled into Little Grade, and half of
the journey was behind them. Here
they would take on coal and water and
get their new orders to proceed.

7^$%

ONLY TO SPRING TO HIS FEET AGAIN

Campbell brought the engine to a
standstill at the coal-chute with a master
hand. The fireman climbed wearily to
the top of the tender and let down the
door of one of the chutes. There was a
rush of coal, but it only half-filled the
tender.

" What's the matter with you dagos
up there? " called the fireman with some
heat. " Why haven't you got this chute
full of coal?"

" Gotta no coal up here," came the an-
swer. " No eng' to putta it up."

Campbell moved the engine up to the
next chute, and this time the coal del-
uded the tender and cab.

CAMPBELL'S WEDDING RACE.

The fireman climbed into the chute,
picked up a shovel, and threw it onto
the tender. The Italian boss looked
wickedly at him as he climbed back into
the cab, but the fireman cared little so
long as he had the prized shovel.

" I'll go back and get the orders," said
Campbell as he jumped to the ground.

Half-way to the depot he spied the
trainmen entering the lunch-counter of
the company hotel.

" Hey, there, you hay-pitchers ! " he
called after them angrily. " Where do
you think you are going? We're only
two hours and a half out of a division-
point. Why didn't you eat before you
started? "

" We didn't have time," the conduc-
tor answered. " We were called on short
notice, you know."

Campbell ground his teeth, and strode
angrily into the telegraph- office, to "meet
with another shock.

" You fellows will have to put up
coal," the operator said blandly.

In one bound Campbell cleared the
counter that separated him from the of-
fice, and he gripped the operator by the
shoulder.

"Who says to put up coal?" he de-
manded hoarsely.

" Why— why, the -despatcher." said the
operator, wriggling with pain. " Yours
is the first engine in here since the coal
ran low, and there'll be a big delay to the

— WITH A MUTTERED CURSE, AS HE SAT DOWN IN A TUB OF WATER
TO PUT OUT THE FIRE.

already delayed trains if they come down
here in a bunch from the wreck and find
there's no coal."

" Tell him," bellowed Campbell,
" that we have a 'leven-hundred engine,
and can't go onto the chute."

"He says," grimaced the operator,
" that you can leave enough cars between
the engine and the cars you put up to
keep the engine off of the chute."

Campbell hesitated for a moment,
then turned on his heel, vaulted the
counter, and ran down the track to his
engine.

The engine watchman had by this time
cleaned the ash-pan of the engine, and
was seated in the cab listening to the
excited fireman's account of their record-
breaking run.

Campbell choked down his wrath, and
when he addressed these two his voice
was as low and as sweet as he could
make it.

"Boys," he began, "there's got to be
some coal put up, and the train-crew has
gone to eat." His voice faltered a little
here, but he went on bravely. " We
three can put it up, if you fellows will
act as my brakemen ; and, if you will, I'll
give you four bits apiece."

The -fireman and the engine watchman
gaped in astonishment at the liberal offer,
and eagerly accepted. They clambered
back over the train, cut off six cars back
of the engine, and Campbell ran down
to the coal-spur, where
his acting brakemen
coupled on five cars
of coal.

They backed up to
the chute, coupled, on
the five empty cars
that were on the in-
cline, and shoved them
in on a siding. Again
they backed up to the
chute, this time with
greater speed, and the
cars of coal mounted
the incline to the
shed.

Campbell was still
hot with anger be-
cause the trainmen
had taken advantage
of him, and he did
not observe his usual

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

caution while putting up the coal. The
cars mounted more swiftly than he - sup-
posed, and the last one was just enter-
ing the shed before he slackened speed.

Then his two brakemen came racing
out of the shed over the cars, waving
frantically for him to stop. He applied
the air, but his helpers had neglected to
connect it, and, before he could stop, two
cars of coal plunged over the other end
of the chute and flattened out on the
ground thirty feet below.

The Italian coal-heavers tumbled out
of the shed and scattered in every direc-
tion.

A grim smile showed plainly on Camp-
bell's face as he released the engine and
shot down to the level track.

The fireman opened the switch, and
Campbell backed down to the train. Pie
plucked out his watch and studied it in-
tently.

" Four-thirty," he muttered, " and de-
lay number three. The worst half of the
wedding march is yet to come ! "

In motion once more ! The last half
of the journey! This time the fireman
had the shovel tied to his wrist, for he
was determined not to be tricked into
losing it again.

There were a few miles of level track
before they came into the mountains, and
they took them with a rush. By the time
they struck the heavy grades the flues
were leaking badly, and the steam- gage
showed a gradual lessening of pressure.
At last Campbell drew the throttle wide
open, and turned to the fireman sav-
agely.

" Can't you keep her hot? " he roared.

" You're working her too hard," com-
plained the fireman. " The flues are
leaking."

Campbell slid down from his seat and
peered into the fire-box. Water was
dripping down onto the fire in many
places.

" Great Scott ! " growled the engineer.
" I wish I had some bran."

" I think," said the fireman, " that the
car next to the head one is loaded with
bran. I saw the advertisement on the
side of the car; but you can't get it, go-
ing at this rate."

Campbell gripped the fireman by the
arm until he wriggled.

" Get up there on my seat," he or-

dered, " and run her till I come back.
Don't you dare slow down, unless it's
around a curve ! "

He turned and climbed swiftly over
the coal, wabbled across the first car,
and disappeared between it and the next.

The fireman shuddered, then turned his
eyes resolutely to the track ahead.

Campbell slid part way down the
brake-rod between the rocking, swaying
cars, and balanced himself on the only
step within reach. The end door of the
car was sealed with a tin seal and cleat-
eel at the end.

He gripped the seal and tore it loose
with one jerk. Then,' half braced, half
balanced, he kicked straight down at the
cleat with all his might.

He knew that to miss it once would
probably overbalance him and send him
down to certain death; so each kick was
well aimed. Four times he struck straight
down with all his might before the cleat
gave way and dropped to the track be-
neath.

He stopped to breathe a moment ; then,
leaning far down, holding only by one
hand, he seized the catch of the door and
pulled it open.

Just as he did so, the cars swayed apart
in opposite directions and wrenched loose
his hold. He balanced dizzily on the
step a moment, then swung downward.
A sickening feeling tore at his vitals ; but,
with a catlike turn, he managed to light
feet foremost on the bumpers, where he
clung for some time to regain his lost
breath and quiet his nerves.

Sacks of bran filled the open car door,
and he ripped one open with his knife.
A stream of bran followed ; and, taking
off his jacket, he made a bag of it. - Hold-
ing it under the stream of bran until it
was full, he bound it tightly with the
sleeves.

Three feet below, death nipped at his
heels — but he was not thinking of that.
He was growing a little vague as to why
he was running all these risks to make
time, but his determination Avas still the
same.

Closing the car door, and taking the
bran in his teeth, he swung out to the
side of the car, and climbed to the top.
He wabbled across the length of it again,
over the coal, and into the cab.

Soon he was pouring bran into the

CAMPBELL'S WEDDING RACE.

boiler. This stopped the leaking some-
what, and the needle on the steam- gage
began to climb round' to its accustomed
place.

* But now they were nearing the scene
of the wreck, and were compelled to take
the siding to wait until the liberated
trains passed. v

There was an agonizing delay of twen-
ty minutes before the first train came in
sight, and Campbell put in the time
pacing up and
down the track,
muttering ineffec-
tual curses at the
waste of time.

Then there was
another wait of fif-
teen minutes be-
fore all the trains
were clear, and by
that time Camp-
bell was nearly mad
with impatience.

He rushed out
of the siding at
great speed when
he was liberated,
and came very near
leaving behind the
brakeman who
closed the switch.

Out in the open
again, Campbell's
loud-mouthed im-
patience gave way
to silent, grim de-
termination.

By this time the
train-crew was get-
ting a little used
to fast running.
Campbell's reckless
pace did not
frighten them so
much as before.

He slackened speed
swinging around

NOT SURE JUST WHAT HAD HAPPENED, HE

STOOD FOR SOME TIME GAZING AT HIS

EMPTY HANDS VACANTLY, THEN

AT THE ROARING FIRE.

not at all now,
curves at a rate that
took away the breath, while the down-
grades seemed naught but a straight,
dizzy drop.

Only when they came to the scene of
the wreck did he slacken speed at all,
and even here he exceeded the speed limit
to such an extent that the section men
standing near the' track moved away to
a safe distance as the cars swung by.
2 R R

Darkness settled down at six o'clock.
There was no moon. The headlight,
which the fireman had lighted while they
were at Little Grade, was burning bad-
ly, and threatened to go out entirely.
But there was no stopping to repair it.
One of the brakemen, who had taken
one drink too many at Little Grade, now
climbed out of the caboose and over the
top of the train to a seat on a brake-wheel,
his lantern proclaiming his presence.

Campbell did
not see this man
for some time — not
until they had
passed the last
telegraph-office be-
fore entering
Junction City.
Happening to
glance back, he saw
trfe lantern sudden-
ly shoot high in the
air, drop to one
side of the track,
and go out.

At about the
same instant there
was a jar of tight-
ening air - brakes,
and the engineer
was thrown
through the
cab - window. He
turned over two or
three times in his
flight through the
air, and lit on the
loose soil at the
side of the track.

He lay quiet for
a few moments,
partly stunned,
then sat up and
looked about won-
deringly. He saw
the engine a few rods ahead of him, stand-
ing quite still. Farther along he could
dimly see a break in the train, and a
dark mass at the side of the right of way,
which he thought must be derailed cars.
Painfully he got to his seat and hob-
bled toward the rear of the train. He
did not seem badly hurt — merely
scratched and bruised and stunned. He
remembered having such a tight grip on
the throttle that when he went out of the

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

window it was closed before his hand was
wrenched loose.

Lights appeared toward the end of the
train as some of the trainmen came run-
ning forward. Campbell hobbled to-
ward them, but was stopped by the over-
turned box cars. There appeared to be
quite a number of them, and he sat down
on the trucks of one, swearing fluently

Another groan from the darkness an-
swered his question, and all started in
the direction of the sound. They came
upon the brakeman stretched out on his
back in the sand. He sat up and blinked-
at the light as the men came up.

" Give me just one more drink," he
begged, looking around in a puzzled sort
of way. " What's happened? " he asked,

YOU CALL ME TO TAKE THAT
FREIGHT-TRAIN OUT ! "

at the darkness and wondering where the
fireman was.

He had forgotten the brakeman whose
lantern he had seen go over with the
wrecked box cars, but he remembered
him now as he heard a groan from some-
where out in the darkness to the left.

The conductor and one brakeman came
in sight and flashed their lanterns on the
wreck. At sight of Campbell, both be-
gan to swear softly in awed tones, as
though looking on a ghost.

"How did you get here?" asked the
conductor at length.

" I fell out," confessed Campbell.
" How many cars are off the track? "

" About five or six," answered the con-
ductor. "Where's rav head brakeman?"

after a pause. " Am I drunk, or dream-
ing ? Or am I dead ? "

" You've just had your toes over the
fagged edge," said the conductor. " This
rapid -fire- gun of an engineer has put us
in the ditch and near killed us all. How
do you feel? "

The brakeman felt his left shoulder
tenderly.

" My wing's broke," he declared, and
scrambled to his feet.

They walked around the wreck, count-
ing the derailed cars.

" I count five off the track," said the
conductor, as they completed the circle.
" Three cars more, and the caboose would
have gone," he added.

On the track they found the fireman,

CAMPBELL'S WEDDING RACE.

white-faced and very nervous, looking
over the torn-up track by the light of a
torch.

V Five rail lengths of track torn up,"
he announced as the others came up.
" Is that you, Campbell? " he asked. " I
thought you'd quit the job, by the way
you left the cab."

" Well, this means trouble for some
one," said the conductor, looking hard at
Campbell.

The big engineer straightened.

" I'm going to take what's left of this
train to Junction City now," he declared.
" There's no telegraph-office between
here and the Junction, so I'll run along
in and head the wrecker out to you. Better
put out your lights right away," he cau-
tioned as he hobbled toward his engine,
followed by the fireman.

" If you're not careful, this wedding
march will be turned into a funeral pro-
cession,"' warned the fireman as they
climbed into the cab.

But Campbell only gritted his teeth
and opened the throttle.

The fireman plucked at his sleeve as
the engine started.

" You'll have to hurry, or we won't
make it," he called. The flues are leak-
ing again."

" Oh, we'll hurry, all right ! "

As the engine forged ahead, Campbell
glanced at his watch.

" Seven-twenty," he announced. " I'll
have to hurry this wedding march along
a bit, or it'll be late. This is accident
number four. I wonder will there be any
more? "

Slowly the remnant of " Extra, 1127 "
pulled into Junction City and came to
a stop before the yard office. The en-
gine was leaking badly again, making
a puddle of water beneath her as she
came to a standstill. The needle of the
steam - gage showed there was but little
steam, and this was fast decreasing.

Campbell climbed stiffly from the cab
and made his way toward the open door
of the yard office, where McDonald, mas-
ter mechanic, and father of Nellie, stood
looking critically at the engine.

Campbell was begrimed with coal
dust j his face was streaked with blood,
and over all there was a liberal coat of-
bran.

" You've played the dickens with that
engine ! " growled McDonald, as Camp-
bell came up. " Look at her! " he cried.
" She's leaking so fast she'll be dead be-
fore we can get her into the shops."

" Shut up ! " snapped Campbell in a
choked voice. " Call the wrecker," he
ordered, " and get 'em out right away. I
put five cars of merchandise into the
ditch at Mile-Post 438. Where's Nel-
lie?" he asked.

" Why — why, is that you, Campbell? "
gasped _ McDonald. "I thought you
were tied up in Farnham."

" Where's Nellie? " repeated Campbell
doggedly.

"Nellie? Why, she — why, you wired
that you couldn't get out of Farnham,
and I think Nellie announced to her
friends that the wedding was postponed
for a little time. I think she went to the
theater with Willis Garvin' this evening.
Why didn't you wire us when you start-
ed?" he asked in great excitement.

" I forgot," said Campbell weakly, as
he sank upon the step.

Mechanically his hand sought his
watch-pocket.

- Seven-fifty-seven," he murmured.
"This is accident number five."

Suddenly he got to his feet.

" After you've called the wrecker," he
said in low, decided tones, '*' you just hike
home as quick as those legs of yours will
carry you, and get ready for the wed-
ding. Take the parson with you as you
go by.

" I'm going down to the theater and
get Nellie, if I have to storm the place.
I'm also going to marry her to-night, or
turn this town upside down. Now, hur-
ry! " he added, and strode off toward the
lights of Main Street with a step which
had suddenly lost its limp.

McDonald gazed after his future son-
in-law for a few moments in silence.

" Well," he muttered at length, " he's
the limit."

The finest engine will run heavy if it is out of quarter — be on the square.

— The Master Mechanic.

The Pumpkin -Vine Special.

BY MILES McKERCHER.

It Came Around the Curve Rather Unexpectedly, Just as the " Kid

Crew " Was Communing With Nature and Thanking

the Stars for Being Alive.

AILWAY engineers take par-
ticular delight in run-
ning over hand-cars and
velocipedes. Anyway, it
has always seemed so to
me. Perhaps they don't.
Opinions differ. One thing is sure — they
hit them sometimes. Once they pretty
nearly hit us.

It was when we were repairing bridges
and trestles on the Rochester and Winona
division of the C. & G. W., better known
as the Pumpkin - Vine branch of the
Gerkwater.

From Utica to Winona the track is
just the sort you would expect to see_in
a nightmare. It typifies what you read
about Arkansas railways consisting main-
ly of horseshoe curves, S's steep grades,
and trestles over gullies.

Stanley Wright was the foreman of
our crew of five. We were all young —
in fact, Wright himself was not old
enough to vote. Other gangs called us
the " kid crew," but I feel safe in saying
that many of the older crews accom-
plished no more than we did.

One morning in the early part of July,
1907, we found it necessary to take a
case of dynamite from, Rollingstone on
our " Armstrong private car." We were
in the habit of usually stopping just be-
fore rounding very sharp curves to listen
for any possible trains. As a rule,
" extras " were few and far between on
the Pumpkin - Vine. " Specials " always
created surprise and comment among the
natives.

• The " regular " east bound had already
gone through, and we were pumping our

car around curves and over high bridges,
talking merrily. We had just arrived at
the conclusion' that even if we did spend
a good deal of muscle on the derrick and
crane (not to mention" the hand-car),
perhaps, after all, our life on the road,
free from care and worry, toiling lazily
in one of earth's pretty garden spots,
letting the early morning sunshine trickle
down on us, " perhaps," we thought,
" such a life, in spite of some slight dis-
advantages, was pretty nearly ideal."

Far were our thoughts from danger.
Guess, then, our surprise when, coming
around the last curve in a deep cut, we
were suddenly confronted by a huge lo-
comotive drawing two cars of horses and
coming like a whirlwind.

She looked as big as a barn to us. A
sheer wall of rock on each side, a ninety-
foot trestle a few yards back of us — ap-
parently no chance of getting out.
And a case of dynamite aboard !
We held our breath as Stanley applied
the brake. Our first thought was to
jump. Then common sense told us that
to do so would be fatal — not only to our-
selves, but to the train and crew as well.
There wasn't near time enough to re-
verse the motion of the car and run back
until the engineer could stop the onrush-
ing traim and we did not fancy being
hurled off the high trestle with the proba-
bility of the whole train crashing down
on top of us.

We glanced at each other in dismay.
The cold sweat trickled down my back.
We heard -the locomotive whistle fran-
tically, then saw -the engineer dodge
down low in his cab.

SILENT HEROES OF THE RAIL.

My heart beat furiously. With one
accord we were about to abandon the
car and run toward the train when
Stanley, white as a sheet, but calm and
with great presence of. mind, almost
screamed the order: " Pick up the car-r,
boys ! "

It seemed useless, but we had great
faith -in our young boss. Being in the
habit of obeying orders Ave did pick up
the car, and at a signal from him placed
it on edge against the rock bank, Stan-
ley meantime grabbing the explosive.

We were just about in time, too, for as
the locomotive whizzed by, something
caught my overalls, ripping them from

the waist to the knee. It was a very
close call.

Stanley gazed after the disappearing
train and watched it out of sight. Then
he fished out his dinky little pipe, leaned
up against the rocks, and filled and lit it.

" I guess, by jinks," said he, " we
ought to take a run dewn to St. Charles
and recuperate our exhausted nerves."
Stanley was great on speeches. " Hang
it, you fellows look scared to death. Be-
sides, I want to-'write a letter to Mamie."

So we took a holiday and rambled down
to St. Charles. When our checks came
on pay-day I can't say as I noticed any
" lay-off " recorded, either.

Silent Heroes of the Rail

BY ROBERT H. ROGERS.

HERO is a much-abused word. It means almost anything, from a man
who saves a ship-load of people by brave and long-sustained endeavor
to a matinee idol. We have made many in this country, and forgotten
them within a week. Meanwhile, heroism walks among us daily, and we
fail to see it.

Our monthly department, the Industrial Roll of Honor, proves this, and
the article that follows adds further point to our belief that the man who
does his duty simply and unostentatiously as he sees it, in spite of dangers
and discomforts or actual suffering, is a very real hero in a very real, manly
way.

Railroad Men of All Grades Who Have Faced Danger and Endured

Discomfort in the Simple Performance of

Their Every-Day Duties.

NE night in the winter of
1907, at a few minutes
before twelve o'clock, En-
gineer Champagne, of the
New York, New Haven
and Hartford Railroad,
advised the night-foreman at South Bos-
ton that the window glass was missing
from the front door of the cab on his
side of engine 809-. This might appear
a simple matter for the carpenter on
duty to repair before the engine was due

to depart for the South Station, and so
it would have been did time permit.

The yard schedule, however, demand-
ed that this engine must leave the round-
house at 11 p.m. sharp to take out the
midnight New York express, and the 809
was then over half an hour behind. Con-
sequently, Engineer Champagne backed
off the turntable with the pane knocked
out.

It was seasonable New England
weather. A wild blizzard from Cape

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

FOR OVER FOUR HOURS THIS MAN SAT FACING THE COLD AND THE
HOWLING WIND IN ALL ITS FURY.

Cod way for the past twenty-four hours
had been sweeping relentlessly west from
Provincetown ; and zero temperature,
with the usual accompaniment of needle-
like snow, conspired to make a wintry
scene extending from Boston to the Grand
Central Station. The street-car, and even
the cab service, in the Hub, was practi-
cally suspended; and the few passengers
made their way to the train with diffi-
culty, breathing meanwhile bitter invec-
tives against the east wind and all that it
brought. Then they entered the warm
and comfortable sleepers, and promptly
forgot their passing discomforts.

Up forward on the big engine it was
different. That front window meant a
great deal to the engineer. It was his

only protection against
the driving snow and
gale, the latter to be
intensified by the giddy
speed at which he must
run; and to one fa-
miliar as himself with
the prospect ahead, a
hero's nerve was re-
quired to " pull out "
without it.

For over four hours
this man sat facing the
cold and the howling
wind in all its fury.
When the' train finally
halted in the New
Haven depot, where
the 809 was changed
for the New York di-
vision engine, he was
in a state of exhaus-
tion, and literally en-
cased in ice. It is
impossible to conceive
what he must have en-
dured on that long run
of one hundred and six-
ty miles.

This is merely an in-
stance of the silent,
every - day heroism of
railroad employees.
Engineer Champagne
would have been en-
tirely within his rights,
and would have been
upheld by the com-
pany, had he refused
roundhouse in South
Boston until the damage had been re-
paired, but he knew that this could not
be done in season to start on time. So
he accepted the hardship and danger,
and started on his run without a murmur,
although the outlook might well have
daunted the stoutest heart.

Turkish Bath in the Cab.

The story of the iron rail is so bestrewn
with similar examples of devotion to duty
that the record of a single road would
furnish material for a volume. Unfor-
tunately few, if any, are heralded in
print, because these men are loyally reti-
cent, and because they are grounded in

to leave the

SILENT HEROES OF THE RAIL.

the belief that such inconveniences are
merely incidental to their calling.

About two years ago the body of Paf-
rick Collins, mayor of Boston, was being
brought to his native city on train 72,
popularly known as the " Federal Ex-
press." Two miles west of Providence
the throttle-packing blew out of engine
806, which was handling the train.

The immediate result was to fill the
cab with steam, followed by a continuous
spray of hot, almost boiling* water, which,
as might be expectedr selected for its
target the fireman shoveling his coal.

Common sense, in view of the discom-
fort in the cafe, dictated that another
engine should be put on the train at
Providence, and the 806 left there. For
a moment Engineer Connors entertained
this idea, because there was a relief-
engine available at the Charles Street
roundhouse, only a mile up the track, but
he as promptly dismissed it.

" We've got the mayor's body aboard,
John," he said to Fireman Sommerville.
" There is a committee waiting in Boston,
and everybody on the road and in the
city wants the train in on time.

" Can you stick it out another forty-
five miles? If you can't, I will call for
the 1280 here, but we will lose fifteen
minutes making the change."

Shoveled Three Tons of Coal.

While they were taking water, John
reflected, and then told the engineer that
he wouldn't mind a little thing like a
wetting. The train left Providence with
the leaky 806, and arrived in the big
train-shed of the South Station on time
to the minute.

The big locomotive, with its tolling
bell, attracted little attention as the fu-
neral cortege passed through other than
this mark of respect by her crew, but had
the mourners observed closely they would
have seen two men as nearly drowned as
it is possible for men to be who have not
actually been submerged. The fireman
was in the worst plight of the two.

From 'the time when the throttle-pack- -
ing gave out he had shoveled nearly three
tons of coal, and in depositing: each
•shovelful where it belonged he had re-
ceived the full volume of boiling water
escaping from the ruptured joint.

The cab had been filled with steam
to such an extent that even the towermen
along the -.road observed it, and wired
ahead, fearing there had been an acci-
dent. The men who stood for upward
of an hour like specters in the fog re-
ceived a letter from their master me-
chanic commending them for not giving
up their engine at Providence.

Crippled, but On the Job.

The case of Engineer E. T. Parlett,
of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,
illustrates the extremes to which the dis-
regard of comfort, even when it entails
actual suffering, may be carried in order
to " make the time." A short time ago,
while engine 1330, on the 9 a.m. limited
out of Washington for Philadelphia, was
gaining speed after crossing the Susque-
hanna River, the reverse lever became
unlatched, and flew back with a bang
into the corner of the quadrant.

Sixty miles an hour was the mandate
of the schedule, but so great was the
strain thrown upon the lever by the
moving parts when traveling fast it
became necessary to reduce the speed
in order to hook it back where it be-
longed.

As Parlett pushed in the throttle, and
reached for the brake-valve to " pull her
down," he felt a sudden sharp pain in
his left hand. A glance showed that his
first and second fingers were missing,
and that his overalls were spattered with
blood.

With the assistance of his fireman,
Parlett restored the lever to its proper
position and picked up speed again.
Then he bound up the bleeding stumps
with his neckkerchief, and threw the am-
putated fingers out of the cab-window.

It was still sixty miles to Philadelphia,
but he never faltered, arriving at the
Twenty- Fourth and Chestnut Street sta-
tion on time. Then he promptly fainted
from pain and loss of blood.

"My hand was resting on the lever
when it unlatched," he said afterward,
" and it went into the corner so quick
that my fingers were cut off clean as by
a knife, against the handle of the sand
lever, I suppose. Why didn't I get off in
Wilmington, or ask for another engineer
there? Well, I don't know.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" She wasn't steaming very good, for
one thing, and I knew that if she fell
into strange hands, cranky as she was,
she wouldn't get the train to the Read-
ing on time, and that's what we are paid
to do."

Overtime for a Hero.

Daniel Smith, an engineer on one of
the Reading flyers between Camden and
Atlantic City, has about as much nerve
as they ordinarily put into a man. This
has been, shown without the excitement
of a battle-field, to urge his decision.

In a similar accident the reverse lever ;
flew backward while his train was "doing
her mile," about ten miles east of Cam-
den. The engineer was found by the
fireman unconscious in the rear of the
cab. The latter shut off steam, and re-
vived him .with cold water.

When Smith reached for the refractory
reverse lever he found that his left arm
was broken. In spite of the entreaties of
the fireman to stop and have the injury
attended to, he ran the engine the re-
maining fifty miles, doing the necessary
work with his good hand, and making
his time. Then he was lifted from his
cab and carried to the hospital.

No railroad company requires or ex-
pects such sacrifices from its men, but
they seem part of the business, and have
become identified with their calling. Cer-
tainly no official would have instructed
John Dejerald, a Southern Railway en-
gineer, to pull out on the main track
ahead of a string of runaway freight-
cars, with the forlorn hope of stopping
them before they piled into a passenger-
train a few minutes ahead, but this man
took the initiative and did so successfully.

Ten of them, all heavily loaded, had
escaped from the gravity yard at Lons-
dale, two miles west of Knoxville, and
were embarking on the down grade lead-
ing to the city when Dejerald saw them
coming. He had just arrived from Ashe-
ville, and was waiting to put up at the
roundhouse near by.

He motioned to the negro brakeman to
open the switch and let him out, and by
the nicest sort of calculation managed to
have his hundred-ton " battle-ship " over-
taken and gently run into by the follow-
ing cars without damage.

Then, by a vigorous use of the air and
sand, he " back-pedaled " the runaway to
a* stop, and quietly returned it to the
yard, where was gathered an excited
group of the yardmaster and his assist-
ants in anxious speculation over the out-
come.

"My time was up when I arrived from
Asheville," was Dejerald's only com-
ment to the former ; " and I want an ex-
tra hour for this work. Charge it to
switching cars in Lonsdale yard after
completion of regular trip."

Thus was a thrilling incident calmly
transformed into a matter of routine, with
an attendant of forty cents for overtime.
Had he not stopped the runaways, it is
impossible to estimate the damage which
would have resulted when they met in
the crowded Knoxville passenger ter-
minal, with the speed of a limited.

There is a peculiar pathos in the story
of Fireman Marston, which is still talked
about by railroad men on the Pittsburgh
division of the Baltimore and Ohio.
While he was firing a pushing engine on
Whitehall hill, just outside of Pittsburgh,
a few years ago, a telegram came to the
Glenwood shops, in care of the round-
house foreman, telling of the death of
Marston's mother in a trolley accident.

No Time for Mourning.

The foreman, in. the press of other
duties, neglected to send the message to
the young man. The latter was on the
pusher that day and the next, when he
was hurriedly called to fire the west-
bound Chicago express to Chicago Junc-
tion.

It was not until he had reported for
duty that the sad news, now two days
old, was conveyed to him. In the mean-
time only twenty minutes remained for
the engine to reach the Pittsburgh depot,
if it was to leave on time, and there was
no . other fireman to take his place.

Although dazed with grief over his un-
expected loss, Marston went with his
train.

"If you can wire ahead," he said.
" and have some one relieve me at New-
castle Junction, for God's sake do it.
Every mile is taking me farther away
from my dead mother."

They tried, but failed, and he was

SILENT HEROES OF THE RAIL.

obliged to make the round trip of over
four hundred miles. When he returned
the next day the funeral was over.

Naturally the engineer and fireman,
from their exposed position at the head
of the train, and their consequently
greater liability to bear the brunt of
danger, become the
heroes in the ma-
jority of these in-
stances of inborn de-
votion to duty; but
many similar exam-
ples can be found
among the less ex-
ploited callings of
the railroad.

There is not a
roundhouse or shop
in the country which
does not number on
its pay-roll one man
at least who has per-
formed some feat out
of the common
which, if properly
presented, would
transcend, fiction.
There was a boiler-
maker employed on
the Baltimore and
Ohio several years
ago, at Baltimore,
Maryland. John Rau
was ' his name, and
his special job was
the " hot work " at
the Riverside round-
house. Hot work
means calking boiler-
flues when they
come in leaking, in
a fire-box temper-
ature of close to
two hundred de-
grees. „

Ordinarily the boiler is well cooled
before the boiler-maker begins, but some-
times the engine is badly needed, and
time does not permit all of the precau-
tions which might be observed for his
comfort.

In this age of organizations and rights
it becomes only necessary for the man
to remark to his foreman that' " things
are too hot in there yet," and no one has
authority to order him on the job.

It is said, however, in the case of Rau
that it was only necessary to tell him the
engine was wanted in a hurry, and he
would calk flues under conditions which
would nonplus a salamander.

One day a special was ordered in a
great rush to take the president of the

HE HAD RECEIVED THE FULL VOLUME OF WATER ESCAPING FROM
THE RUPTURED JOINT.

road to Washington. As usual, as every
engine despatcher can attest, the call
found them short of power. None of the
few engines available were suitable to
put on the train, and it became necessary
to place dependence on the 1402, which
was then in Camden station, and would
shortly be over to the roundhouse.

Preparations were made to clean her
fire and get her around for the special
at the earliest possible moment, but on

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

TWENTY MINUTES IN THE GLOW-
ING HEAT, UNDER THE PLAY
OF A HOSE.

her arrival her flues were leaking. The
master mechanic and every one in au-
thority sought to dissuade Rau from en-
tering the fire-box, which had been hastily
emptied of fuel, until it had cooled a

little, but the boiler-maker
knew that the engine was
wanted badly, and must
leave for the depot in half
an hour to save the credit of
the shop.
' He went into the fire-box,

' and stayed twenty minutes
' in the glowing heat under
the play of a hose, stopped
twenty-three squirting flues,
and emerged practically par-
boiled, but with enough vigor
to demand an extra hour,
which, needless to add, was
thankfully allowed him.
So hot was the water in the boiler of
this engine while the work was being
done that after the leaks had been
stopped she was run out of the house
under her own steam.

REST-ROOMS FOR SUBWAY MEN.

ALL over the country the railroads are
L realizing that the way to have an
efficient working force is to encourage
among their men a " club spirit." The re-
sult has been the providing of rest-houses,
libraries, and athletic organizations, to which
the roads themselves have usually con-
tributed largely, often financing the whole
thing.

The latest addition to this system is the
Interborough Rapid Transit Company of
New York. It is announced that the com-
pany has appropriated fifty thousand dollars
for the erection of six clubhouses at various
parts of the city, namely, One Hundred and

Fifty-Ninth Street and Eighth Avenue, One
Hundred and Twenty-Ninth Street and
Third Avenue, the One Hundred and
Seventy-Ninth Street yard, Bronx Park and
Third Avenue ; Two Hundred and Forty-
Second Street and Broadway, and One Hun-
dred and Forty-Eighth Street and Seventh
Avenue.

The buildings will be sixty-five by thirty-
six feet, and will be equipped with shower
baths, kitchens, restaurants, smoking, and
reading rooms. It is stated that Mr. August
Belmont has personally added ten thousand
dollars to the appropriation for the purchas-
ing of books, newspapers, and periodicals.

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

BY STEPHEN CHALMERS,
Author of "The Cataclysm," "A Daughter of the Armada," etc.

A Prophesy of Death and a Mortgage on
Life, with Love Lurking in the Background.

CHAPTER I.

The Man on the Straw.

HILIP SAND left the doc-
tor's office with an amused
expression playing about his
quietly humorous mouth. In
this workaday, uneventful
existence there is something
novel, highly interesting, and diverting
in the sudden announcement that one is
about to pass away.

" I wouldn't care to promise you a
year," was Dr. Lauriston's way of con-
veying the information. "Of course, I
may be mistaken ; but, from the appar-
ent progress of the trouble in the last
month or two, "I feel justified — in fact,
it is my duty to warn you."

" Quite so," said Philip Sand, with a
note of sympathy for Philip Sand.

The announcement was so startling,
so all-upheaving, so sweeping, that it did
not strike Philip as being anything
which really concerned him personally.
When a man lives for thirty years,
hearing of deaths every other day dur-
ing that period, he begins to regard
death as something quite abstract —
something which is common to every
other mortal, but a thing- apart from his
own matters.

That is why it amused Philip Sand
to be told that he himself was about to
pass away.

Of course, Dr. Lauriston might be
wrong. He probably was wrong. In
fact, Lauriston was often wrong in his
raven-like predictions. It was old Phi-

lander Sand, Philip's father, who once
said :

" So long as Lauriston says I'm going
to die, it's all right."

Old Philander did die eventually.
Perhaps in the spirit world he had time
to reflect on the matter. If so, he
probably attributed his mortality to the
fact that for once he had called in an-
other doctor who had distinctly agreed
with Lauriston.

All of which is aside from the gravity
of Philip Sand's condition ; but Philip's
own thoughts were running in the pecul-
iar strain of levity which flows through
a man's brain when he is confronted by
that fact which destroys the sense of
fitness. Philip Sand felt that everything
was a misfit that morning — everything
was ridiculously out of joint.

He, feeling in the prime of health —
except for a little cough, which left him
damp and flushy — had been told that he
had not a year to live. Philip chuckled
as he turned up Fifth Avenue toward
the park. Somehow, the park called
him just then. He wanted to get to the
green trees and the cool water quickly —
just to sit and look at them, as if they
would give the lie to the prophecy.

His thoughts wandered as he strolled
up the gay thoroughfare ; but all the
time the undertone was Lauriston and
what he had said, and what he, Philip
Sand, thought of Lauriston and what he
had said. Among medical men Lauris-
ton-was playfully referred to as " Lugu-
brious Larry." Yet he was the first spe-
cialist in the diagnosis of pulmonary
troubles.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Philip's mother had been deadly
afraid of him. Philip's father had
loved the gloomy physician. His gloom
had amused Philander. Old Philander
used to say :

" The number of departed that Lauris-
ton meets when he walks down the ave-
nue would scare any ordinary man.
But, maybe, he thinks they are ghosts."

And there was another story that used
to amuse old Philander Sand, and the
son chuckled as he remembered his
father's way of telling it. One of Dr.
Lauriston's patients lived in a boarding-
house. The nurse slept in the next
room. She needed sleep, but the patient
couldn't afford a relief nurse. Lauriston
solved the difficulty by getting a tin
horn — the kind you blow on election
night — and placing it by the bedside.

"If you feel yourself sinking in the
night," said he •to the patient, "just
blow the horn and the nurse will wake
up."

The scheme worked excellently. The
patient had a sinking spell in the night.
He blew the horn with his last breath —
and the nurse, woke up.

" Every man his own Gabriel ! " old
Philander used to add, with a chuckle.

But — supposing Dr. Lauriston was
right, and Philip Sand was in danger
of losing his life. He was well aware
that the cure for his trouble had not
yet been discovered; and that, once the
disease had taken a firm hold; it was
only a matter of time.

It might be, as Lauriston had said, a
year, or it might be five years ; but the
fact remained that he had the trouble
in his lungs, and that was enough to
cause sober reflection.

It came to Philip all at once, just as
the park arose before him. The green
trees and the babies in their perambu-
lators suddenly reminded him that the
sap of life was beginning its annual re-
juvenation. Everything seemed green
and young and fresh. The very air
breathed of life — new life ; even in his
own veins he could feel it. Yet the fiat
had been issued. The blight also was at
work.

But Philip was not of the brooding
temperament. When he was confronted
by any fact he adapted himself to it. If
it were pleasant, he accepted it with the

quiet gratitude of one who does not
spend what he has recklessly. If it were
unpleasant, his philosophy covered it, or
he trusted to the alleviating circum-
stance that would balance the misfor-
tune.

But this was something new — the
something which the human mind con-
siders with surprise and non-comprehen-
sion. He had about one year to live.
All at once he could hear all the clocks
in the universe ticking in riotous unison,
and, his faculties became strangely alert
to the little things of the business of
living.

He was filled with the idea that he
must at once balance his books and,
realizing the liabilities without much
figuring, glean every possible asset to
cover the bankruptcy. He settled him-
self to the task.

He, Philip Sand, came of a very old
family. Its history dated back to an-
other land, and could be traced through
its history to a dim time when sentences
covered eras. His grandfather, Septi-
mus Sand, had come from that other
land, wiping out his connection with it
by his own personality ; for Septimus
was a dreamer.

Septimus loved old books, old jugs,
old documents. He was a ne'er-do-well
in that other land. Here he was a queer
old gentleman who had plenty of money,
but thought more of a scrap of parch-
ment than of a government bond. His
only son, Philander, was the very op-
posite.

From some mysterious source Philander
had acquired an intensely commercial
spirit, allied with a grotesque sense of
humor. Philander met Philip^s mother
at Dodworth Hall, New York, when
Artemus Ward lectured there.

Philip's mother had observed Philan-
der in the throes of exquisite mirth over
little points which escaped a large part
of the audience. Philander's laughter
was so human, so genuine, so infectious,
that the great humorist finally fixed him
with his eye and said in his melancholy
manner :

" I would remind the jovial gentle-
man in the third row that I did not come
here to be laughed at."

That completely finished Philander
Sand. And Philip's mother - to - be

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

laughed, too — not at A. Ward, but at
the " jovial gentleman in the third row,"
and remarked to her own father that " a
man -who can laugh like that must be a
pleasant person to live with."

From her gentleness of spirit — for
A. Ward was the matchmaker — Philip
acquired his philosophic, thoughtful
temperament. From his father he ac-
quired good sense and that irresistible
sense of humor. But the predominating
strain of his character was the intro-
spective way of his grandfather, Septi-
mus, together with that old gentleman's
love of lore, pictures of the past, and
the glamour of book-life.

After Philander's death — Philip's
mother died when the boy was young — ■
the lad found himself the last of the
Sands. The commercial Philander had
left a fortune, invested, which Philip
left to take care of itself.

Unfortunately, others took care of it,
while Philip fished, smoked his pipe,
and in the evenings explored his grand-
father's dog-eared treasures. The for-
tune suddenly collapsed, crashing to
earth so violently that it carried the
house of Sand with it. Philip saved the
•old books and curios and went to work,
but he was not built for commerce.

He remained away from business for
days at a time. He felt ill, although he
was not sure whether his illness was tem-
peramental or physical. Now he knew
it was both.

Here was his position. He was with-
out a tie in the world. His heart was
whole and untrammeled. He was free
to roam the wide world, but the first
move meant car fare, at least ; and car
fare was scarce.

He was unfitted for drudgery by tem-
perament, and now he was unfitted phys-
ically. He had contracted the disease
that means immediate cessation of con-
finement. What was he to do?

" In short," reflected Philip, " I am
of no use to any one. I ought, perhaps,
to commit suicide ; but I have such a
faculty for enjoying life that I see no
use in cutting off my nose. If I only
bad enough money to make the last year
worth while. I feel so fine."

His idea of making the last year
" worth while " was not that of despera-
tion. The "white lights and the reckless,

glad suicide did not appeal to him. He
wanted to live — a healthy, spirited life.

In other days he had vowed to travel.
But, like the man who did not read
Dickens until he was sixty, he kept that
joy until his mind was mature and he
might be fully appreciative of the world
that he was- to see and study.

Now he called himself' a fool for not
having traveled while he had the money.
Now that life was a matter of three hun-
dred and sixty-five days, or less, the blue
seas had a strange fascination, and the
spring air of the park suggested green
islands with coral beaches and opal in-
shore waters.

Couldn't it be done? There was only
one thing which was an asset — his
insurance. Unfortunately, that fifty
thousand dollars would not be available
for ten years, unless he died in the
meantime. True, he might cash in the
policies.

They should be worth something after
ten years. They were on the twenty-
year payment plan, but they would hard-
ly be worth a sum large enough for an
extended tour of the world with never
a thought of cost — for the year must be
free from all worry, and the year must
embrace everything worth seeing, worth
tasting, worth experiencing.

There were so many things that he
•would like to see, taste, and experience —
the many things he had planned when
he reveled in the romantic suggestions of
his grandfather's old papers. Recently
he had been reading an old book about
Panama.

He would like to see Panama — not
the canal works, but the ghost Pan-
ama, from the Spaniard with his trains
of ingot-laden mules, and the buccaneers
with their red cutlasses and firebrands,
down to the gold - crazed immigrants
sinking beneath the yellow scourge along
the jungle trail.

Then Philip Sand sank into a day-
dream, as he so often did. But this day-
dream had an idea through it. He im-
agined he was back in the old library
again. A rotting old ledger, which was
now in his bedroom in Forty-Ninth
Street, was open before him. It was an
old log-book which his grandfather had
picked up somewhere.

The author of that log-bopk and the

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

ship whose journeyings and adventures
it chronicled were not known to fame,
but the book was a fine specimen of a
sailor's diary. It contained, besides po-
sitions and weather remarks, the philo-
sophic reflections of a lonely captain.

On one page, as Philip recalled, was
an attempt at poetry — a fragmentary
paean in praise of somebody's good looks :

Wherever I go on the raging main
I see your brown eyes, Martha Lane.

And on another page there was an
account — cruelly realistic in its very
crudeness — of the death of the ship's
boy, Harry Breakspar, and of his burial
at sea — "and Dick Gibby, the ship's
sweetheart, blubbered like a babby."

But the page that arose before Philip
Sand's mental eyes as he sat on the park
bench was worded something like this :

Gibby's father sailed with him, and he
told Gibby that the treasure was still
where they putt it. The buccaneers never
buried treasure in the Pacific ; the At-
lantic was handier,. near England. Gibby
says it was never put down, so the story
got wrong by word of mouth. It never
were putt on the Cocos Islands at all.
Gibby says it were putt on the Caicos,
which islands are among the Bahama
reefs, and hard to find, because they are
changing names all the time. It may be
true. I think Gibby's right, and his
father sailed with him. The pig jumpt
overboard this morning.

" It may be true. I think it is.
And Gibby's father sailed with him,"
echoed Philip, without knowing or car-
ing much who Gibby's father was or
with whom he sailed.

Philip remembered the day his grand-
father, Septimus, showed him that pas-
sage. To old Septimus the matter of
knowing where a million dollars' worth
of treasure might be lying around did
not matter much ; it only pleased the
old gentleman to think that a secret like
that enhanced the value of the curious
log-book.

Many a time Philip had turned to
that page and studied the communica-
tion of Gibby. The thing was like an
opiate that lulled him to romantic day-
dreams. In his dreaming he had seen
the old captain writing, with his tongue

out, the words that Gibby had told him.
Then he had drifted back to the bucca-
neers and the galleon and the sea-fight.

He knew quite well that it was a hard
engagement, lasting all day; and the
scuppers poured blood, which clotted as
it trickled down to the water. And he
knew that the pirates boarded the Span-
iard, made the dons walk the plank, ill-
used the women, broke into the stores
and got drunk, transshipped the treasure
of Peruvian ingots and miscellaneous
loot and sailed away after scuttling the
Doha Maria del Something or Other.

They may have set -fire to it, but
Philip knew better. They scuttled it.
He saw them do it.

By and by they came to the island —
the Caicos. They took the treasure
ashore and buried it. Philip knew the
spot quite well. He had seen them
bury the treasure. He had helped pile
the ingots himself, and Gibby's father
had got very drunk and shot a dog
which wasn't harming anybody. Gibby's
father was as coarse a man as ever
broached a rum puncheon.

Then they had a great barbecue and
fell asleep on the island when they were
hoarse with singing and unable to stand
on their legs for another jig. And
Gibby's father fell in the fire, and the
smell of burning flesh awoke him, and
he spat in the fire to show his contempt
for its entire proceedings.

Philip Sand awoke. The ducks on
the lake were quacking. He had thought
they were wild ducks in the swamp in-
side the beach ; but they were quite tame,
and a little girl was throwing broken
crackers to them. The green was still
on the trees ] the air was wine- like and
living as ever, and a policeman in a new
uniform was strutting along the walk,
swinging his locust on a thong twisted
about his wrist.

If only he could go aftef that treasure
— not for the treasure's sake, but for
the joy of the dream. If only he had
the money which had been his a . year
before ! He would charter a steam-
yacht and a crew, and sail in search of
that island which he knew so well, and
he would go to that spot where his own
hands had piled ingots and where he
had helped Gibby's father to his feet.
He felt sure that the burned spot where

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

the barbecue had been held must Still
show.

The call of life was growing stronger
every minute. Money ! Money ! He
must have money ! And again that
mocking fifty-thousand-dollar bond arose
before him, and it pointed a mocking
0 at him, as much as to say :

" You can have all the O's, but the
5 is not available until you are dead !
Do you understand? — dead! And you'll
be dead in a year, and it will all go
to some one you never heard of."

Philip rose to his feet and began to
walk rapidly through the park. Was
there no way he could get some of that
money? He would mortgage his soul;
a pound of flesh; his life, like Faust or
Lorenzo, to the Devil or Shylock, or any-
body who cared to have it.

Surely there was some Shylock who
would be willing to make a fabulous
profit on a year's investment. Surely
any business man whose practical mind
overlooked silly sentiment would take- a
plunge on a man whose death in a year
would mean fifty thousand dollars hard
cash.

Philip Sand stopped short at a point
where two paths diverged. He had ar-
rived somewhere, and the two paths sug-
gested the pause. He had solved the
problem. He would mortgage his life,
the mortgage to be foreclosed at his
death, or in three hundred and sixty-five
days.

The other man's profit mattered little
to him as long as he, Philip Sand, could
raise enough to go treasure-hunting, to
sail the seas, taste the salt air, feel the
vessel sway and heave on the billows, see
the green islands and the coral beaches
and opal waters.

To find the other man! That was
all. Presently Philip Sand took the path
to the right, walking rapidly toward the
park exit. He had remembered a name
— the name of a Shylock — Merton
Scragg !

CHAPTER II.
The Gamblers.

MERTON SCRAGG had the repu-
tation of being the meanest man
in the United States. Whether he was

or not, the title was his, and it is the kind
of reputation that is easier to maintain
than lose.

Of course, the man's name was against
him. So was his appearance. A man
with the name of Scragg could not fail
to be mean, any more than a Gamaliel
Simpkins could achieve military glory.

Merton Scragg looked the character
that was popularly attributed to him.
He was tall, big-boned, lantern-jawed,
and hungry-looking. There was, how-
ever, a kindly eye in the man's head.
Those who had seen that eye, when it
was not fixed upon a victim with steely,
gray-blue keenness, declared that old
Merton was " a good soul at bottom." .

Whatever might be the truth of it, it
was common gossip that Scragg would
never buy a newspaper if he could pick
one up that had been dropped in a
Steenth Avenue car. A Steenth Avenue
car is particularly mentioned because
Merton Scragg owned the franchise and
the car-line that ran on Steenth Avenue.

Although the Steenth Avenue cars did
not run within twelve blocks of the
man's Wall Street office, Scragg would
walk the intervening distance in order to
save a nickel ; or, at least, to prevent any
other street-car company from getting
the five cents.

Perhaps there was even some founda-
tion for the story that Scragg would not
even pay his nickel on his own line. The
conductors knew him and never dared
ask for it.

It is possible that there was a great
deal of pure fiction about the stories told
of Scragg's meannesses, for the man's
life was as close as his fist was said to be.

However all that may be, the man at-
tended strictly to his own business, turned
over every cent until it became two, ap-
peared at his office every morning at ten
sharp, worked steadily until five in the
afternoon, went up-town in a Steenth
Avenue car as far as it would take him,
and then disappeared until next morn-
ing, when the car would pick him up at
the same crossing.

He was enormously wealthy ; there
could be no doubt of that. The man
who had never been caught in the mar-
ket for any large amount; the man who
was never known to spend a penny on
luxuries, and who even wore a celluloid

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

collar ; the man who had saved and in-
vested every cent since he made ten dol-
lars out of a brush and a tin of shoe-
polish, was certain to have a large capital
somewhere; and never by word or action
did he deny it himself.

Just where and how Merton Scragg
lived, no one seemed to know or care.
As the old skinflint refused to make him-
self interesting in the public mind, he
even escaped the attentions of that creator
of personal interest, the Sunday news-
paper.

In the directory he appeared as
" Scragg, Merton — Wall Street," and
that was all. If his residence appeared
in the directory, it must have been under
some other name.

About noon that day Merton Scragg
was about to put on his faded, green
derby hat and slip around to a quick-
lunch for the coffee and buns which con-
stituted his midday meal, when his clerk
handed him Mr. Philip Sand's card.

" Show Mr. Sand in," said Scragg,
scratching his chin.

From a pigeon-hole in his brain he
drew data regarding the Sand family
and glanced over it on the instant. He
knew the Sands for an honorable, quiet
family, although he was under the im-
pression that they were all dead. The
last he had heard of them was when the
Sand estate had gone smash in the panic
and — Ah, yes, there was a son. This
was the son.

" How-do, Mr. Sand," said he coldly,
waving a long, bony hand in the direc-
tion of a prim, straight-backed wooden
chair. That chair was a part of
Scragg's business policy. ,If the busi-
ness was important' the caller would not
mind its discomfort ; if otherwise, it
urged Scragg's inhospitable reception.

" What can I have the pleasure of do-
ing for you, Mr. Sand? "

" I wish to borrow twenty thousand
dollars, Mr. Scragg," said Philip, his
eyes bright and his manner slightly nerv-
ous.

"lam not a money-lender, Mr. Sand,"
said Merton coldly. " Did you wish to
sell me a bond? "

" Yes — that is to say, I wish to raise
twenty thousand dollars on a bond which
will be worth fifty thousand dollars
within a year."

" You have the bond with you, I
take it? "

Philip laid the insurance policy on the
financier's desk. Scragg took it up, and
examined it with cold eyes for a few
minutes. Then he folded it up, replaced
it in its envelope and handed it back to
Sand with the remark :

" This policy will not be mature for
ten years, unless you should happen to
die in the meantime."

" Unless I should happen to die in the
meantime," echoed Philip quietly. " Mr.
Scragg, I shall explain my position."

He did. He pointed out that he had
been given one year to live. He wished
to enjoy that year of life. He had no
assets, save his polic)*, which was a per-
fectly sound bond. He had no relatives
near or dear enough to whom he would
care to will the fifty thousand dollars.

Mr. Scragg might have the balance of
thirty thousand dollars as well as any
one else, and more than any one else if
he would be willing to speculate to the
extent of twenty thousand dollars. Would
. Mr. Scragg be willing to advance that
sum?

" Suppose you did not die? " said Mer-
ton Scragg coolly.

" I have little fear — hope of that,"
said Sand. " I have tuberculosis of the
lungs, and the first specialist in the city
has given me twelve months."

"But suppose you did not die?" re-
iterated Scragg monotonously.

Philip was silent. He had not thought
of this possibility, save in connection
with Lauriston's many unfulfilled proph-
ecies. In his own case he had no
doubt of the truth of the physician's
prediction.

" There, of course, is the risk," said
he feebly.

" Which I am not prepared to take,"
said Scragg, with a note of finality and
dismissal.

Philip rose to his feet, but he prompt-
ly sat down again, his face slightly pale
and his lips compressed.

" If there was no risk — you would be
willing? "

Scragg glanced at him for the "fraction
of a second.

" I do not care to commit mvself to a
definite reply to that question." he said
calmly. " I do not quite understand."

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

"Mr. Scragg," said Philip, in a tone of
anxiety and sincerity, " I came to you
because you had many business dealings
with my late father. You know that
my name is synonymous with honorable
business methods. I may have more
than a year to live, but at present I have
no available money. I am willing to
take the risk of being alive three hundred
and sixty-five days from now, if you
are."

"You are willing to take the risk?"
said Scragg. "Speak plainly, Mr. Sand,"
he added almost peevishly.

" There is no suicide clause in that
policy," said Philip quietly.

Merton Scragg frowned and quickly
replied :

" You ask me, Mr. Sand, to compound
a felony."

"I do nothing of the sort," said
Philip sharply. " There is only a per-
sonal principle involved, and it does not
concern your hereafter. For the rest,
the insurance company which issues a
policy advertised as without lien or spe-
cial clause is merely speculating in one
of the many ways of speculation."

" Mmmm ! " hummed Merton Scragg,
looking at the wall with an interested
light in his gray-blue eyes. He was si-
lent for a full minute,, then he said:
"What, then, do you propose?"

" I propose to make over to you this
insurance'. Better still, in considera-
tion of twenty thousand dollars -received,
I propose to draw up a will leaving my
entire estate to you. I am also willing
to enter into any contract which you may
wish to make, in which I shall agree to
be dead before the expiration of three
hundred and sixty-five days."

Merton Scragg turned his steely eyes
upon the younger man. When he spoke
his tones were clear-cut and significant.1

" You agree to.be dead." It was more
a statement than a question.

" I do. I will sign a paper to that
effect."

" Not with my consent," said Scragg
incisively. " Such a contract would be
of no use to me and would not be up-
held by any reputable court. Besides
which the existence of such a document
would help you more than me, should
our interests clash at the end of the
period suggested."
3 R R

" I hope you do not mean to insin-
uate— -" began Philip.

" Tut, tut ! " Scragg exclaimed, wa-
ving an impatient hand. " I never in-
sinuate. But life is sweet — even to me,
Mr. Sand." And he smiled a slight, sad
smile. " That was not in my mind.
Indeed, your word is worth more than
your bond. If you are still 'of the same
mind, I shall accept the risk, Mr. Sand."

" You — you will accept ! " stammered
poor Philip. For a moment his brain
was awhirl between the prospect of his
dream being fulfilled and the certainty
of his doom, the seal of which he was
about to affix with his own hand.
- " I think that was what I said, Mr.
Sand. You will please to draw up your
will, naming me as sole legatee and sole
executor. You will also please leave this
insurance bond in my safe. In return I
shall give you twenty thousand dollars
in cash, the condition of the transaction
being that you will be dead before the
expiration of a year."

" Meaning, of course, that if I should
not die naturally — "

" Mr. Sand, I think we have said
enough," said Scragg coldly.

" Very well," said Philip, shrugging
his shoulders. " I was only proposing
fairness to you. Can we close the trans-
action now? "

" No. It is my lunch hour," said
Scragg firmly, " but I shall be back
in—'" He looked at the dollar watch
again and made a calculation. " — in
seventeen minutes."

So saying, Merton Scragg put the
faded, green derby hat on * his head and
held open the door for his client. A
few minutes later, as the financier walked
swiftly up the street on his daily coffee-
and-buns routine, Philip, standing on the
steps of the office building, watched his
progress with a queer desire to laugh.

" I wonder," he wanted to say aloud,
" what that queer old skinflint would say
if he met Gibby's father ! "

CHAPTER III.

Chasing a Dream.

T> HILIP SAND had the blessed
■*■ faculty of making the best of
things. By the time he had the check

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

for twenty thousand dollars in his hands,
he had quite dismissed the fact that he
had mortgaged his life to Merton Scragg,
and, possibly, his soul to the devil.

He gave as little thought to the moral
as to the material aspect of the matter.
All he cared to remember was that he
had twenty thousand dollars ; his to do
with as he saw fit, that he had at least
the present in which to enjoy himself
thoroughly, and that to-morrow would
take care of itself, even if next year did
not.

Naturally, the man who had dreamed
the dream of Gibby's father and the
treasure was an adept at the game of
" make-believe." For the first few -
hours after he received the check from
Merton Scragg, Philip just wandered
about the streets of the city, thinking,
from the loftiness of his suddenly and
queerly acquired wealth, what fools these
other mortals were.

He found himself wondering what in-
terest those worry-faced persons found
in life. The same old drudgery day after
day, month after month, year after year.
Better a year of sheer life — spirited liv-
ing— than a half-century of this droning, ■
prosaic existence. What if death came
at the end of the year?

" I will have lived, at least," quoth
Philip to himself. " Sooner or later
they'll die, too — ' unfreed,' as Arnold
says, ' having seen nothing ; still un-
blest.' "

It may be difficult for some persons to
understand the spirit which was upon
Philip Sand that-day, when all his doubts
had become certainty ; when by the ac-
ceptance of the twenty thousand dollars
which was to make life pleasant, he had
sealed his doom either by natural death
or suicide. It was the spirit of the
French patriots who ate, drank, and
were merry the night before they rode in
the tumbrels. It was the spirit of the>
man who, having determined to commit
suicide, decides to spend the interval in
amusing violations of the law.

Such a man is dead, as far as the
world's concerns are his. He can look
upon human foibles with tolerant indul-
gence. The old ache of life has gone
from him, for with one fell resolution he
has wiped out the source of all aches.
Between the acceptance of Fate, with

the attending resignation and the execu-
tion of his resolve, such a man is as free
from the little discomforts of life as a
condemned prisoner who can have what
he likes for breakfast on the day of his
star performance in the electric-chair* or
on the rope's-end.

There was nothing desperate, however,
about Philip Sand's state of mind. He
was, on the other hand, quite interested,
quite amused, quite satisfied with the
condition of affairs. He felt that he
had made an excellent bargain with Mer-
ton Scragg, and that Scragg had .made
an excellent bargain with him.

If any one was to suffer it would be
Philip Sand, and Philip Sand was de-
lighted at the development of the busi-
ness. The prisoner was having his un-
expected luxurious breakfast, and the
ham and eggs tasted good.

For hours he continued to walk about
the streets. The shop windows attract-
ed him as they would attract a child, or
an overgrown boy. The sun was shining
with spring fervor, and the world was
good.

Philip strolled along the water-front
late in the afternoon, and here his en-
joyment of the first delights of the ven-
ture reached its highest. He smelled
the river and the sea. He caught a whiff
of rum at one wharf, West Indian spices
at another, New Zealand kauri at a third,
and the air was always tanged with the
odor of pitch, resin, and pine.

It was one of the most" adventurous
day-dreams Philip Sand had ever enjoyed.
When he returned to his room in the
evening the dream was as a continued
story, through which paraded" the old
captain— with the log-book under his arm
and his tongue stuck out, and Spanish
dons, and pirates, and Harry Breakspar,
who was always dying to the tune of a
shipmate's " blubbering." And, of course,
Gibby's father drank rum and swore all
night, until Philip Sand lost patience
with the old scamp and woke up laugh-
ing.

Philip's first reflection next morning
was that " action " must be the motto of
the day's doings. He had drained the
cup to the dregs. Now he must have
a little taste of material pleasures.

He wondered how he would go about
the business of chartering a steam-yacht.

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

He might go into the office of some ship-
ping-man and clear his throat and say,
quite coolly — for there was no use hem-
ming and hawing about a necessary piece
of business :

" I want a reliable steam-yacht ; also
a steady captain and a sober, industrious
crew. When can they be ready?"

Then Philip had to laugh heartily,
for that grotesque heritage of his prompt-
ly made the imaginary shipping-man an-
swer :

" Why, certainly. Thomas, show the
gentleman a few steam - yachts. And,
possibly, sir, we might show you a string
orchestra, although, perhaps, you would
prefer a steam-calliope."

And yet Philip Sand thanked God that
he was a dreamer with a sense of humor.
He lives who dreams and has the blessed
faculty of risibility. Every detail of his
doings in the three hundred and sixty-
four days to come must be fraught with
similar delight. And so they were, at
least, at the beginning, from the negotia-
tions for the steam-yacht to the inter-
views with the yacht's captain, to whom
he whispered the magic word :

" Treasure ! "

The only cloud on Philip's horizon
these days was that things moved too
fast. Not that every moment was not
fraught with pleasure, interest, and quiet
excitement, but his twenty thousand dol-
lars oiled the wheels too well. The
yacht was chartered with despatch and
ease. The steady captain and the sober,
industrious crew appeared as by magic.
In two weeks all was ready; yet, up to
this time there had not been the shadow
of a difficulty, or the least sign of a vil-
lain's entry. It did seem to Philip that
a villain was all that was required to
complete the cast of the play which
was about to begin.

That was the reflection of the playful
Philip, the grandson of the dreamy
Septimus; but the son of the practical
Philander thought better and more wise-
ly. Not even to Captain Pearce, of the
steam-yacht Chameleon, did he divulge
the secret of the treasure's real where-
abouts.

" We are going to hunt for the Cocos
Island treasure," said he to the ship-
master. " I have a chart which differs
in many respects from the alleged charts

and plans and dying statements upon
which so many vain attempts to recover
gold have been made. But for the pres-
ent, captain, I am sure you will agree
with me that I had best keep my infor-
mation to myself — at least, until we are
at sea."

"Quite right, sir," said Pearce.
" Sealed orders tell no tales in port."

" The Cocos Islands are about a few
hundred miles to the west of Panama,
are they not? "

" About seven hundred, sir — roughly
speaking."

" And as the canal is not yet cut
through, it will be necessary for us to
make the long voyage through the Strait
of Magellan."

" Yes, sir. It was not my business,
sir," added Pearce, " but I wondered,
when you first spoke of the Cocos Island
treasure, why you chartered a yacht here
instead of at Frisco, say."

" I have a very good reason for my
course, Captain Pearce," said Philip, with
a smile. " That reason I will reveal to
you when we are at sea. Besides that,
if we were going to the Cocos Islands
and started from Panama Bay on the
Pacific side, our destination and plans
would be suspected, especially as, at this
moment, I learn by the newspapers, there
are no less than two other parties engaged
in . the hunt for the Cocos Island treas-
ure." ,

Captain Pearce nodded his head wise-
ly. He wondered just what that differ-
ing information as to location of the
treasure might be. But he asked no
questions. .

" My plan, then," said Philip finally,
" is this. You will proceed at once —
without me. I shall join you at Colon
in a week or ten days, when I hope you
will have the Chameleon spick and span.
I hate worry, Captain Pearce, and the
run to Colon will give you an oppor-
tunity of getting in sea-going ship-
shape."

" Aye, aye, sir," said Pearce, thinking
that he understood the rich man's hor-
ror of the breaking-in process. "In a
week or ten days. You will come by the
regular steamer, I take it."

'" By the regular weekly steamer — the
Latin - America line. I should be
aboard the Chameleon in ten days."

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Next day the Chameleon sailed out
of Sandy Hook and nosed south, Cap-
tain Pearce filled with satisfaction, for
this was a " soft job " — no loading, no
bickering with customs agents, super-
cargoes, etc. ; nothing but fine-weather
sailing, fat living2 white decks, paint,
and polished brasswork. And there was
always good pay, a spice of romance,
and maybe a bit of money on the treas-
ure, although not for a moment did
Pearce dream that Philip Sand had any
more definite information as to an in-
definite treasure than scores of others
who had tried for it and failed.

Philip laughed heartily the evening of
the Chameleon's day of sailing when he
picked up a late afternoon yellow and
read a " full " account of the yacht's
departure and her proposed destination.

" It was learned on good authority,"
said the newspaper, in that pompous
this-is-a-true-story style which defeats
veracity, " that the Chameleon will touch
at Colon for supplies, then ' sail for the
Azores,' although it is a fact that she
will sail through the Strait of Magellan
and head for the Cocos Islands in search
of the Spanish treasure buried there.

" The yacht has been chartered by a
private company, composed of New
Yorkers, several of whom are well
known in social and club circles.

" Every effort has been made to keep
the yacht's real destination and purpose
secret, but when it was learned that the
Cocos Islands figured in her itinerary it
was easily surmised that the Azores was
a blind."

" Good ! " laughed Philip. " I knew
it would leak. Pearce and his men will
leak some more at Colon, and then —
ho, for the Caicos ! Was there ever a
treasure - hunt or a treasure - story that
didn't leak? It's human nature, and
Pearce is just human."

Two days later Philip Sand sailed on
the Latin-America liner Revuelan, for
Colon. It was perfect weather; and
when the sun is shining upon a quiet sea,
there is no more soothing thing to the
spirit than the white decks and polished
rails of a tropic-bound steamer. The
very course of the ship suggests that the
days will grow in beauty, calm, and sun-
shine.

From the old log-book Philip had

torn, not without a qualm, the leaf of
the diary pertaining to what Gibby's
father told Gibby and what . Gibby told
the captain, who wrote the paean in
praise of Martha Lane's brown eyes.

There were only four women on the
ship. One was a negress bound for
Colon, another a Chilean lady on her
way to Valparaiso, via Panama. The
other two were Americans — a Miss Ve-
rina Harding and a Miss Sharpe. Ap-
parently, Miss Sharpe -was the young
woman's mentor, chaperon, and com-
panion ; for at seemly intervals she
checked Miss Harding's spirits with a
stern face and an unutterably reproach-
ful:

" Verina! "

There were a number of male passen-
gers. Most of them were very, ordinary
mortals — some so ordinary that they
were interesting. There was a Jamaica
orange - planter with asthma, who
wheezed out his opinion that the Amer-
ican tariff was ruining the Jamaica fruit
trade. There was an automobile agent,
who paced the deck at a furious gait,
trying to accelerate the speed of " this
old tub."

There was a Venezuelan, who pro-
claimed himself " the Cattle Prince of
South America," and raved of the day
when a South American League would
wipe the Gringos off the Southern con-
tinent ; and there was an English engi-
neer, bound for Bolivia, who listened
patiently to the " prince," and said :
" Really ! That is most interesting."

But the character which appealed
most to Philip Sand's sense of the ridi-
culous was a little " drummer," who
gloried in the name of Mr. Theodore
Higgs. Higgs was about five feet four
inches in height, and he was built in
proportion. He had the tongue of a
remnant salesman and the nimbleness of
a dancing-master.

" I am sole representative for South
America and the West Indies," said he
to Philip Sand, " of the Kurve-Kut
Korset and the No-Kut Klip. I see you
use the ordinary clip for your tie, Mr.
Sand. Don't do it! It spoils the silk
of the scarf, and bites into the material
of the shirt-front.

" Use the No-Kut and you will effect
a savin s, in linen. It can be used as a

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

tie-clip, a sleeve-clip, and can be
attached to the ordinary gentleman's
garter without damage to the sox. Not
doing business aboard ship, of course ;
but let me present you with a No-Kut
Klip."

" Good Lord ! I wish you were a
woman ! " he exclaimed on another oc-
casion. "You see that Miss Harding?"
Higgs rolled his eyes and moistened his
lips with his tongue. " Can you beat
that? Take in the lines of that woman's
figure. Observe the sweep from the tip
of the bust to the curve of the hip.

" She wears the wrong corset, though,
if she only knew it. If that girl wore
a Kurve-Kut, she would have the whole
ship at her feet. The Kurve-Kut does
not compress the figure. It merely holds
the outline of the natural shape. It
yields to the movement of the body with-
out creasing or wrinkling the garments.
It can be worn to the same advantage
with the thickest traveling costume or
the flimsiest silk. Miss Anna Held — "
* " I don't think Miss Harding would
appreciate your public enthusiasm^ my
dear Mr. Higgs," said Philip, with the
greatest good-nature. "Have a cigar?"

" I wonder what that man finds in
life ? " Philip asked the taff rail ten min-
utes later.

Two days later, however, it became ap-
parent to Philip that even the meanest
of God's creatures have ambitions. He
was strolling along the deck, when he
suddenly came upon Miss Harding and
Theodore Higgs. Miss Sharpe was in
her berth, seasick, and thus the hand-
some American was unprotected from
the rather personal enthusiasm of the
Kurve-Kut Korset man.

Higgs, as Philip came upon the scene,
was talking volubly, and drawing
demonstrative parallels with his hands.
Miss Harding was standing up, her face
burning with blushes and her lips mov-
ing between tremulous embarrassment
and angry but vain articulation.

Philip took in the' situation at a
glance. Walking rapidly to her side,
he almost shouldered Mr. Higgs out of
the way and raised his yachting-cap.

" Pardon me," he said to the lady.
" Miss Harding, I believe. You must
really come forward and see the flying-
fish — shoals of them. I hope you don't

mind my introducing myself. Ship-
board etiquette, you know."

He laughed. Miss Harding looked
into his eyes with a swift glance of
gratitude. She understood. Next mo-
ment her arm was in his and they were
walking toward the bow of the steamer.

Later in the day, Higgs came upon
Philip by the rail. The treasure-hunter
had been indulging in a day-dream in
which was a strain of the agony of
Tantalus.

"Say, old fellow," said Mr. Higgs
familiarly, " that was a mean trick you
played me ! "

It was an inopportune moment for the
agent of the Kurve-Kut Korset. A
hitherto undreamed-of ferocity suddenly
leaped into Philip's heart. He turned
around, caught Higgs's chin between his
right forefinger and thumb, gave it a
sharp jerk, and said :

"Sir! You are an unspeakable cad!"

CHAPTER IV.

A Disaster at Sea.

TyriSS VERINA HARDING was

\ quite unconscious that her good
looks had stirred enmity in the hearts
of two of Nature's noblemen, although,
in her mind, there was no comparison
between the unspeakable Higgs and the
tall, refined, gentlemanly person with the
amused eyes and the quiet smile. One
was a cur, the other a mastiff.

Sand interested Miss Harding. That
he was a gentleman in the strict sense
of the word she had no doubt. There
was a formal informality about his do-
ings that stamped him as a man of hab-
itual refinement, and there is nothing of
stronger appeal to a woman's genfle na-
ture than this.

He was handsome, too, in a quiet, un-
obtrusive way. He was hardly the man
a maiden would sigh over o' nights.
Philip Sand grew upon the senses rather
than burst upon them. His quiet humor,
too, left a feeling of light-heartedness
which somehow made one's outlook on
life pleasant.

He was a delightful person to travel
with, as Miss Verina soon discovered.
He had a gift of word-painting. In one
suggestive sentence he could depict a

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

fellow passenger's whole life — history,
peculiarities, and personality. That is,
he drew a vague line across the canvas
of the mind, and the mind unconsciously
finished the picture.

Then, too, he had such a delightful
way of being sentimental. He did not
enthuse over anything, verbally. He
would grunt something about the stars
and succeed in producing the wide si-
lences upon the senses. Or, after a long
silence, broken abruptly by one resonant
note of the ship's bell, he would lift
his head and say, half jocularly, half
reverently :

" And the lights are burning bright,
sir ! "

Miss Harding herself was quite a
mystery to Philip, but no less was he a
mystery to her. Her intuition divined
an unusual something about this man.
Sometimes he seemed a thing apart from
worldly things. Especially did she feel
this when she was not with him, but
watching him as he sat alone.

But what puzzled her most was the
smiling attention which he sometimes
bestowed upon a ragged piece of yellow
paper which he would reverently draw
from an inside pocket.

Naturally her gratitude was his, for
she instinctively felt that his masculine
power had been exerted on her behalf.
Mr. Higgs did not attempt to speak to
her again, although she sometimes caught
the Korset man's wide, animal eyes fixed
upon her in a disconcerting manner.
And she also noticed, and understood,
that Mr. Higgs had developed a fearful
respect for the quiet Mr. Sand.

Philip himself was no less puzzled
over Miss Harding. That that was her
name he had learned from the passenger-
list. Whether Miss Sharpe was the
young woman's aunt or servant, he could
not decide. Miss Harding treated the
elderly spinster with good - natured hu-
mor, as she might treat a privileged serv-
ant or a peculiarly constituted relative,
while Miss Sharpe played the harmless
tyrant with her charge.

Sand spent a good many hours of the
second and third days in Miss Hard-
ing's company. So long as the conver-
sation was of a general nature, she was
a delightful shipmate ; but as soon as
the talk drifted into the deep waters, as

on an ocean voyage it somehow will be-
tween comparative strangers, she adroit-
ly swam back into the shallows, if Miss
Sharpe did not drag her back with that
absurdly reproachful warning :

cc Verina! "

Several times Philip, incomprehensibly
anxious to know something of the young
woman's life and antecedents ashore, re-
vealed some personal details of himself.
Having said that he was bound for Co-
lon, he succeeded in ascertaining that
Miss Harding and her elderly companion
were paying a touring visit to Jamaica.

" I expect to join the yacht Chame-
leon at Colon," Philip continued bait-
fully, " and do some cruising."

Miss Harding turned her head slowly
and stared at him.

"The yacht Chameleon!" she said
in slow amazement.

Philip felt embarrassed. He had not
meant to convey that he was rich enough
to charter one of the finest yachts afloat.
But Miss Harding added quietly :

" Oh, you mean Mr. Merton Scragg's
yacht? "

" Whose? " exclaimed Philip.

" Verina! " rasped Miss Sharpe.

Philip thought for a moment. He
had learned the name of the Chame-
leon's owner, and had forgotten it.
Anyhow, it was not Scragg, although
he thought he ought to remember the
name of the person from whose agents
he had chartered the yacht. It had a
familiar ring, now that he had forgot-
ten it!

" I think you must have in mind an-
other yacht of the same name," said he.
" The owner's, name was not Scragg.
Also, I would be surprised to hear that
Merton Scragg owned a yacht. I have
had personal dealings with Merton
Scragg," he added, almost bitterly.

Miss Harding's face was a study for
a moment. Presently she concluded the
incident with the remark :

" Probably you are right, although
Mr. Scragg, if he is the~ same person,
does own a yacht. I have been his guest
aboard her."

Philip said no more, although he was
chuckling in his mind over the incon-
gruous possibility of skinflint Scragg in
a white yachting-cap, with a nautical
swagger and an up-aloft voice. It was

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

an absurd idea, of course ; but the in-
cident served to deepen the mystery of
Miss Harding and his interest in her.

His interest in her was not without a
growing sense of pain. If he had been
a well man, with years of iife before
him, Philip Sand might have questioned
his interest in Miss -Harding. She was
the finest woman he Had ever met, both
mentally and physically.

Mr. Higgs had not been wrong in his
estimate of her bodily charms ; but al-
lied with them was something which
Mr. Higgs was incapable of appre-
ciating. She was a young woman of
character.

She was intellectual without being
masculine. On her broad brow was
pride, and in her eyes was modesty and
tender kindliness ; while her mouth ex-
pressed strength, with feminine softness.
Philip liked her because she was not
helpless, but no less of a helpless wom-
an on that account.

On the morning of the fourth day of
the Revuelan's voyage south, Philip Sand
arose from his berth after a restless
night. He determined, as he put on his
clothes, that he would have nothing to
do with Miss Harding to-day. His in-
terest in her was becoming too marked,
at least to himself. It caused him the
first bitterness of his mortgaged life to
discover that there was one happiness in
which he might not dabble during the re-
maining days of his year, and that was
the supreme happiness — Love.

He was not in love with Miss Harding
— yet. And to-day he was going to
make sure that there was no danger of
such a catastrophe. To-day the Revue-...
Ian would enter the Bahamas, and to-day
Philip Sand would attend strictly to the
business that had brought him a sailing.

Immediately after breakfast he ob-
tained the captain's permission — in the
form of . an angled invitation — to come
up on the bridge. In an hour the cap-
tain — Captain Rodgers — expected to
raise San Salvador, or Watling's Is-
land, as Columbus's landing - place is
written on the maps.

What Philip really wanted to have a
look at was the captain's chart, in or-
der to inform himself as to the approxi-
mate position and distance of the Caicos
Islands. Hitherto he had been unable to

find the islands under that name. When
Watling's Island was raised, the captain,
a queer bit of humanity, began an un-
solicited discourse.

" I never see that island, Mr. Sand,"
said he, waving his hand over the bows,
" but I think of the wonders of the
Lord."

' They that go down to the sea in
ships and do business in great waters,' "
quoted Philip gravely — " ' these see the
works of the Lord.' "

"Ah!" said Captain Rodgers, ap-
provingly. " You read the Scriptures, I
see." Encouraged by such sympathetic
piety, he rambled on about how, in these
very waters, in sight of that very island,
where at night a lighthouse beams in
place of the Indian torch, the thankful
Salve Regina of the Spaniards was raised
to the listening skies. America was dis-
covered, although, as Captain Rodgers
added slyly, if there hadn't been a light
that dark night, America might have
discovered Columbus.

Philip smiled obligingly. He was pic-
turing the captain on each and every
voyage perpetrating the same joke to
some honored passenger on the bridge.

" The Bahamas are a queer group,"
said he, like a schoolmaster who repeats
the same lesson to succeeding classes.
" At one time there was no Caribbean
Sea, no Gulf of Mexico. Wild Indians
roved over the face of the waters. Then
came a great earthquake — a great sink-
ing— and a third of the entire Western
Hemisphere sank beneath the waves.

' To-day," concluded the nautical
schoolmaster, " all that is left of that
large portion of rich continent are the
mountain tops that are now low-lying is-
lands — a range of mountain-peaks
stretching from the tip of Florida to the
shoulder of South America, and between
them a great pocket of water which es-
capes in what we call the Gulf Stream.

" That Gulf Stream, formed by the
Lord's mighty hand, influences all Eu-
rope, makes England habitable, makes —
Quartermaster! " he- broke off with prac-
tical sharpness, " sing out when Watling
Lighthouse is abeam."

" I- would like to see that on the map,"
said Philip innocently. " Of course,
I've often seen it before, but now it
means — differently."

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

The captain fell into the trap. He
led the way to the chart-room, eager to
show his appreciative pupil " the works
of the Lord." He unrolled a chart of
the Bahamas, showing, also, the coast of
Cuba, Santo Domingo, and Porto Rico.

" This is where we are now," said
Rodgers, pointing to the eastern end of
Watling's Island.

Philip Sand studied the chart. He
felt like the villain in a treasure story.
Right in the ship's course were a number
of islands with clear water threading
among them. There would be Rum
Cay to the right, and Long Island; then
Fortune Island to the left, and Acklin
Island, then a speck called Castle Is-
land, with clear water to Little and
Great Inagua Islands on the port side —
and then Cuba.

This was the course as Captain Rod-
gers traced it, discoursing all the while.

" This afternoon we will pass Fortune
Island," said he, " and in the night we
will pass Castle Island ; or, as it is called,
Bird Rock Light. I hope the weather
is fine, for when it blows, this passage is
one of the worst in the world. I'm
afraid Ave will have a noisy passage
through. It is too bright to-day. Glit-
tering sunshine like this is a bad sign
hereabout."

But Philip was not listening. His
eyes were fixed on a spattering of pin-
head islands to the southeast of Castle
Island. His heart was beating like a
riveter's hammer, for the name printed
over them was Caicos Islands.

" How is this? " he said, pointing to
the little cloud of pin-heads. " I never
heard of these islands before — at Least,
I don't remember ever seeing that name
on a map of the West Indies."

"Ah!" said Captain Rodgers, pre-
paring for another discourse. " This
chart, like all charts, is accurate. These
are the Caicos Islands, although on ordi-
nary maps and in the speech they are
called the Turks Islands, just as San
Salvadore is called Watling's Island.
They are continually changing names —
these islands."

Philip started. He looked up at the
captain and expected to see him with his
tongue out, but all he said was, after the
manner of the English engineer :

" That is most interesting! "

" Watling Light abeam, sir ! " hailed
the quartermaster.

The captain hurriedly excused him-
self, and Philip was left alone with a
forefinger placed upon the Caicos Islands.

Late in the afternoon Fortune Island
^vvas raised on the port bow. Philip had
found enough in his own thoughts and
in the glimpses of' passing islands to oc-
cupy his attention to the partial exclu-
sion of Miss Harding. His mind was
filled with the romance of treasure.

The inshore opal of the waters around
Fortune Island was rapidly changing to
varying shades of angry green, blue-
black, and white-gray. Presently a mist
came over the sea. In less than half an
hour Fortune Island had vanished and
the Revuelan was driving over a sea that
was as flat as a billiard-board and
churned white as milk.

At first it was believed to be one of the
passing squalls which are common
enough among the islands and which
sometimes attain a dangerous velocity,
but as a second squall, more ferocious
than the first, was followed by a third,
and a fourth which finally developed into
a growing gale, the outlook for the night
in the island passage became grave.

" There is nothing to worry about,
ladies," said Captain Rodgers to Miss
Sharp and Miss Harding, taking his seat
at the supper-table as usual. " We will
have Castle Island Light before mid-
night and then the weather will abate
and you will be able to sleep comfortably.
It is the mighty sea confined in this lit-
tle space that makes such a protest."

In the middle of the supper Captain
Rodgers, after a mighty list of the steam-
er to port, excused himself and Avent on
deck. That AA^as the last ever seen of
Captain Rodgers !

When Philip Sand returned to the
deck he caught the terrible whisper as it
Avent from lip to lip, from bridge to
stokehole. The captain AA-as missing.
When a man is missing aboard ship dur-
ing heavy weather no question is asked.

Philip Sand felt his spine creep as he
heard the rumor. The self-satisfied man
of the bridge, the paternal simpleton of
the supper-table, was gone — into the
deep, dark sea AA7hich AAras roaring around
the steamer like a pack of Avoh-es,
hungry for more.

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

To make sure that it was the truth,
Philip did not hesitate about ascending
to the bridge. A man clad in oilskins
turned abruptly upon him.

"Well?" snarled a strange voice.
"What d'y' want here?."

" Pardon me," said Philip, " but there
is a rumor about the ship that the cap-
tain has fallen overboard. If it is not
true, you had better quiet the anxiety — "

" What business is it of yours ! " said
the man in oilskins. " I'm captain of
this ship, and you get down the compan-
ion as fast as you came up ! "

The man advanced upon Philip men-
acingly. The treasure-hunter fell back
a step, astonished at the reception. For
a moment his blood boiled. Then it
chilled as he caught the odor of the
man's person. The first mate — for it
was he — ■ had been drinking. Philip
walked down the ladder.

He went below to the dining-saloon
where he came upon a group of scared
passengers. Miss Harding saw Philip
and stopped him with a question.

" Is it true, Mr. Sand? They say the
captain has fallen overboard."

" It may be true, or it may not," said
Philip slowly, and he forced a smile,
" but one thing I do know. I have just
■ been on the bridge, talking with the cap-
tain, and he is in no very civil frame of
mind."

"There!" wheezed the Jamaica
planter. " Gossip ! All gossip ! - I
never was on a ship that didn't gossip."

Philip said no more. He let the mis-
understanding act as he had intended it
should, and retired to his cabin. He
read a novel for. an hour, while the wind
screamed around the ship and the steel
plates hummed with the vibration of the
driving sea. Just as he was retiring, a
steward entered to ask if anything was
wanted. Philip inquired as to the
weather.

" Don't like it, sir," said the man.
He cautiously closed the door and whis-
pered mysteriously: "It's true, sir;
captain's overboard, and Chief Off'cer
Howell's drunk as a fiddler. We should
have Castle Light by now, and there's
not a sign of it. Don't like it, sir."
" Neither do I," said Philip.
Nevertheless, he had had enough of

(To be continued.)

participation in the ship's affairs. For
himself, nothing mattered much. His
life was mortgaged anyway, and there
were worse things than drowning. Miss
Harding came to his thoughts ; but he
put out the light, and presently was
lulled to sleep by the ocean and the wind.

It seemed a moment later that he was
awakened by a terrific shock. The cabin
was in darkness. There was a pattering
of feet on deck, a mingled chorus of
shouts, curses, and screams.

A moment later there was a hammer-
- ing on the door of his cabin, and a
woman's voice crying :

" Mr. Sand! Mr. Sand!"

" Thank you, Miss Harding," said
Philip. " I am coming. Go on deck.
I shall join you and Miss Sharpe there.
Don't be alarmed."

Then Philip Sand switched on the
light. The cabin seemed all askew. Ap-
parently the Revuelan had climbed up
on a reef, or on an island-shore. Any-
how, she seemed hard and fast, so Philip
proceeded to dress with little less than
his customary coolness. To a man
whose life is mortgaged, nothing mat-
ters a great deal as long as it is inter-
esting, and to a person of Philip's turn
of mind, being shipwrecked on a desert
island was quite interesting.

He had just about finished dressing
when the ship gave a queer, jerky shiver.
Next moment it seemed as if the floor
was sliding from under his feet. In-
stantly he realized what was happening.
The steamer was sliding back.

He darted' through the cabin - door,
across the saloon, and bounded up the
companion. As he rushed deckward he
was conscious of a sullen sinking of the
vessel beneath his feet. The uproar of
the sea and of human voices suddenly
became terrific. As he emerged on deck,
he was greeted by the sight of a wall of
water steadily climbing over the rail.

The Revuelan was going to the bot-
tom. He glanced swiftly along the
deck. Dozens of men were crowding
around the boats. He discerned the fig-
ure of only one woman.. He dashed
toward her in the darkness, but a great
wave of water slid between him and the
figure, and next moment he was battling
with the ponderous, black sea.

Fighting the Ticket-Scalpers.

BY H. A. KOACH,

Assistant Chairman, Railway Ticket Protective Bureau.

WE begin here one of the most important and interesting series that ever
appeared in The Railroad Man's Magazine. It doesn't seem
possible that there are people on this continent so gullible as those
mentioned by Mr. Koach — people who would sell what they had left of a
railway ticket for twenty-five cents because the scalper said liis price was
three dollars a yard! Think of it!

Ticket -scalping grew to be an organized, protected industry before the
railroad lines, which had lost thousands of dollars, took a hand in the matter.
The Railway Ticket Protective Bureau is an organization similar to the
American Bankers' Association and the Jewelers' Alliance, with Pinkerton
connections.

The Many Ingenious Schemes Used to Lure the Cash of the Unsus-
pecting Traveler by a Band of Men Who Cleverly
Manage to Evade the Law.

FIRST ARTICLE.

NORMOUS quantities of
forged and altered rail-
road tickets were discov-
ered at the close of the
World's Fair, in 1893.
Prior to that time there
had been occasional instances where al-
tered tickets were found by railway
auditors when checking-up, but these al-
terations were confined wholly to what
is known as "plugging"; that is, filling
up the canceled date of an expired ticket
with paper-pulp of the same color as
that of the ticket, and cutting a later
date in month or year on the ticket with
an " L " punch, thereby reviving its life.
This, however, was so poorly done that
the plugging was frequently discovered
by a conductor when the ticket was of-
fered for passage. Frequently Mr. Scalp-
er got a sound thrashing from the irate
passenger at the office where the ticket
was purchased.

At that time a scalper, or, as he pre-
ferred to be called, a railroad-ticket bro-
ker, who dealt in altered tickets, soon
became an object of suspicion to his
brother ticket - scalpers, who not only
would refuse to do business with him,
but frequently informed the railroad
companies of his fraudulent practises.

This course was pursued by them, not
from any fine sense of honor, but be-
cause they were, at the time, in receipt
of many favors from the railroads.

Easy To Be a Scalper.

The wholesale forgery of printing
tickets outright and, by means of acids,
changing the destination on regular tick-
ets purchased from railroad offices had
not yet reached the point where it ma-
terially threatened the passenger revenues
of the railroad companies which it at-
tained in later years.

FIGHTING THE TICKET - SCALPERS.

During the summer of 1893 the Eastern
lines made unusually low rates from
New York, Boston, and other Eastern
points to Chicago. What is known as
a " coach-ticket " was then first intro-
duced. This was practically a second-
class ticket. Sleeping-car accommoda-
tions were not allowed in connection
with it. It was limited to ten days for
a round trip, was non-signature, good
for use of any one, and accordingly
transferable, having the date of its ex-
piration printed on its face.

These tickets were sold by Eastern
lines one day each week only, and to
avoid confusion each weekly issue was
of a different color. They were printed
on ordinary paper and were not en-
graved. Plain type, such as is found at
any printing-office, was used, excepting,
of course, the signature of the general
passenger agent, which was an engraved
facsimile.

The ease with which these tickets could
be bought and sold, the slight knowledge
required as to rates and train-schedules,

induced many to embark in the scalping
business.

But small capital was required to open
an office. Some gaily colored cardboard
signs, six feet of space in any store, a
large stock of impudent self-assertion,
and a hypocritical pose as a friend of
the people by procuring cheaper rates
than they could secure for themselves,
together with the assumption that al-
most anything that had the semblance of
a railway-ticket would pass the scrutiny
of those whose duty it was to pass upon
it— these constituted the scalper's stock-
in-trade.

Many of these new recruits obtained
their primary knowledge of the scalping
business, and its possibilities for fraud,
while being employed as train " skin-
ners " by ticket-brokers. They had to
procure portions of tickets by boarding
the incoming excursion-trains, or remain
about the railway - stations and induce
passengers to sell their unused transpor-
tation.

Large numbers of the return portions

GOT A SOUND THRASHING AT THE

OFFICE WHERE THE TICKET

WAS PURCHASED.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

of these tickets found their way into
scalpers' hands. As the rate from New
York for the round trip was but ten dol-
lars, many travelers availed themselves
of it. The Chicago scalpers would pay
from five to eight dollars for the return
portion of such tickets, and in this way
the passenger from New York had an
exceedingly cheap one-way trip.

Auditing Departments Helpless.

Notwithstanding that hundreds of re-
turn tickets were daily secured by scalp-
ers, the supply was not equal to the
demand. It was then that the parasites,
realizing the ease with which the tickets
could be counterfeited, had large quan-
tities printed which were sold without
difficulty or detection.

Owing to the heavy travel, the audi-
ting departments of the railroads were
swamped with work and could not check
up promptly, so the frauds were not dis-
covered until the exposition was over.
When this wholesale forgery was de-
tected, the itinerant scalpers, some forty
of whom had opened temporary offices
in Chicago, closed their shops and moved
to pastures new, so no arrests or prose-
cutions could be made, the railroads
simply swallowing their losses with the
lessons learned.

To show with what ease the unsus-
pecting and unsophisticated stranger vis-
iting Chicago could be imposed on, the
following authentic episodes are cited:

The Iron-Bound Box Trick.

A traveler, having returned portion
of a ticket for sale, would call on a cer-
tain scalper, who would simply look the
ticket over and, without saying a word
or asking what price was desired for it,
would drop it through a small opening
into a large iron-bound box with a mas-
sive padlock, which stood at one end of
the counter.

He would then open his cash-drawer
and give the party offering the ticket
twenty-five cents. Of course, an im-
mediate protest would be made by the
stranger, who pro/bably had expected to
get at least one-half of the original cost
of the ticket. The scalper would appear
very much surprised and explain that

the rule of the Railroad-Ticket Brokers'
Association was to pay a fixed rate of
one dollar a yard for tickets, and as this
ticket was only a quarter of a yard long,
he had offered him the regular price; —
a quarter of a dollar.

Another ■ lengthy argument would en-
sue, when the scalper would apologize
for placing the ticket in, the box, stating
that he was simply a clerk in the estab-
lishment and had no key, but if the
stranger desired to await the return of
the proprietor the ticket- would be given
back to him.

Of course, the proprietor would never
return, and the stranger, tired out with
long waiting, would depart with his
piece of silver.

Worked with Bunco Men.

Then, there was the nifty scalper in
collusion with " bunco steerers," whom
they notified by a system of signals, pro-
vided the victim had sufficient money on
his person to make it worth their while
to rob him.

For instance : A party desiring to go
to some point in California would shop
for rates among the different scalpers,
who would closely question him as to
how many there were in his party, when
they intended to go, and if he expected
to purchase his tickets that day.

If it was found that he had the means
to purchase fotir or five tickets to Cali-
fornia, he would be asked to return in
an hour, when, the scalper promised, the
tickets would be ready for him. In the
meantime the bunco steerer would be
coimnunicated with and given the neces-
sary information as to point of destina-
tion desired ; and when the stranger re-
turned, he would be told that the scalper
had been unable to secure the required
tickets.

The Old, Old Story.

After leaving the scalper's shop, he
would be accosted by a well-dressed man
— the accomplice of the scalper — who
would make inquiries as to where he
could dispose of two or three tickets
to, say, Stockton, California, which, of
course, would be the exact point where
the stranger wished to go.

FIGHTING THE TICKET - SCALPERS.

A BENEVOLENT-LOOKING ELDERLY MAN
AND HIS DAUGHTER SHOWED TWO
RETURN TICKETS READING
FROM CHICAGO TO PORT-
LAND.

The stranger would be induced to ac-
company the supposed owner of the tick-
ets to his hotel to complete the trans-
action, and, en route, his new-found
acquaintance would invite him into a
saloon, where, with the aid of confeder-
ates, the stranger would be inveigled
into some game whereby he would be
promptly and scientifically fleeced, the
scalper getting his commission on the
proceeds.

Again : A ticket would be called for
to some town in Montana.- The scalper
would possibly have one reading to some-
Iowa point. He would then cut a rail-
road map so as to eliminate a number
of the States, and paste it together again
in such a manner as to bring the Mon-
tana point within a quarter of an inch
of the town in Iowa indicated by the
tickets.

Then he would convince the unsophis-
ticated stranger that, by purchasing this
particular ticket and paying a small cash
fare of a dollar or so to the conductor,
he would reach his destination for a very

low rate. The guileless passenger, when
he .arrived at the city designated in his
ticket, would find himself nowhere near
his destination, and obliged to pay a con-
siderable sum to reach it.

Put Aboard the Elevator.

It is said that many country visitors,
after paying the prices demanded for
railroad-tickets, would be taken to the
elevated trains, put aboard by one of
the innumerable runners employed by
the scalpers, and told that their tickets
had been given to the conductor and that
they would have no further trouble re-
garding them.

On arriving at the terminus of the
elevated line, they would find that they
were still in Chicago. When complaint
was made to the police department, they
were unable to identify the scalper with
whom they had transacted their business.
The streets were honeycombed with scal-
pers' offices, all presenting a similar ap-
pearance.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

To further confuse their patrons, when
a worthless ticket was sold, a scalper
would fully explain that he was thor-
oughly responsible, a member of the scal-
pers' association in good standing, and
that he guaranteed all his transactions.
He Avould then hand the purchaser his
business-card, saying that if there should

Mexican, Canadian, and even Confed-
erate money in exchange for their tickets.
They would ask their victim if he in-
tended going to any other point after
visiting the exposition. If so, they would
make a trade with him, giving him an
order on a scalper for a ticket to a point
where he wished to go, taking the return

HE WOULD DROP IT THROUGH A SMALL OPENING INTO A LARGE IRON-BOUND BOX
WITH A MASSIVE PADLOCK.

be any question as to the acceptance of
the transportation on the part of the
railroad officials, to return at once- and
the money would be refunded.

This generally inspired confidence in
the victim. The ticket, of course, was
refused. On returning to the address
given on the alleged business-card of. the
scalper, he would find that it did not
exist, or that it was the address of some
other scalper, who, of course, denied all
knowledge of the transaction.

All Kinds of Money Given.

The men employed by the scalpers to
purchase, tickets on trains worked in-
numerable schemes to swindle passen-
gers, even going so far as to give them

portion of his ticket in exchange for this
order. This exchange order, when pre-
sented to the scalper on whom it was
drawn, would not be recognized, or,
more frequently, no such concern ex-
isted as that on which the order was
-given.

The Busy "Mr. T. Pump."

The issuance of " rebates " was an-
other method employed in swindling the
unsuspecting public. A scalper's " re-
bate " was an order from one scalper to
another for the payment of certain
money on delivery of certain portions
of unused railroad transportation read-
ing beyond the destination to which it
had been used.

FIGHTING THE TICKET - SCALPERS.

Innumerable would be the " rebates "
made out, during the World's Fair, to
" Mr. T. Pump," located in different
towns throughout the country. To a
man wanting a ticket to St. Paul, a
scalper would sell one reading a short
distance beyond that point, charging for
the entire distance, but declaring that
on presentation of the unused portion
of the ticket to the scalper on whom the
" rebate " order was drawn, he would be
refunded a certain sum.

He would then give the purchaser a
" rebate " order on " Mr. T. Pump,"
located on " Water Street," St. Paul.
The victim, on his arrival in St. Paul,
would find no such scalper, . and would
soon realize that he had been fleeced and
that he was in possession of the unused
portion of a ticket, worth perhaps sev-
enty-five cents or a dollar, which was of
no service to him, and for which he had
paid the scalper four or five dollars.

Selling an Office.

Another source of revenue was the
selling of half-interests in scalper's of-
fices. By advertising in the daily papers,
a scalper would sell a half-interest in
his business to some one seeking an in-
vestment which was profitable and did
not entail any particularly hard work.

Immediately after the payment of the
money, the scalper would leave his new
partner in charge of the business. Then
he would notify a number of his friends
in the same business, who would rush in
and interview the new partner, selling
him as many altered, manipulated, and
expired tickets as they could induce him
to buy, making him particularly low and
attractive prices.

He would be immensely elated over
his business acumen until the return of
his partner, who, with a great show of
anger, would demonstrate to him that he
had been wasting the money of the con-
cern by buying worthless tickets, and
that he was totally unfit for the scalping
business. This would usually result in
the scalper repurchasing his interest for
a small sum, of course taking into con-
sideration the amount expended for
worthless tickets.

If this could not be accomplished, the
victim would be induced to buy the

entire interest, and the scalper would
promptly open another office and pursue
the same tactics on some other innocent
investor.

That scalpers not only preyed upon
the public, but on each other, is shown
by the following :

Foxy Grandpa!

A benevolent-looking elderly man and
his daughter entered a scalper's office
and showed two return tickets reading
from Chicago to Portland, Oregon. The
old man said that he found it impossible
to return within the limit of the ticket's
time, and wished to sell them. His story
was so plausible that he succeeded in
selling the tickets. It was found later
that he went the rounds of the scalpers'
offices, reciting the same tale and selling
two tickets at each place visited.

Shortly afterward these tickets were
shown to be forgeries, and the fact that
the deal had been engineered by two
itinerant scalpers was revealed. This
was apparently such an easy method of
obtaining money that they endeavored to
sell more of these forged tickets, even
after suspicion had been aroused.

The same benevolent old chap entered
the office of one of the scalpers who
knew that the tickets were forgeries, and
who was on the alert for them. He
treated the old man most courteously
until he was able to lock the door, when
he told him in plain terms it was up to
him to disgorge what railroad-tickets he
had in his possession, or he would cause
his arrest.

' Wheels Within Wheels.

The man finally admitted his guilt
and handed over some fifty or sixty of
these forged tickets. The scalper, know-
ing it would be impossible to dispose of
the tickets, as the line over which they
read had been notified of the forgery,
arranged the following deal :

Hastily rushing to a pawnbroker, he
said that a well-known railroad official
had selected him to act as agent for their
road in disposing of a large number of
tickets which he could get at a very low '
rate, but the transaction must take place
secretly.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Unfortunately he told the pawnbroker
that he was unable to furnish the cash
capital required by the railroad official,
but if the pawnbroker would furnish the
money he would leave the tickets with
him as collateral, paying him for them
as they were sold, and, in addition, al-
low him a handsome commission.

The pawnbroker promptly advanced
one thousand dollars and took the tick-
ets as security. The tickets were never
redeemed.

A passenger had bought a ticket read-
ing to New York. He was assured that
.it "was a first-class ticket, but on present-
ing it to secure sleeping-car reservations
he ran against a snag. The Pullman
agent called his attention to a clause
printed on the ticket, which stated that
it would not be accepted for passage in
sleeping-cars.

Cut It in Two.

The passenger angrily returned to the
scalper's ' office, showing him the clause
in the ticket, and demanding the return
of his money. The scalper said be could
easily remedy this. Taking the ticket to
a rear room, he eliminated this clause by
cutting it out bodily and pasting the
ticket together. He returned it to the
passenger, asking him to again apply to
the ticket-office for sleeping-car accom-
modations. This time the ticket evidently
passed muster.

At the close of the exposition the scalp-
ers became so bold that they did not even
take the trouble to furnish tickets to
their victims. They would guarantee to
deliver certain tickets at a given date,
giving themselves a week or ten days'
time, demanding and securing from fifty
to seventy-five per cent of the price asked
for the ticket.

The

the Game.

Hundreds of deposits were taken, but
the night before the delivery was to be
made the miscreants disappeared, taking
with them the money of their gudgeons.

It was from this class that the
skilled ticket manipulator and forger was
evolved ; also the experts in acids ; the
colorists, who, by the aid of dyes, are
able to give to a ticket its original color
after it has been removed by its acid
bath ; the maker of forged validation
stamps; the printer of forged tickets and
passes on. railways which existed only in.
his imagination ; the corrupter of rail-
Avay employees, and the ticket " fixer,"
who claims that he is willing to permit
any railroad official to take a new, un-
used ticket from the ticket case, place on
it any writing, any stamps or date or cut
out any limit with a ticket punch ; or, in
fact, make out the ticket in any way he
wishes, and that he will restore it in one
hour's time to its original condition. '

Such men never frequented scalpers'
offices, but maintained rooms in close
proximity where, with their complete par-
aphernalia, they worked skilfully and se-
cretly for the different scalpers, altering
and forging tickets.

The type of ticket-scalpers of whom I
have written became a distinct class by
themselves. They maintained offices in
different cities throughout the country,
bound together by the strongest ties of
self-protection, assessing themselves to
maintain a defense-fund for use in event
of arrest and prosecution, gradually ab-
sorbing the entire scalping business.

They even had their own language,
never speaking of a railroad ticket in its
proper terms. All tickets were " duck-
ets " or " broads " ; a passenger was a
" rummey " ; a small contrivance used by
them for redating a ticket was named a
" dinkey," and the redated ticket was
spoken of as " redinked," while a ticket
requiring alteration had to be " hit." A
forged stamp was termed a " phoney."

They finally became such a menace to
the passenger revenues of the railroad
lines that the Railway Ticket Protective
Bureau, an organization comprising all
of the railway lines in the United States,
Canada, and Mexico was formed, for the
purpose of bringing these malefactors to
justice.

This is the first of a series of three articles. In the second, Mr. Koach will describe
the method of forging tickets, the arrangement of scalpers' offices, fake scalpers, the corruption
of railway employes by scalpers, the forging of validating stamps on railway tickets, the
making of one ticket out of two, and the raiding of some noted scalpers' offices.

THE FRASER-FLAXMAN FIGHT.

BY FRANK CONDON.

How You Can Occasionally Win on a Horse
That Doesn't Finish Within a Mile of the Post.

NE thing on the face of the
earth that defies logic and
sneers at reason is the firm
belief of a street-car con-
ductor that he is as good
as a railroad fireman.
There was the case of Peter Flax-
man. *• The other man was David Fraser,
and the girl was Nora Feely, by which
admission is established immediately the
three sides of - the
human triangle ; and
while all such geo-
metric figures promise
and produce action
of one sort or an-
other, this particular
triangle began to bat
over .300 from the
very first.

In Toledo,' Ohio, a
thriving Western me-
tropolis, where they
have all-night street-
cars every fifteen min-
utes and an owl
lunch-wagon exactly
like every other owl
lunch - wagon on the
North American con-
tinent, the " union
deepo " is an institu-
tion, coddled by the
residents in kind
words and profaned
by the stranger.

Toledoans speak of
it cheerfully, and
you expect to find it
on the main thor-
oughfare, surround-
ed by girdles of elec-
tric lights, swathed in
4 R R

banners, and one step from your hotel.
On the contrary— yes, on the emphatic
contrary — the " union deepo " is chastely
snuggled in the bosom of a depression
that had once done duty as a self-re-
specting swamp, miles away from the
teeming, roaring city, leagues beyond
where you expect to find it, doing its best
to be a pigs-in-clover enigma.

Miss Feely was twenty years old the
night, of the car-barn
fire. That was the
biggest event in To-
ledo's history, and it
was very exciting.
You will have no
trouble in placing
the date, so you can
see that Miss Feely
is still quite a young
woman, and she is
every bit as entran-
cing this minute as
she was that night.

She watched the
flames from the top
of Peter Flaxman's
car, which had been
converted into a
" Seeing Toledo
Burn " vehicle, in
special honor of the
occasion.

During that terri-
ble visitation of the
fire fiend, young Mr.
Fraser stoked an-
thracite intcv'a pony
engine in the yards
— a snorting, hustling
little four - wheel
Brooks, with the
disposition of a Mis-

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

souri mule and an abrupt habit of throw-
ing a man off his feet every time the
brakes were applied. Mr. Fraser had
reason to believe Miss Feely was watch-
ing the fire. Furthermore, he was con-
vinced that Mr. Flaxman was some-
where near her, and the double thought
peeved him in a most acid way.

" I don't wish him any bad luck,"
communed Mr. Fraser, passing in the
coal, " but I hope he's under the next
Avail that falls. She makes me tired,
anyhow. Chasin' around with a bell-
ringin', nickel-chasing shrimp that can't
keep his ears clean ! She ought to have
better sense."

Whereupon Pony No. Ill bucked vio-
lently into a Pullman, and tried to push
the water-gage down Mr. Fraser's" throat.

One day, six months before the fire,
Davy Fraser finished washing his face
in the roundhouse, preparatory to buy-
ing some chewing-gum in the waiting-
room. Davy hadn't chewed gum in
fourteen years ; but there was a new girl
behind the counter, and she looked like
a dream come true. Davy had seen her
for the first time in the morning, and
his long-lost love for gum abruptly re-
turned.

At the gum counter, and partly hiding
it, was a man in a blue uniform. When
Davy strolled in through the clicking
telegraph office, the man in the uniform
was buying gum, and indulging in what
appealed to Davy as some very loose and
infantile conversation about the color of
eyes, and how brown eyes always looked
nicer than blue eyes.

Miss Feely had brown eyes — very
brown eyes; the sort of brown eyes that
make their owner's telephone number
stand out in a man's memory like a light-
house. Davy had always hated Peter
Flaxman ; but until he saw Peter talk-
ing to Miss Feely, that bright afternoon,
he never realized how intense a loathing
one man may have for another.

There he was, a blue Peter in good
sooth. Blue uniform, blue cap, nickel
buttons, badge, gloves and all, and talk-
ing to Miss Feely for all the world like
a silly magpie, when no doubt she Avas
interminably bored and irritated.

" Have you got any Blood Red
gum, miss?" asked Davy politelv.
" Hallo."

He addressed the last word to Mr.
Flaxman, coldly and frigidly.

" Ffallo, Davy," answered Peter
brightly. " I haven't seen you since that
night you came near being arrested.
How you ever got' out of that scrape
beats me."

Miss Feely looked politely- interested.

" I haven't any Blood Red," she said
in the pause that followed Peter's pleas-
ant remark; "but we sell Tulip's Heart.
It's very good gum. Would you like
some Tulip's Heart?"

" That's the very name I was trying
to think of. I always chew that kind.
Gimme fifty cents' worth."

Davy peeled off the tinfoil and in-
serted a wedge in his mouth.

" Ain't you chewing tobacco no
more?" asked Mr. Flaxman with -in-
terest.

" I never did chew tobacco," respond-
ed Davy tartly. " Your motorman's
calling you."

It was even so. Peter smiled bright-
ly at Miss Feely, who had seemingly
been paying slight attention.

" So long, Miss Feely," he said. " I'll
see you the next trip."

"Do you know Flaxman?" asked
Davy, when the conductor had gone.

" Not very well. He comes in to see
me when his car gets here. He's a nice
man, I think. He's very fond of gum.
Are you? " ~

" I live on gum," replied Davy.
" What was he saying to you about
brown eyes when I come up ? "

'.', Oh, nothing. He was just talking
like all you men talk. Aren't you the
fireman out in the yards?"

" I fire the switch-engine," admitted
Davy. " I get a job runnin' before
long. Do you like street-car conduc-
tors? "

Miss Feely smiled one of those quick
smiles that start and end in the same
second. -

" I don't know," she answered. " I
like men if I like them, regardless of
what they do for a living. Do you like
girls who work in railroad-station wait-
ing-rooms, selling gum to firemen who
chew tobacco? "

She leaned her rounded elbows upon
the glass case and looked Davy in the
eve. He grinned.

THE FRASER-FLAXMAN FIGHT.

" Sure I do. But now, listen. I ain't
got a thing against street-car conduc-
tors. They're generally dead - beats or
crooks of some sort or other, and they
usually drink like a fish and never pay
their debts, and they never have a decent
home over their heads, and they're not
refined, and they'd probably steal the
pennies off a dead man's eyes. But, out-
side of that, they're all right. Taking
them as a class, they're all right, outside
of the trifling exceptions I. mentioned.

cover a capable switch-engine shinnying
around the yards, and during most of
the day you'll see me chucking coal into
her.

" Every now and then I'm coming in
to buy some of this here Tulip gum, and
eventually I believe we'll get to know
each other ; and, in the course of time,
I'm going to ask you definitely to come
to a dance with me, because if there ever
was a swell little dancer in Toledo, the
same is yours, etc., etc."

"i'm going to ask you to marry me to-night."

How long since you knew this Flaxman
fellow?"

" I began this job at seven-thirty this
morning," laughed Miss Feely. " I met
Mr. Flaxman at seven thirty-two, and
he's been in to see me at the end of
every trip, so far. His car has to wait
outside for ten minutes each time."

"Do you ever go to dances?" asked
Davy, changing the subject easily.

" Very often. I love to dance."

"If you ever get to know me better,
d'ye suppose I might have the honor?"

"We'll see, later on."

" Well, if you look out through that
last window once in a while, you'll dis-

A customer interrupted the flow of
conversation, and Davy walked forth
into the summer-night's air smiling upon
the rich and the poor alike.

Miss Feely was the sole support of a
large and expensive wardrobe, and, in-
cidentally, she won the bread for a timid
little mother. There was nothing bril-
liant about her except her eyes, and
nothing pretty except — well, her whole
sweet self. In Toledo, a girl must work
for a living or get married. No To-
ledo girl has ever tried out the first
system to its fullest extent, and mar-
riage is as common as conversation.

Miss Feely had no particular aspira-

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

tions, ideals, or ambitions, but she liked Greek to him. They had nice covers,

good-looking men who were properly in- and they made an acceptable gift. It

troduced, and occasionally she became was Peter who learned to buy flowers

acquainted with other men in unconven- now and then, to mind the holidays with

tional ways — just as she came to know an appropriate greeting, to tip his hat

Davy Fraser and Peter Flaxman. frequently. And whatever he did, Davy

Peter was a good-looking chap. So came in behind with a mild sort of imi-

was Davy. Peter made a fair income, tation.

and so did Davy. Peter had a gift of
gab and a sweet way of talking nonsense

Davy was no ladies' man, but he was
a mighty good fireman. He could tell

but he couldn't make a pretty
speech to save his soul. As a social
light, he was unlit.

Now and then, after all three had be-
come pals— all except Davy and Peter

13 MM Set &

to a girl, and Davy lost points on this the steam-pressure without looking at the
count. But the triangle started out
easily, and made good time from the be-
ginning.

It was Peter who first leaped the
bounds of restraint and carried off the
girl to an ice-cream social in Walbridge — the fireman would invite the girl out
Pajk. It was Peter who drove himself for a moonlight ride on the lake. He
into a book-store and bought a bundle of might take her to a summer-theater show,
books, the contents of which were pure or he might drop in at the little cottage

up on Western Ave-
nue and. idle away a
few hours without
making any particular
effort to be entertain-
ing or amusing.

One night Davy sat
in the big Morris
chair, staring at Nora
and wondering how it
would feel to be able
to ask her if she had
put out the cat and
locked the back door.
He sat up suddenly
under the weight of a
stray thought and pro-
pounded :

" Say, Nora, do you
like Peter Flaxman
better than me? "

Nora turned her
brown eyes on him in
mild surprise.

" I've often won-
dered," she said grave-
ly. ■" It's been both-
ering me lately more
than ever. I've sat up
with that particular
thought more than
one night. Peter is a
fine chap. So are you.
Neither one of you
has made violent love"

"i NEVER DID CHEW TOBACCO," RESPONDED DAVY TARTLY. _ me > ^U^ *■ ^ n°t

"your motorman's calling you." blind, and I can see

THE FRASER-FLAXMAN FIGHT.

THEN EVERYBODY CLUTCHED WITH THEIR ARMS, WRISTS, KNEES, AND FINGERS AS THE
PASSIONLESS STEEDS SHOT DOWN WITH A METALLIC ROAR.

that you like me. Peter asked me to
marry him last night."

" As usual," grunted Davy. " He's in
ahead of me again. Well, I may be a
trailer, but I'm consistent. So I'm go-
ing to ask you to marry me to-night. I
don't care what you told Pete; but if
you said you would marry him, I'm go-
ing to look him up this bright sum-
mer's eve and knock his block off."

" I didn't say I would marry him. I
told him he would have to wait."

" That sounds better. Now, what are
you going to tell me?" ,

" Same answer, Davy. I can't decide.
I wish I could, because somebody is
going to get the worst of this, and I,
don't want to hurt either you or Pete.
I presume one of you will be hurt."

" One of us will, unless I marry you,
Nora. If you have any large sums of
money around the house, go and get a
bet down that one of us will be hurt,
and his initials will be P. F. Say ! Can
you see me on the curb watching you and
him trail into church — him in a waiter's
dress suit and you all dressed up?"

" Nix. I'll be on the curb maybe, but
I'll carry a dynamite bomb, and I'll
touch it off right after some one gives
Pete away, taking great care to have it
remove him from earth. No. I've been
reading the cards, and they say you're
going to lose the Feely end of your name
and adorn yourself with the pleasing
»ame of Fraser."

Nora laughed, and so did her small
mother. The mother always sat in on
these little affairs, and Davy wasn't the
least embarrassed.

"How much do you make now?"
asked Nora. " I'm not mercenary ; but
it's nice to know the facts, . in case of
fire."

" Hundred and thirty, counting over-
time, and I'll do better when I start run-
ning. We can get married to-morrow
and have a honeymoon next year."

" Next year I'll answer that. But,
remember this. I'm ready to marry
either you or Peter. I can't settle it
because I can't, and that's all there is to
it. Things will have to go on in the
same way until something happens."

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Nothing happened to sway the situa-
tion from its perfect poise. Peter and
Nora were fast friends, and Davy and
Nora were fast friends. True, Peter
escorted the girl to frequent social
events, but Davy trailed along about the
same as ever ; so the general average was
undisturbed.

Even a fireman can become jealous.
Davy was jealous. Not only that; he
was angry, and threatened Peter with
bodily - harm, whereat Peter laughed.
And when the grand ball of the Fourth
Ward Democratic Club was given at the
Casino, Peter slipped one over on Davy
for the thousandth time by getting in his
invitation to Nora first.

" I'm awfully sorry, Davy," Nora
said consolingly. " But Peter heard of
the affair before you did, and he asked
me to go with him, so I couldn't very
well refuse."

" All right," replied Davy. " I hope
you have a good time. But remember,
I'm sore."

He cut his visit short because he
couldn't keep up his end of the conver-
sation,, and Nora's mother remarked that
David was getting stupid.

The day and night of the grand ball
spread red ink upon the fair annals of
Toledo. Everybody was going. The
municipal offices were to be emptied,
and every official, from the mayor down
to the workhouse superintendent, had
promised to attend. Even the red-
headed mayor's secretary, who never at-
tended anything, had given his word;
and when' the sun came up on that fes-
tal day, all the chivalry and beauty with-
in the city walls began to pile into the
wabbly street-cars. At noon the Casino
grounds were filled, and by night the
attendance was dancing around the
twelve-thousand mark.

When twelve thousand - Toledoans de-
cide to leave town temporarily — and the
Casino is out of town — what remains of
the city is peculiarly lonely. After Davy
Fraser had wiped the lubricating - oil
from his ruddy countenance and pol-
ished himself back to decency, he
emerged from the roundhouse and
thought solemn things.

Nora was riding the merry-go-round
with Pete. Nora was eating gummed
molasses and popcorn with Pete. Nora

was sitting in retired corners, drinking
lemonade with Pete. They were shoot-
ing the chutes, Pete and Nora; and
without a shadow of doubt, Pete had his
arm around Nora to prevent her from
falling.

Davy had a perfectly fine time with
his thoughts' until they finally got the
better of him; and, like the murderer
returning to the scene of the crime,
Davy boarded a South Street car and
started for the Casino.

A street-car ride frequently clears a
man's brain and opens up channels of
thought that may otherwise remain
clogged. And a ride on a South Street
car in Toledo is the longest thing this
side of eternity. By the time the mo-
torman had turned into Stickney Avenue,
Davy Fraser had ceased to sit on his
shoulder-blades like a condemned pris-
oner. He had taken his hands out of
his trousers - pockets, and his face was
beginning to flush with a red tint, which,
in Davy's case, meant either the pres-
ence of an idea or the approach of the
measles.

It was an idea.

Why, communicated Davy telepathi-
cally to the advertising-signs in the cor-
ner of the car, should this ghastly farce
be continued longer? Why should he,
Davy, Who was continually and monot-
onously bested t by a transfer - punching
rival, submit to further mortification?
Hadn't the thing gone on for months?
Hadn't he lost on every occasion? Was
he any more likely to win in the future?
He was not !

Then, why not end everything imme-
diately? -Have it settled and over with,
and if things turned out wrong, let 'em
turn. If Davy had known what a die
was, he would have cast it as the car
turned into Lower Summit Avenue.

You approach the Casino grounds
through a series of curves2- finally stop-
ping at a raised platform, beyond which
is a wire netting surrounding a lot of
unhappy animals. Davy slid off the car,
and paid ten cents to a man at the gate,
who seemed to be suffering from an ex-
treme case of ennui.

In ten minutes he had joined the
merry throng ; in eleven minutes he had
begun to search for a tall, handsome
girl and a street-car conductor.

THE FRASER-FLAXMAN FIGHT.

They were leaning over
the railing, watching the
hired motor-boats. Pete was
explaining,- and Nora was
listening.- Davy anchored in
the offing, sheltered by an
ice-cream booth. He medi-
tated upon various things;
but uppermost in his mind
was the notion to suddenly
leap upon the inoffensive
Pete an^, if possible, kill him
wiih despatch, and throw the
body into the water;

Then seize the girl and
leave abruptly without being
discovered. In the cold light
of even Davy's reason, the
plan had weak points. Some
one would be sure to. see
him in the thirteen thousand
thereabouts, so he paused
and bought another ice-cream
soda.

Nora and Pete sauntered down the
long board walk, followed , by the
doughty Dave. They halted at various
booths, and Davy stopped also, to avoid
detection. At one point he approached
too closely, and it was only by dodging
behind a stall that he escaped as they
turned to retrace their steps.

An indignant old lady regarded Davy
with a malignant eye, and he had to buy
a cane from her before she was con-
vinced that he hadn't meant to . snitch
the till.

The Casino has many attractions, but
the black4, type in its advertisements al-
ways has to do with the steeplechase.
This steeplechase renders the words of,
man feeble and insufficient. It causes
press-agents, to run loosely to strange ad-
jectives. It is the grand special, the
prize feature of the show, and, alto-
gether, the most exciting and indis-
pensable part of the performance.

Four wooden horses slide down four
iron-shod rails for all the world like
race-horses, and four people ride them.
The horse that finishes first wins the
race, and its rider receives a free" ticket
which enables him or her to ride in the
next race without the payment of an
additional ten cents.

The starting-point is up on the sec-
ond floor, where the beer is sold in bot-

HE LOWERED HER BETWEEN
THE SINGLE RAILS.

ties, and after a dizzy downward plunge,
the racing steeds disappear in a cavern
of intense darkness, emerging at the far
end of the grounds, and circling around
in broad loops until the finish - line is
reached. ,—

When ladies ride, it is necessary to
cast conventionality to the winds, be-
cause if a lady were to ride side-saddle,
she would hit the ground on the first
turn with a surprising wallop. You ride
astride — man, woman, or child — and
you clutch your wooden Pegasus with
all the strength in your good knees.

So when Davy .saw Nora and Pete
heading for the steeplechase entrance,
he just naturally followed, hoping that
something would happen. He sidled
along among the rest, buying his ticket
mechanically, standing in line, and keep-

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

ing air eye on a certain ostrich plume in
front. Four horses galloped in.

It takes two couples to occupy four
horses. Pete led Nora to the waiting
horse and helped her gallantly into the
saddle, and, if it must be said, Nora
fitted into the picture perfectly. Pete
hopped nimbly to his horse, and the
starter yelled for two more riders. A
pale-faced youth clambered upon the
horse on the inner rail, leaving a vacant
horse between him and Nora.

Davy looked at the empty horse. It
looked good. He slipped out of the
line and covered ten yards in two sec-
onds.

Nora was surprised. You can't pay
attention to emotions on the Casino
steeplechase. In a flash she saw that
the rider to her left was Davy Fraser.
Peter, on the off horse, saw it, too.
Then everybody clutched with their
arms, wrists, knees, and fingers as the
passionless steeds shot down with a
metallic roar.

Whether Davy had figured it out
beforehand, or whether the inspiration
came to him on that first downward
dip, is something for historians to puzzle
over. The cane he "had bought under
protest was in his hand, and beside him,
hanging on for dear life, was Nora.
Somewhere to starboard was the hated
Pete, engrossed solely in the business of
sticking to a wabbling hobby-horse.

When the four horses, breast to
breast, disappeared into the dungeon
part of the ride, Davy reached over
and laid a detaining hand on the horse
beside him — not the horse occupied by
the pale-faced youth. He jimmied his
cane down betAveen the forelegs of his
own steed until it reached the cog rail,
and then, using it as a lever and still
holding the tail of the horse to his right,
he leaned against the cane desperately.

There was a sudden and perceptible
diminution of its speed. The wooden
skate swayed and bucked. So did the
horse beside him. Slowly they drew up
side by side, Davy still bent forward
upon his trusty cane. The terrific mo-
mentum was being overcome. On his
fiery steed, Peter was shooting ahead.
On the other side of the track, the pale-
faced youth had disappeared, leaving
only a grating sound in the darkness. '

As the two horses slid forward, a
voice sounded :

"Is that you, Davy Fraser?"

"Is it me? You're dead- right it's
me! You hang on tight, and we'll be
out of -this hole in a minute. Look at
the daylight ahead. Don't go and get
scared. I'm working this thing."

The steeplechase-course winds around
the south end of the Casino grounds,
and for a brief space it curves over the
fence that encloses the grounds. At the
point where the horses cross the top/of
the fence, Davy gave One last push at
his cane, and the two racers stopped.

" Here," said Davy. " We've got
twelve seconds before the next bunch
smashes into us. You got to jump."

He threw his arm around the girl and
lifted her clear of the saddle. Then,
with infinite care, he lowered her be-
tween the single rails, holding her by
the hands, until she hung suspended
eight feet from the ground, and then he
dropped her.

Nora landed on the grass and crum-
pled up in a little heap. The cavern
behind Davy suddenly began to roar,
and he knew that another team^of four
horses was plunging down upon him.
So, without further ado, he dropped his
cane and slipped down, head over heels,
and on the outside of the fence.

Two stationary wooden horses were
plowed up into splinters and rendered
useless by the collision that followed.
No one was hurt. The riders who fol-
lowed managed, luckily enough, to stick
to their saddles. Below them, Davy
was helping Nora to her feet and urging
upon her the necessity of getting away
before they were arrested for murder.

"D'ye know where we're going?" he
asked as they hurried up toward the line
of waiting cars. " You don't need to
answer. We're going to be married.
I'm going to marry you. You're going
to marry me."

Nora was making a feminine noise
that is either laughing or crying. It de-
pends upon the situation.

"But what about Peter?" she asked.

" Oh, he wins, that's all. He wins
the race because we didn't finish. Un-
less," Davy padded as an afterthought,
" unless that pale-faced guy beat him
out."

Observations of a Country
Station-Agent.

BY J. E. SMITH.

No. 17. — Chauncy Discourses On the Patience and Labor that Goes

to Make Up the Unrewarded Lot of the

Ticket-Agent.

® I

Chauncy, our ticket-
man, in a state of gloom.
Outside the sun shone bright-
ly, the chickadee was chirping
to his mate, and the sound of
empty-headed levity from the
passing throng was borne in on the balm
of the morning air.

Chauncy was downcast. He sat deep
in the office chair and telescoped far
down into his clothes, until nothing but
his nose was visible.

"Has she said it can never be?" I
asked tenderly.

Chauncy emitted a discordant grunt.

" Maybe she'll be a sister," I added
consolingly. " By and by she may- snug
up closer. Sisters have that cunning
habit. Let her know you are the High
Panjandrum of the ticket-office, and that
you can get passes -any time for two — as
far out as Minnie-ha-ha Falls."

" You are on the wrong trail alto-
gether," said Chauncy, pushing his cap
up far enough to see out from under the
rim. " It's contact with the accursed
populace that brings on this grouch.
It's the people we are supposed to serve
— the dear people — our esteemed patrons
— who take advantage of us and rub it

Series bcean in the July, 1907, Railroad

Man

in on us, and leave us bobtailed when we
are expecting the most from them."

" Doesn't the salary go on just the
same? " I asked.

The Pride of Chauncy.

" It does," replied Chauncy. " But I
have a pride in the business of the office
— in the earnings — there is where I am
disappointed."

" Does the president of the road know
what a keen interest you take in the
business? "

" Don't kid," said Chauncy. " Any
man with red blood hates to have the
game get away from him, and he feels
lots worse when some one else beats him
to it. Maybe you think a ticket-agent
has nothing to do but sit on a cushioned
chair, with an effervescent smile and
shelf-worn stock of soft words, and await
the procession of faces at the ticket-
window.

" Maybe you think people tumble over
one another to get to our window with
their simoleons for tickets over our line.
Maybe you think they actually fight for
the privilege of riding on our cars.
They may do that on Mohammed's cele-

Magazine. Single Copies, 10 cents.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

'maybe she'll be a sister," l added, "by and by she may snug up closer."

brated caravan route to Mecca, but in
this land of the free and home of the
rival road they don't. Indeed, they
don't ! You've got to go out after them
and gather them in ; and about the time
you think you have 'em, you haven't.

The Agent On the Trail.

" Some people think hunting the
rhino, the hippo, and the wart-hog in
darkest Africa is real sport ; but it
hasn't any thrills over bagging a pas-
senger a rival line is after.

" Here are sample illustrations of how
we conduct the passenger business :

" Exhibit A — Two months ago I was
waited on by Professor Von Plunk, tell-
ing me he contemplated a journey over
prairie, mountain, and coast for him-
self and two daughters. He wanted in-
formation about fares, routes, stop-overs,
and side trips. For thirty days I con-
structed itineraries. I laid out for his
approval an even hundred combinations.

" ' Ah,' he exclaimed enthusiastically,

' how travel broadens the mind ! What
an education for my daughters ! ' I de-
scribed every train, on every road, in
every direction.

" I enumerated every attraction of the
earth below, the fascination of the waters
beyond, and the charm of the heavens
above. I told of the silverware in the
diners. I described the kind of buttons
on the coats of the porters. I wore the
back off the official guide. There were
to be three tourist tickets as far west as
Balboa's aqueous preserves. We needed
the business.

Metaphysical Travel.

" The professor occupied all my spare
time for one month.' In the breathing
moments he told me about himself in de-
tail. I was an interested listener. Told
me about his daughters — their wonder-
ful talents in music and art and marvel-
ous capacity for deep thought.

" His system was surcharged with a
strange cult, and he unloaded all that

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT.

on me. Something about metempsycho-
sis, or transmigration of souls. The nit-
ness of the ego. The astral body de-
tachable from this material frame, and
which can make distant journeys and
communications.

"I told him when a man had that
sort of an apparatus it was no use for
us to try to compete with him on a travel
proposition. Our service costs money,
and we can't go up against those ethe-
real projections.

" That was a flippant remark of mine,
and he seemed to lose interest. What
do you think he finally did?

"He took his daughters on one of.
those cheap one-day-limit-dollar excur-
sions down to Louisville and showed
them the Ohio River ! Went on the other
road, too !

" What did I get for all my pains?
Nothing — only a few tips on the infinite
— the eternal — and the immutable !

" Exhibit B — You know that excur-
sion party I had worked up for Magoo-
goo Take ? We did not get them ! That
was what I was thinking about when you
came in. It's all off. Didn't I tell you
about it? I thought I did.

Philanthropic De Witt.

" About two months ago Mr. T. De
Witt laid the proposition before me.
•He. had a Sunday-school class of ten
boys. It occurred to him that some time
during the summer he would take his
Sunday-school class on a personally con-
ducted excursion to some lake for a few
days' outing.

" He didn't' care if it cost him
twenty dollars for the trip. Two dol-
lars per head for ten. De Witt was
enthusiastic over it.

" ' It will be a happy event for the
boys. They will remember it all their
' lives,' said he.

" I recommended Winona. I went to
great pains to get particulars and loaded
him with information. Twenty dollars
isn't much ; bijt in these distressed times
we are after everything, however small.

" De Witt came back in a few days.
' There'll be twelve instead of ten,' said
he. ' We have two new boys in our
class. We'll figure on twelve.'

" I went over the train schedule again

with him. That's one fine thing about
handing out information to a passenger
a long way ahead. You got to tell it
over again ""a number of times. If you
write it out on paper for him, the pas-
senger at once loses the paper. If you
merely recite it, the passenger has for-
gotten it all, or is hopelessly jumbled by
the time he reaches the station plat-
form.

" ' I think it will be Winona,' said
De Witt. ' Guess I can stand two more
without breaking the bank.' He added
this remark with merry confidence. He
was back again in a week arid wearing
a troubled expression.

The Beginning of Growth.

' I wish you would see,' said he,
' what you can do for fifteen to Winona.
Won't the road make a cheaper rate
when there's so many? You see, we
have three more new scholars ; and it's
going to be a little expensive, I'm afraid,
unless the railroad helps me out a little.
I've promised the excursion, but we
ought to have better figures on fifteen
than on ten.'

" Now, a railroad in devising rates for
parties cannot see much difference be-
tween ten and fifteen. I told De Witt
I was afraid we could not get any con-
cession from the road. We would try,
however.

" He bounded in a week later with a
haunted look. ' The railroad will have
to do better on that rate to get us.
There's twenty of us now. There were
five more new scholars Sunday. If
they'll make it a dollar straight, I'll
close up the business right away.'

" Of course, we could not give him
the fare he wanted. At this stage . of
the proceedings the competing line but-
ted in and made a bid for the business.

Competitor's Bait.

" They sent that ' Con-Man ' Mc-
Carty, their traveling passenger - agent,
up to see De Witt. He offered them
Ooze Lake and back for one dollar !
. " Did you ever visit that cattail
swamp — that miasmic jungle ? Take
my word for it, it's only a frog-pond.
I told De Witt if he took those innocent

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

"ah," he exclaimed enthusiastically, "how travel broadens the mind!
what an education for my daughters ! "

children out there for the mosquitoes to
pump malaria into them, I would report
him- to the humane society.

"It is said a buzzard will scent a
carcass a hundred miles. Same in the
passenger business. Within the^ next
two weeks we had representatives from
every road in this country to see De
Witt. His head buzzed with sylvan
scenes, and his pockets bulged with the
alluring literature of the rail. I caught
him on the 'fly.

" ' We had ten more new scholars
Sunday,' he said hoarsely. ' There will
be thirty of us. I think we will go to
the Capitol and back. I am seeing the
M. and G. road about it to-day. They
offer us eighty-five cents for the round
trip.'

Bait and Rebait.

" I saw at once that Winona was out
of the question. I dropped that resort
and hit on Magoogoo Lake. It isn't

much of a lake. It has two canoes and
three sycamore-trees, but it was the
closest article on any road that could be
called a resort.

" In the meantime poor De Witt was
chasing up and down, running sidewase
and* going around in circles, interviewing
and being interviewed, trying to connect
with something cheap, for his class had
now increased to forty-two !

Chauncy's Master-Stroke.

" Our competitors began to disagree.
At the psychological moment I sprang it.

"'Why not Magoogoo Lake? I can
get you there and back for forty-five
cents per head, De Witt.'

" He grasped at it "like a straw.
' There's now fifty-eight of us,' he ex-
plained, nervously passing his hand
over his pale forehead. That'll be un-
der thirty dollars. I'd better take it
and close this, thing up.'

" That week the local paper gave De

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT.

Witt a column on first page, extolling
the benevolent impulse that led him to
give an excursion to his Sunday-school
class to Magoogoo Lake. You see, I
tipped it off to the newspaper, and I
read it with satisfaction. It was not
exactly authorized by De Witt ; but it
sort o' committed the expedition to Ma-
googoo Lake, and that was where I
thought I had turned a neat trick.

The Half-Fare Theory.

" I had, but for one little unforeseen
consequence, that resulted from the news-
paper publicity, I had so cunningly fos-
tered. On the Sunday following the
announcement there were twenty-seven
additions to the class!

" Thus by sheer force of numbers Ma-
googoo Lake went down and
out of De Witt's calcula-
tions. He took summary
action. Delay meant bank-
ruptcy. He loaded the class
on the street-cars and took
the whole bunch out to Phil
Motter's park for a day !

" It cost him ten cents a
head, and it took two cars to
hold the class that started
on a charter membership
of ten.

" What did we get out of
it? Not a. sou ! These were
the things I was thinking
about when you came in.
These are the wherefores of
this air of sadness."

There was a momentary
interruption. A woman and
her near - grown - up daugh-
ter appeared at the ticket-
window.

" I want a half-fare ticket
for my little girl to She-
mung," said the woman.

"Where is the child?"
asked Chauncy, ducking his
head and casting his eyes
about in vain search.

" Why, this is her ! "

" Oh, indeed ! " exclaimed
Chauncy. " She's not twen-
ty-one yet, is she? "

" The idea ! " retorted the
woman with warmth. " She

won't be seventeen until next February !
Indeed, she won't."

"I am sorry, madam, but we shall
have to charge her full fare. The rule
is half fare between five and twelve."

" Well, that's funny. We've never
had to pay full fare for her before.
You're mighty particular, but I suppose
I'll haft to pay it."

She glared at Chauncy with some
hostility, and she passed in a silver dol-
lar with a hesitating, reluctant motion.

Chauncy extracted full fare.

" That's something a woman never
understands," he said to me. " If she
has never paid full fare for the child
before, why should she be asked to do
so this time? It isn't a question of how
old or what ought to be, but she's never
had to pay it before, and it's all wrong

"the idea!" retorted the woman, "she won't
be seventeen until next february!"

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

to have to pay it now. That's the sort
of argument you have to meet.

" There is no answer to that logic,
and if followed up I see no reason why
any one should ever be charged more
than half fare, because, having paid it
once, that is sufficient reason for the next
time, and that starts one of those end-
less chains."

Billed Through.

The woman reappeared at the win-
dow.

" I want a way-bill for the girl,"
said she.

"A what?" asked Chauncy.

" A way-bill. I want a way-bill for
her."

"Oh, I see!" replied Chauncy. He

took a piece of clip and addressed it to

Conductor No. 6, informing him briefly

' that the bearer was Miss Susan Blinker

and her destination was Shemung.

" That will put her in charge of the
conductor, won't it? " asked the woman.

The woman took the piece of clip and
would have thanked Chauncy, but the
memory of the recent full-fare outrage
was too fresh in her mind to permit any
show of gratitude.

"What she wanted was a' note to the
conductor," explained Chauncy to me.
" She called it a way-bill. She thought
she had to use a railroad term, or we
would not understand what she wanted.
That note won't do any particular good,
and it won't do any harm ; just eases
the mind of all concerned.

" Whenever grandpa, or grandma, or
any of the youngsters, or the poodle dog
is put on the train, the folks remaining
want 'em placed directly in charge of
the conductor. This is a fine arrange-
ment.

" The conductor usually lets them sit
in a seat and look out of a window, if
they feel disposed. He permits them
to leave the train when they reach their
destination. He doesn't give the close,
every-minute, personal attention to his
charge that those behind imagine, as he
has to divert his "attention to minor du-
ties now and then in going by. Never-
theless, he is a widely trusted man.

" But while you sit idly by, seeing
and hearing the mishaps that befall a

ticket-man, I want to point out to you
my old friend Abraham Bunker, who
lives one mile in the country and owns
all the land in that part ' of the town-
ship. He now approaches the window.
Hear me ask him about his daughter.

"How are you, Mr. Bunker?" said
Chauncy cheerily.

" Only middlin' ! "

"What can we do for you?"

" I wanted to get the correct time,
that was all," replied Bunker, fumbling
at a silveroid watch.

" Nine-twenty-seven and one-half,"
volunteered Chauncy.

" That's gittin' it down purty fine,
ain't it? "

" Everything's right up to the hair's-
breadth on this road. By the way, Mr.
Bunker, how's your daughter? I under-
stand she was dangerously ill last week."

Bunker looked up in quick surprise.
The sunburn of his face shaded a little,
and he walked out of the station rather
briskly and without making any reply.

" It doesn't seem to me," I observed,
" that your solicitude for the health of
Mr. .Bunker's daughter aroused much
enthusiasm in the old gentleman."

" He didn't make any answer at all,
did he?" said Chauncy with a wide
grin. "I will tell you the story, con-
nected with it. It happened last week.

Some Saving Schemes.

" Maybe you do not know Bunker. He
is one of those nice old farmers, with
more chattels than he can get down on
the inventory. Made it all by saving
everything he ever got his hands on.

" Before the pure-food era, he sold
maple molasses, which he manufactured
from hickory-bark and corn-cobs. He
used to take an apple that had one
rotten side, cut it in halves, and stick
the good half, by means of a little
wooden peg, to the good half of. another
apple similarly affected. These charac-
teristic side-lights go with the story.

" Last week Bunker took a car-load
of fat steers to Cincinnati. You know
how these things are arranged. The
shipper is passed free with his live stock
to market, but comes back as a passenger
at regular fare.

" Bunker got to Cincinnati very early

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT.

in the morning, found a quick market,
and was sold out and ready to return
by ten o'clock. Now, our No. 26 leaves
Cincinnati at ten-forty, but it only makes
two stops between there and Indianapo-
lis. It goes through here about fifty
miles per hour.

he sought the superintendent's office and
told a touching story to sympathetic
ears : His daughter was dangerously
ill — might not survive the day — would
not the company let him go to her on
No. 26?

" The superintendent gave 26 an

HE CAUGHT A FLEETING GLIMPSE OF THE FARM WITH TWO OF HIS HIRED MEN SITTING
COMFORTABLY ON A FENCE IN THE FRIENDLY SHADE OF A MAPLE-TREE.

" Bunker wanted to come home on
26. The regular local train for this
station didn't leave until 3 p.m. That
meant he would put up twenty-five cents
for his dinner and the loss of the entire
day. Losing a day, with three or four
hired men at home and no one to watch
'em and prod 'em along, was a mighty
serious matter on the farm.

A Sympathetic Super.

" The fool hath said many things in
his time. Among other observations is
one that ' Corporations have no souls.'
Bunker evidently thought otherwise, for

order to stop at B ,f and Mr. Bunker

marched aboard with a cunning and tri-
umphant chuckle.

" The superintendent had taken his
address, and a Tittle later I got a mes-
sage from him to make inquiry and re-
port quickly by wire, if Mr. Bunker's
daughter or if any other member of the
family was seriously ill.

" I got the housq by phone. Natu-
rally my inquiry alarmed Mrs. Bunker
and aroused her curiosity to the highest
pitch, but it elicited the information
that all the Bunkers, big and little, were
in their usual health, and that nothing
out of the ordinary had happened the

THE RAILROAD. MAN'S MAGAZINE.

household, save that the head thereof was
in Cincinnati. Maybe something dread-
ful had happened to him. Goodness
gracious !

" I wired the superintendent that the
state of health among the Bunkers was
the very best. No one ill. No calls
for help.

" At Greensburg, where No. 26 made
its first stop, the conductor received a
message from the superintendent cancel-
ing his instructions to stop at B , and

to carry the passenger on to Shelby, the
next regular stop, paying no attention
whatever to his protest. Bunker went
through here about fifty miles per hour.

What Bunker Saw.

" He got one fleeting glance at ^our
familiar faces, and he caugnf a glimpse
of the farm, with two of his hired men
sitting comfortably on a fence in the
friendly shade of a . maple-tree. It
threw him into a duck-fit. He appealed
to the conductor, but that man, with a
heart of stone, knew his business, and
Bunker unloaded at Shelby.

" He came sneaking home on the eve-
ning train from the west, and got out
to the house in the deepening twilight —
in the sad and solemn gloaming — just
'as his dying daughter was chasing a
Jersey cow into the pasture-lot for the
night."

I arose to go. Chauncy laid his hand
on my arm and detained me a moment
longer.

" When we were speaking about rev-
enue for the company a while ago," said

he, "I thought of Billy G at X .

When it comes to getting all the money

the patron will stand for, Bill has us
all beaten.

A Round-Trip Corpse.

" You know, when a corpse is taken
away for burial, it travels on a first-class
ticket. Billy is the only agent I ever
knew that succeeded in selling a round-
trip ticket for the corpse.

" Not long ago a gentleman of a
frugal turn of mind approached Billy's
window for a ticket for a corpse. When
you ask a ticket-agent for a ticket, he
will automatically come back at you with
the question, ' Qne way or round trip ? '

" So Billy spoke up kind o' unthink-
ingly, ' One way or round trip ? '

" ' How much is saved on the round
trip ? ' asked the thrifty passenger.

" ' Ten per cent,' responded Billy.
' Twenty-five cents in this case.'

" ' Give me a round trip, then,' said
the man ; ' twenty-five cents is as good
to me as to the railroad company, I
reckon.' No man ever saved a cent on
a ticket purchase that did not get off
that comfortable observation.

" I don't know whether they ever
straightened it out or not. Economy,
you know, sometimes has its kinks. It
is probable that when the buyer of the
ticket follows the lamented aforesaid
through the pearly gates, and compares
notes, he may find cause for reporting
Billy to St. Peter, and Billy will get his.

" One more remark about round trips.
When a passenger knows he wants a
round trip, and beats you to it, he in-
variably hands you this triple combina-
tion : ' Give me a round-trip ticket to
Hardscrabble and back, both ways ! '

MAILING BY THE TRAINLOAD.

THE record mail consignment made in
this country by a single individual or
firm was established some months ago by a
Chicago company. The same firm also held
the previous record for the largest mailing
consignment.

A year ago last March they established
the first record by mailing three million
eight hundred thousand catalogues, each of
which weighed two ounces. On that occa-
sion thirty tons of mail-sacks were required
to convey the two hundred and sixty-five
tons of advertising matter.

This year the firm mailed six million cata-
logues. The total weight was about four
hundred and fifty tons, and sixty-five tons
of mail-sacks were required. In both cases
the consignment was delivered direct to the
depots without intermediate handling.

If an attempt were made to mail such a
consignment in the ordinary way through
a letter-box it would take a man, working
eight hours a day, including Sundays, and
mailing an average of three catalogues a
minute, about eleven years and five months
to complete the task.

"Windy" Dodges the Boss.

BY HOWARD GRAHAM.

THE TRUE STORY SERIES. A guilty conscience is the most
relentless of fool-makers. Man's mind usually follows the line of
least resistance, and that is usually on the trail of his fears or his
hopes. So it came about that " Windy " hopped all over the Bessemer
yards one wearying day, in an effort to keep clear of the Old Man, only to
.walk heedlessly into him when his fears had been lulled to rest by his success.

TRUE STORY, NUMBER THIRTY-SEVEN.

When a Man Breaks a Rule He May As Well Let the Result Catch

Up Right Away, Because It Will

Get Him Anyway.

was one summer when I
worked at Bessemer ore yard
that this incident occurred ;
it was there I first became
acquainted with Windy. Of
all men, railroad men have a
knack of characterizing a man by a nick-
name so striking that one cannot help
acknowledging that it describes its vic-
tim to perfection.

Need I quote examples? They will
occur to any one with a fairly wide ac-
quaintance among railroad men. There
was my old friend, Romeo Hooker, of
the Third Ward passenger yard.

Who that ever saw poor old Romeo,
with that soulful expression" on his face
and that enormous curved nose of his,
would deny that " Romeo Hooker " fitly
described him? Many a time have I
joined with the boys in a laugh at . his

expense when they were eating their
lunch in the telegraph office at the old
Lake Shore Depot ; but when he was
killed by a switch-engine we all mourned
a friend.

Or need I allude to that old stand-by,
" Flatwheel " Murphy? He limped
somewhat ; well, if you have ever'
watched a freight-car limping by on a
flat wheel, you will recognize the ap-
propriateness of the nickname.

It is hardly necessary to tell you at
length why " Windy " was named thus. .
I've forgotten his other name — in fact,
I doubt that many knew it outside of
those who had to do with the time-roll.
He was simply " Windy," and that suf-
ficed. If you had ever heard him talk,
you would know that no other name
could fit him as well.

But if Windy did talk too much and

Editor's Note : All the stories published in this True Story Series have been carefully
verified by application to officers or employees of the roads or companies concerned who
are in a position to be acquainted with the facts. Contributors should give us the names of
responsible persons to whom we may apply for such verification, in order that fruitless
inquiries may be avoided. This condition does not imply any lack of confidence in the
veracity of our contributors, but is imposed merely to give greater weight and authenticity
to the stones.

Series began in the October, 1906, Railroad Man'* Magazine. Single Copies, 10 centt.

5 R R 65

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

too loud and too long, we still liked him
in spite of it. True, many a time would
I gladly have punched his nose for him,
when I would be sweetly sleeping in the
morning hours — for I worked " nights "
in the telegraph office at the ore yard —
sleeping on the soft side of the grain-
door that served as a desk in the pump
shanty, which, in turn, served as an
office. The switch-crew would make- a
run for the hill with a string of empties
to take up to the Tilden Mine; and
Windy, whose business it was to close
the switch, would stick his head in at
the door and wake me from my slum-
bers with the yell :

" Hi, kid, will you shut the gate after
us?" And yet I always did get up and
close that switch, in spite of the- ob-
jurgations I sent after the retreating
switch-engine and its crew. By the time
they came down from the hill again, and
I rode back to town with them for
breakfast, we would be the best of
friends.

Now, as I was about to relate to you,
the book of rules had a stringent rule at
that time about drop-switches. I read
the other day that a friend of Commo-
dore Vanderbilt once told him that cer-
tain measures which the commodore
wanted the board of directors of the
New York Central to take were strictly
against the laws of the State of New
York, whereupon the commodore replied
with some surprise : " Well, you don't
suppose you can run a railroad in ac-
cordance with law?"

I am afraid that a few railroad men
take about the same position with regard
to the book of rules. At all events,
Windy did not view the rule about drop-
switches with unfailing respect.

One day, when he was up on the hill
with the switch-engine, he did as he had
often done before. There were some
ore jimmies to be placed at the Rand
stock-pile.

" We'll cut 'em off, and you go down
there with 'em, Windy," said big Red
Anderson, the foreman in charge of the
crew. "Can you hold 'em?"

" Sure, Mike," says Windy, and
climbed on the string of empties. Just
then he saw a Polish laborer, one of the
stock - pile trimmers, come along the
track. Why should he walk back to the

engine after making the switch when
the " dago " could just as well hold
those cars?

" Hi, Polski," he yelled at the trim-
mer, " you go along with these jims and
stop 'em," and climbed down off the
cars, as the engine started them.

" Me go 'long," the trimmer volun-
teered, and started for the moving cars.

But, alas! just then he tripped and
fell ; and before he had picked himself
up and collected his wits, the cars were
too far for him to 'catch them; while
Windy, depending on the foreigner, had
gone back with the engine. Well, there
was about the prettiest pile-up at the
end of that track you ever saw, for it
was a heavy down-grade, and the way
those cars piled over the end - post
would have gladdened your heart to see.

What availed it that Anderson ex-
pressed his opinion of Windy to that
unlucky individual in the choicest terms
at his command, and that Windy, in
turn, poured out the vials of his wrath
on the unfortunate Polack? The dam-
age was done.

" Say, the old man won't do a thing
to you when he hears of it," prophesied
Red to the downcast Windy; "you
might as well ask for your c. g. to-day
as to-morrow." And well he might pre-
dict trouble, for Taylor, the trainmaster,
whom Red euphoniously designated as
the " Old Man," had a reputation of be-
ing as quick-fire as a hair-trigger, i Ex-
cuses didn't, as a rule, go very far with

The very next day he would, no
doubt, be out to see the ore yard, and
then Windy could see his career in that
yard terminated pretty suddenly indeed.
For once, Windy did not have much to
say the rest of the day; that pile of ore-
jimmies weighed on his otherwise joyous
heart, and made him more quiet than
usual.

Nor did it cheer him up very much
that the others painted the Old Man's
temper to him in the blackest colors.
At the supper-table he looked so glum
that pretty Annie O'Neil, who waited
on the table, noticed it and solicitously
inquired :

"What's the matter, Windy? Has
she gone back on you?"

Windy forced a smile, and said :
" Naw, I just ain't feeling quite meself."

"WINDY" DODGES THE BOSS.

But when Shorty Mc-
Cann, and Jimmy Hol-
verson, the engineer, be-
gan to enlighten Annie
as to the day's mishap,
duly embroidered and
enlarged, Windy pushed
back his chair, and,
with a few random re-
marks about " grinning
monkeys," left the table,
followed to the door by
the snickers of the
crowd. And when, that
evening, Mike Flaher-
ty, 'who had just come
in on the way - freight,
casually asked Windy,
"How's that, Windy?
I hear you broke in a Polack to-
day for your understudy," there was
a free fight before Andy, the barkeeper
of the Miners' Paradise, separated them
with the ice-pick. In short, Windy re-
tired in no very charitable nor joyous
frame of mind that evening.

The next morning Windy stopped at
the depot office to hear the news before
going to work, and Harry Connors, the
agent, said to him, winking at Frank
Smith, the operator :

" Say, Windy, Frank there says that
Old Man Taylor will be over on Num-
ber Seven and wants to see you."

" Ah, 'g'wan and leave a fellow
alone," Windy returned, with little of
his usual spirit, and made his escape
from the office. He knew that Connors
was joking him; but he knew, too, that
the trainmaster very probably would be
over on Number Seven, and in that case
would no doubt want to see him — for no
good object, either ; Windy could feel
that in his bones.

If he could only keep out of the Old
Man's way until Number Six went back
— the trainmaster would probably go
back on that train — and in that case
might forget all about the wreck ; at
least, cool down" about it a little. He
walked over to the siding on which the
457 stood, patiently sizzling and occa-
sionally popping off steam, until the
crew should all be there.

" Say, Red," he ventured to the fore-
man, " I don't feel right to-day. Can
you let me off this morning? "

" what's the matter, WINDY ? HAS

SHE GONE BACK ON YOU ? "

Anderson sized him up rather sus-
piciously and answered with a grin :
" Aw, pile on here. You ain't sick any
niore'n I am. • You're just afraid of the
Old Man."

" The dickens I am," wrathfully re-
plied Windy, though in his heart of
hearts he knew that Red was right. He
swung himself on the run-board of the
engine, as the engineer slowly pulled out
for the hill track, determined to brave
it out. For two hours they worked on
the hill ; then Windy, looking down
into the valley far below him, saw Num-
ber Seven pulling up at the depot ; and
he felt almost positive that he could dis-
tinguish the trainmaster's tall form on
the platform of the station, in spite of
the distance.

When he saw that tall form mount
the 323, another of the yard "engines,
and saw that engine start for the hill

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

track, Windy felt that he was getting
cold feet — surely, the Old Man was com-
ing up the "hill to fire him on the spot.
Ordinarily, he would not have cared so
much ; but Annie's smiles had enmeshed
his heart, and the prospect of leaving
Bessemer seemed dismal indeed.

Stealthily he made his way down the
track, and at the end of a string of cars
watched for the 323. As she came along
to go down the hill again, he swung him-
self on and started down with them.

" Hallo, Windy," said Bill Smith, the
engineer, with a twinkle in his eye, " I

Anxiously he cast about for
a way to escape the avenging
doom coming up the hill.
How could ne manage to
keep out of the Old Man's
way? Suddenly an inspira-
tion flashed upon him. The
323 had no work on the hill
just then, but probably was
only coming up to bring up
the trainmaster. He would
watch his chance with them.

Cautiously he slid off the run-board
of the 457, and, watching a moment
when nobody was looking his way, he
jumped behind the shaft - house, near
which the engine was working. No-
body missed him for a moment.

Presently the 323 came puffing along
and stopped near his engine. Sure
enough, they had brought up the train-
master, and he at once began an earnest
conversation with Red. As Windy
watched them around the corner of the
shaft-house, Red seemed to be looking
around for some one. • Windy felt sure
that the look could only be meant for
him.

IT couldn't have de-
prived HIM OF SPEECH
MORE EFFECTUALLY.

the Old

thought I heard
Man wanted you?"

" He didn't say nothing to
me," Windy truthfully re-
plied. " I got to go down
in a hurry."

So, then, the trainmaster
had been asking for him. It was with
gloomy forebodings that Windy rode
down into the valley. True, he had
dodged the Old Man, but -that was only
temporary relief ; wouldn't things be
only worse because of it?

For a minute Windy entertained he-
roic resolves to go up again and beard
the lion in his den, but presently he got
cold feet again. For an hour he hung
around the outside of the station, un-
willing to go in and face the jokes await-
ing him.

Suddenly he saw his own engine com-
ing down the hill track again. Windy
sneaked around a box car at the end of

"WINDY" DODGES THE BOSS.

the house-track and awaited her coming.
He saw Taylor get off and go into the
station. As the engine started again,
he made a rush across the tracks and got
on the rear, unseen. Not until they were
half-way up the hill did Red Anderson
see him.

" Well, I'll be teetotally hornswog-
gled ! " he exclaimed in surprise.
" Where you been, Windy? The Old
Man looked for you all over the hill."

" Let him keep on looking," Windy
replied ungraciously; "I had to go
down."

Red eyed him with an amused grin,
but said no more ; he saw well enough
what Windy was trying to do.

" Well," he said, " you're all right
now; he's gone down again."

Windy went to work again with rather
a doubtful air. He didn't feel a bit safe
yet; but, anyway, the evil hour had been
postponed'. It cheered him up a good
deal when he saw Number Six pull out,
and he rode down to dinner feeling safe
— at least, for the time being.

He even cheered up enough to pass a
few jokes with Annie, and after dinner
he resumed his work, whistling quite
merrily. Suddenly he seemed to feel a
foreboding. He turned his eyes toward
the road that, led into the valley — and
what did he see coming up afoot but
the dreaded form of the Old Man !

So he hadn't gone back on Number
Six, after all, and was now coming up
to devour him ! In a panic, Windy
climbed over the tank to the farther side
of the engine and dropped off without
a moment's reflection ; anything to get
away from the dreaded interview.
Windy sat for two hours at the top of
the shaft-house, much less interested in
the coming and going of the skips bring-
ing up their loads of iron ore than in
the coming and going of the trainmas-
ter. Not until dusk was falling, and he
had seen the trainmaster go down the

hill with the engine, did he come down
from his airy perch and venture down
toward town, also.

He did not go to supper at all ; fot
worse than the trainmaster did he fear
the gibes of the others of the crew, who
all boarded at»the same place as himself.
A lunch at Kelly's would serve him
until after Number Eight had gone,
and the trainmaster with her.

Then Windy went over to the station,
intent upon finding out what the Old
Man might have had to say. Jauntily
he walked into the office and cried out,
as he saw Connors sitting on the counter :

" Well, did the Old Man—"

That was as far as he got, for just
then he saw Taylor himself sitting in the
agent's chair, with his feet on the table,
and evidently just engaged in a conver-
sation with the agent. Both turned and
looked at Windy.

Had a ghost suddenly appeared to
Windy, it couldn't have deprived him
of the power of speech more effectually.
With open mouth he stared at the train-
master, whom he had fondly hoped to
have eluded, and who now so unexpect-
edly turned up.

But hardly had Taylor seen Windy,
when he jumped up and jovially accost-
ed Windy : ' .

" Where the deuce have you kept your-
self ? I've been looking for you all day.
We're going to put another engine on
the hill, and I want you to take charge
of her."

And, sure enough, so it was. Here
the trainmaster had been trying to find
Windy all day to promote him, and
Windy had just as strenuously dodged
the trainmaster all day for fear of get-
ting fired ! As a truthful chronicler of
facts, I do not even venture to imperil
my reputation by telling you how many
treats it cost Windy when the boys
found out the true inwardness of his un-
successful attempt to escape promotion.

Full Speed Ahead.

Still Racing Merrily over the Metals and in Hope That We Shall

Pass All Records Before the End

of the Run.

THE Southern Railway is said to be
working on plans for a passenger-
station to be erected at Lynchburg, Virginia,
at a cost of $50,000.

THE Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe is
asking bids for the construction of an
eight-stall roundhouse at San Angela, Tex-
as. The estimated cost is $36,000.

EXTENSIVE locomotive orders have re-
cently been placed by the Atchison,
Topeka and Santa Fe, including 4 Mallet
compound and 18 Atlantic type engines.
These have been ordered from the Baldwin
Locomotive Works.

THE Franklin Construction Company,
Frisco Building, St. Louis, is in the
market for 6,300 tons of sixty-pound relay-
ing rails, for use in the construction of the
proposed North Missouri Railway between
Jefferson City and Columbia, Missouri.

THE Norfolk and Western has awarded
the contract for its proposed depot
at Petersburg, Virginia, to the Harrison
Construction Company of that place. This
road is also said to be contemplating the
construction of a passenger-station at Suf-
folk, Virginia.

IN addition to the 30 locomotives ordered
some time ago from the American
Locomotive Company, the Chicago and
Northwestern has placed the following ad-

ditional orders with the same builders :
25 Pacific type, 40 consolidation, and 15
switch-engines.

THE recent inquiry of the Chicago and
Northwestern for 724 tons of bridge
material has resulted in the contract being
divided between the Worden-Allen Struc-
tural Company, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
and the Modern Structural Steel Company,
of Waukesha, Wisconsin.

THE Boston and Maine, it is reported,
will start work this summer on its
proposed repair-shops to be built at Somer-
ville, Massachusetts. The first building to
be constructed will be a one-story repair-
shop 170x203 feet. The structure will be of
steel construction with pile foundations.

IT is reported that the Baltimore and
Ohio will erect a roundhouse, machine,
blacksmith, and tin-shops ; a two-story brick
storehouse, oil-house, sand-house, a power
and electric-light plant, carpenter-shop, and
two water-tanks with a capacity of 50,000
gallons, at Benwood, West Virginia. Esti-
mated cost, $300,000.

ENGINEERS are working on plans for
important changes in the location of
the Beaver freight and passenger terminals
of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie on account
of the new bridge being built across the
Ohio River at that point. Instead of moving
the present passenger-station across the

FULL SPEED AHEAD.

main-line tracks, as was originally planned,
it is said that the present station will be
moved to some other point along the main
line, and that an entirely new and larger
station will be built at Beaver, Pennsylvania.

THE American Car and Foundry Com-
pany has received orders from the
Long Island Railroad for the bodies of the
120 motor-cars to be purchased for use in
the tunnel under the East River, New York;
and the same company has received orders
from the Chicago and Northwestern for
1,000 box cars and 500 ore-cars.

ORDERS have been placed by the Atchi-
son, Topeka and Santa Fe for 10
postal and 40 combination cars from the
American Car and Foundry Company, and
from the Pullman Company 7 composite, 1
observation, 4 diners, 10 smokers, 27 coaches,
28 chair-cars, and 3 cars with separate
accommodation for negroes and whites.

THE Pittsburgh-Buffalo Coal Company
has ordered 900 four-ton mine cars.
The order is divided up as follows :
Youngstown Car Company, 100; Standard
Car Manufacturing Company, 500; Con-
nellsville Manufacturing Company, 100;
Ohio Ceramic Company, Cleveland, 100;
Arthur Koppel Company, Pittsburgh, 100.

ORDERS, each for 12,500 tons of steel
rails, have been placed by the North-
ern Pacifis-with the Lackawanna Steel Com-
pany and the Indiana Steel Company. Those
to be supplied by the former are Bessemer,
and those from the Indiana Company are to
be open-hearth rails. These are in addition
to the 15,000 tons recently ordered by the
road from the Illinois Steel Company.

IT is now possible to make a rail journey
between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans
entirely, under the protection of block sig-
nals, and almost entirely under the protec-
tion of automatic electric block signals.
This journey is 3,245 miles. The last big
gap in the electric system was closed recent-
ly by the Northwestern, when it installed sig-
nals between Boone and Logan, Iowa, a dis-

tance of 117 miles. The journey described
begins at the eastern terminus of the Lehigh
Valley and ends at the Oakland, California,
ferry.

THE Pennsylvania Tunnel and Terminal
Company, operating the Pennsylvania
Railroad tunnels under New York City and
the rivers, is installing in its Long Island
City power-house two Westinghouse tur-
bine-alternator sets of 2500 kilowatts ca-
pacity each for lighting the tunnels and
terminals. The dependability required in
this service has demanded that every pre-
caution be taken to insure absolute continu-
ity of operation of the generating and dis-
tributing systems. The alternators will sup-
ply three-phase, 60-cycle current at 440 volts.

PRESIDENT RIPLEY, of the Santa Fe,
is quoted as saying : " We are going
to build a line across southwestern Texas of
several hundred miles, which will give us
the shortest route in the United States from
the Pacific coast to the gulf. A good por-
tion of the proceeds of the bond issue will
be used for this purpose. The country tra-
versed by this line in Texas will open one of
the best agricultural sections in that State.
Dry-farming in the Southwest is still prob-
lematical, but there is a great deal of enthu-
siasm on this subject.- Gradually a new class
of cultivators of the soil will be trained,
and success will no doubt come.

THE railroads at Grand Crossing station,
Chicago, have decided to expend
about $8,000,000 on track elevation at that
point and vicinity. Those interested are the
Illinois Central, Pennsylvania, Lake Shore
and Michigan Southern, and the Nickel
Plate. The plan provides that the Illinois
Central shall be elevated at Seventy-Fifth
Street, and the Lake Shore and Pennsyl-
vania shall pass over it at a higher elevation.
At Seventy-Ninth Street the Nickel Plate will
pass under the Illinois Central. The Illinois
Central is to be elevated from Seventy-Third
to Eighty-Seventh Streets, the Nickel Plate
from Seventy-Sixth to Eighty-Third Streets,
and the Lake Shore and Pennsylvania from
Cottage Grove Avenue to Stony Island Ave-
nue. Work is to begin at once and should
be completed by December 31, 1910.

The Sunny Side of the Track.

If Everything's Rusty and Stiff and She Runs Like a Thrashing

Machine, Just Get Down and Oil Around

with a Little Laughter.

ROUND-TRIP DISTANCE.

A BRIGHT-EYED old man boarded the
train at St. Paul, bound for Seattle.
As the conductor passed through the car the
old man stopped him and asked how far
it was from St. Paul to Seattle.

" Sixteen hundred and twenty miles," the
official answered curtly.

The next time the conductor came along
the old man stopped him again and asked
him how far it was from Seattle to St.
Paul.

" See here, my man," said the conductor
pompously, " it's sixteen hundred and twenty
miles from St. Paul to Seattle, and its six-
teen hundred and twenty miles from Seattle
to St. Paul, do you understand?"

" Maybe so," said the little man modestly.
" I didn't know. You see, it's only seven
days from Christmas to New Year's, but
it's a long time from New Year's to Christ-
mas."— Houston Post.

COMPARATIVE VIRTUE.

ALAS ! " confessed the penitent man, " in
. a moment of weakness I stole a car-
load of brass fittings."

" In a moment of weakness ? " exclaimed
the judge. " Goodness, man ! what would
you have taken if you had yielded in a mo-
ment when you felt strong?" — Boston
Globe.

THE COMPANY'S PROPERTY-

THE holiday traffic was at its height, and
there were the usual piles of passengers'
luggage on the platform of a great London
terminus. In the usual way, the porters
were banging it about, while the owners
mournfully looked on.

Suddenly the station-master appeared,
and, approaching one of the most vigorous

baggage-bashing porters, shouted in stern
tones :

" Here ! What do you mean by throwing
those trunks about like that ? "

The passengers pinched themselves to
make sure that they were not dreaming, but
they returned to earth when the official
added:

" Can't you see you're making big dents in
the concrete platform?" — Answers.

SIREN SPRING.

A STORY is told of a man who was walk-
ing beside a railway line with a friend
who was very hard of hearing.

A train was approaching, and as it round-
ed the curve the whistle gave one of those
ear-destroying shrieks which seem to pierce
high heaven.

A smile broke over the deaf man's face.

" Man," said he, " that's the first robin
I've heard this spring ! " — Human Life.

REASSURING THE DOG.

A RAILROAD eating-house in southern
Georgia, which enjoys the reputation
of being one of the worst places of its kind
in ^the State, has an ancient darky who an-
nounces dinner to the incoming passengers
by ringing a huge bell.

One day the old negro was accompanied
by a sad-eyed, long-eared hound, who at the
first ringing of the bell lifted up his voice
in a most dismal howl.

The old darky stopped and gazed at him
for a moment, and with a " Hush yer
mouth ! " started ringing again.

Again the old hound, with nose in the air,
sent forth a long-drawn howl.

This was too much for the bell-ringer,
and, turning on the hound, he remarked :

" Now, what in de worl' is you makin'
sech a fuss erbout? You don't have ter eat
here lessen yer wants ter." — Harper's.

S^S^y> WrTTHA-TCrt.

HIGGSY'S SPEED-DEVELOPER.

BY JAMES FRANCIS DWYER.

The Conductor Sets His Inventive Genius to
. Work in Order to Take His Girl to the Dance.

^IGER" HANNIGAN put
his red face inside the old
loft room" over the barn
at the Blue Point termi-
nal and howled for Con-
ductor Hogan. Outside
on the track, Hogan's motorman, on a
full car, helped the starter by repeating
his missing mate's name in the intervals
when Hannigan paused to take breath.
The motorman had eleven trips be-
tween him and 9 p.m., and as that hour
had been recorded in his mind as the
time of his arrival at the Railroad Men's
annual ball at Mulrooney's Hall, he was
exceedingly annoyed'. Besides, it was
snowing hard ; his feet were damp, and
he had just discovered that his name was
on the " Red List " on a charge of run-
ning his car over Sherman Avenue on
" the loop."

The men sitting around the stove in
the waiting - room looked up uncon-
cernedly as Hannigan continued to yell
the name of Hogan. They were wait-
ing for their own run-numbers to be
called, and took little interest in the daily
hunt for crews that took the road be-
fore them.

"Any of you fellers see him?" cried
the starter.

"Saw him in the feedery an hour
ago," muttered " Smiler " Ferris. " He
was cornerin' the cruller market."

"Hogan! Hogan! Where are you,
Hogan?" roared Hannigan; and when
he paused to listen, the motorman's sup-
porting cry came in out of the street
and echoed round the room as if seek-
ing shelter from the storm.

Suddenly " Deaf " Monaghan shook
himself and looked round wildly.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

"Any one calling Hogan?" he asked.

"I'm calling him ! " screamed the
starter. "Where is he?"

Monaghan kicked over his stool and
rushed across the room.

" He's up here, experimentin' with
that invention of his," he muttered as
he reached the door of the attic. " He
told me to tell him when his run-number
was called, but I didn't hear it."

Hannigan's facial area was deep pur-
ple. "I'll give him inventions!" he
yelled. " I'll teach him to have me
roarin' his name like a court-crier ! "

Then, as Hogan appeared on the lad-
der, he unloosed new threats. " You're
for suspension to-morrow sure.! " he

cried. " The road is all tied up ! Jump
onto that car ; an' if I don't kill your in-
ventin' bug inside twenty-four hours, my
name isn't Hannigan."

He followed the conductor out into
the storm, and his angry threats chased
the car when "the annoyed " mote " flung
on the power and raced away up the
snow-smothered track.

" Whizzer " Welch leaned over and
poked the stove-fire industriously after
the starter left the .room, and then, ad-
dressing himself to the red coals, he re-
marked slowly: "It'll take more than
Hannigan to root the inventin' bug out
of a man's brain once it gets into it."

No one contradicted the statement,
but " Deaf " Monaghan nodded slight-
ly. Monaghan was touchy on the mat-
ter of his hearing, and he overdid his
attempts to convince people that he
heard by nodding his head each time a
man moved his lips. The big fight be-
tween him and " Patch " Kelly was
brought about through this habit.

" Patch " stood in front of Monaghan
and kept on moving his lips without ma-
king a sound, and Mona'ghan nodded his

"you're for suspen-
sion TO-MORROW,
SURE."

HIGGSY'S SPEED-DEVELOPER.

head eleven times before the grins of the
others convinced him that Kelly was ma-
king a fool of him. It was a costly trick
for " Patch." After Monaghan had fin-
ished expostulating with him, he was un-
able to take his car out of the barn for
three days.

" An inventor is born, just like a
poet," continued Welch ; " an' you might
as well try to stop a frog from hoppin'
as to keep 'em from corralin' the ideas
that come into their thought-patches."

" I had a brother like that," mur-
mured Dan Moran. " He went in for
experimentin' with dynamite, an' he got
nearer heaven than I'll ever get."

" Whizzer " Welch gave the fire an-
other vicious prod and tilted his stool
backward.

" I worked with an understudy to
Thomas Edison once," he began.
" Every morning he was in the line-up
at the super's office, 'cause he wanted
to demonstrate something that he had in-
vented overnight, an' he kept that super
busy side-steppin' the labor-savers. The
super reckoned he wasn't a patent-agent,
but that didn't feeze Higginson. He said
his inventions were all for the good of
the service, an' on that account the boss
had to look 'em over.

" Higgsy had Nick Tesla and a few
of the smaller idea-chasers tied to the
fender of his little car, I tell you. He
fixed up a patent grip that could lift old
ladies and fat gents up on the platforms,
but the boss didn't smile on that. He
reckoned there weren't enough old fe-
males an' tubby guys in the town to war-
rant the expenditure, an' he told Higgsy
to turn his brain to something that was
really wanted. Higgsy admitted the
logic, an' went out to clinch with what
the boss called a long-needed want."

Hannigan put his head in the door and
threw a run-plate at " Deaf " Monaghan
to acquaint him that his turn had come,
and Monaghan walked away regretfully,
as if Welch's story, of which he hadn't
heard a word, interested him mightily.
" Whizzer " glanced at him, winked at
the otbers, and continued his yarn :

" Higgsy came back next day with
enough joy-creases oh his face to fit out
a wedding-party. He had an appyra-
tus like one of those cash-carriers in a
department-store, an' his idea was to fix

one at every seat an' have a wire running
to the tail-end of the car so that each
passenger could send his nickel along
to the junk-snatcher an' leave that per-
son to look after the drunks and ancients
getting on an' off.

" The super spun a cold eye on it, an'
Higgsy came out of the office unravelin'
the joy-furrows at full speed. He was
pretty sick of the super. He let out
round the depot that the boss wouldn't
have enough imagination to see double
if he was bringing home a load of
whisky, an' some one put lemon-peel
embellishments on the insult an' carried
it along to his highness.

" That's how Higgsy got put on the
horse-cars. He said he didn't mind, an'
he reckoned he'd get some experience
of horses, an' he reckoned right. The
horse-line circumnavigated the town, an'
it did little biz. There was only one car
on the road, an' the horses that dragged
it were the biggest lot of wasters from
Baffin Bay to Patagonia.

" They didn't run to schedule, but six-
teen circular trips was considered a
day's work, an' the driver of Higgsy's
car didn't care how long it took him to
do it. He said he took the job because
he had weak lungs an' wanted fresh air,
an' he didn't study Higgsy a little bit
when he gave his ungs three or four
hours extra in the open. He took a look
at Higgsy the first day the conductor
came on; an' he guessed he wasn't too
strong in the lungs either, but the in-
ventor didn't argue the point.

" The horses were the limit. They'd
never take any notice of the go-ahead
bell when they slowed up to take a pas-
senger aboard, 'cause they had no faith
in the judgment of a conductor. They'd
just turn their heads an' watch till the
passenger settled himself comfortably in
his seat, an' then they'd move off at a
walk, so that he could get used to the
motion. Always before tackling an in-
cline they'd stop an' ask each other if all
was ready for the climb ; an' the more
Higgsy protested against the time he
wasted the more the driver let 'em loaf.

" The inventor had a girl living a lit-
tle way from the depot ; an' when '.he
sixteen trips got drawn out over so much
time that he didn't have a minute to see
her between knock - off and bedtime, h :

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

got mad. He started to put his inventin'
bug on the matter of horse speed, an'
he gave the question some healthy con-
sideration.

" He promised to take his girl to a
dance on the fifth day that he was doing
the merry - go - round stunt ; an' as he
promised to be at her place at nine
o'clock he looked around for some trick
that would stop the ' lunger ' from stay-
ing on the road till midnight.

" At ' swing-time,' in the slack part
of the afternoon, they had only finished
ten trips, an' it looked as if Higgsy's girl
would' have to be her own escort, unless
the horses were in a particularly out-of-
the-way mood. The inventor doubted
their ability to change their pace without
cause, so he brought down an electric
battery to the barn ; an' before the driver
harnessed up the mules he put ithe affair
under a seat, and then ran a couple of
wires under the car, and connected them
with the steel bars of the swingletrees.

" Then he just waited.

" The mules started out at their usual
1 Dead- March ' step, and after they
picked up four passengers at the depot
they commenced to walk round the town,
the ' lunger ' drawin' big breaths in at
every inch of the route. His doctor had
ordered him to do the record-breakin'
breathin' act on every opportunity; -an'
the mules seemed to understand that he
couldn't do that while they were gal-
lopin'.

" Half-way down the little hill from
the depot one of 'em stopped to bite a
thistle that was growin' near the track,
an' just then Higgsy turned on the cur-
rent. On account of it being a down-
grade bo'th of the mules were backin'
against the swingletrees. It was their
first introduction to electricity. They
were pretty amazed.

" They looked at each other, as if they
thought it a trick of the ' lunger,' but he
was breathin' big, so they guessed it
wasn't. Higgsy saw their surprised look,
an' he turned it on a little stronger.
They thought they had run against a
nest of hornets or rattlers. The white
mule that was chewin' the thistle dropped
it out of his mouth an' lit out for the
horizon at a gallop, an' the other fellow
joined in.

" The driver got the astonishment-bug

in a bad form. He started out to spread
some peaceful language over them, but
they were leanin' on the . bit in great
style. The brake hadn't been used for
twelve months, an' it wouldn't act; an'
Higgsy Just stood on the tail-end, an'
made calculations on the speed they were
travelin' at. The mules had come to
the conclusion that somebody ridin' with
the ' lunger ' had tried to light a fire on
their flanks, an' they didn't want to give
him another opportunity.

" After a time some of the passengers
wanted to get out, an' Higgsy gave the
driver a bell to stop. The ' lunger ' just
give him a sickly grin, an' nodded to the
mules. Higgsy .gave him three bells;
then he went out on the front platform
to expostulate.

" ' They won't stop,' said the driver.
' They're not boltin', but they've made up
their minds they won't stop.'

" ' I'll have to report ypvi,' said Higgsy.
' Three ladies wish to get off, an' you
won't stop.'

" ' I can't ! ' yelled the ' lunger ' ; an'
while he was arguin' the mules were doin'
the Marathon of their lives.

" Higgsy started to note down the
time an' place, an' then he went inside
to quiet the three old women. The men
had dropped off while he was talkin' with
the driver, but' the lady passengers Avere
makin' affirmations that they'd sue the
company for false imprisonment if the
guy in front didn't get his team in hand.

" The driver just took no notice of the
umbrellas and -hands that waved to him
from the sidewalk. The mules took no
notice; an' every passenger they left be-
hind Higgsy made a note of, an' warned
the driver occasionally how strict the
company wyas about runnin' away from
fares.

" A copper man got on when they were
half-way round, an' the driver got him
to lend a hand on the reins. The cop
was pretty strong, an' he steadied the
mules down, but >the moment he got off
Higgsy turned on the current as they
were going down another hill near the
depot, an' the car didn't stop to report to
the starter on that trip.

" It just tore by the depot like a run-
away trolley, an' when the super saw it
knockin' up the pace he nearly took a
.fit from astonishment. That team of

HIGGSY'S SPEED-DEVELOPER.

cattle had no eye for thistles on that run,
an' they didn't pick up a passenger on
r the route.

" When they reached the depot, on the
next time round, the starter an' the super
rushed the horses as they were trottin'
by, an' Higgsy put in his report against
the ' lunger.' It was Higgsy's innings
just then, an' he thought of all the hours
that had been wasted through that feller
doin' his big breathin' stunt in workin'
hours. He showed how the company
had lost two dollars
an' thirty cents be-
cause the ' 111 n g e r '
wasn't able to stop the
bus, an' the boss swore
he'd pull it off his pay-
check.

" They changed
horses then ; an' an-
other team that had
never met electricity
came out to take the
place of the white mule
an' his mate, who were
still doin' a hard think
tryin' to find out what
had bit them. The new
team started off on the
old two -mile -an -hour
pace.

" Just as they were
going down the hill
one of 'em sights the
thistle that the white
mule had dropped
when the current bit
him. This nag pulled
up to get it, an' Higgsy
gave him a shock that
made him forget all the thistles in the
United States.

. " That team circumnavigated the town
in seventeen minutes, an' that was the
record. They thundered past the depot
at a gait that would make Lou Dillon
look pretty sick, an' Higgsy pretended to
weep when he' saw the super gapin' after
them.

" He had the super on toast that eve-
nin'. Every now and then he'd ring the
bell sarcastic like, an' occasionally he'd
go out an' ask the driver if he wouldn't
pull up for a minute ; an' the ' lunger '
got that mad he promised to punch
Higgsy silly the moment he got the mules

to stop. The super swung aboard at
the depot ; an' when he heard the driver's
tale he took the reins from him an'
started to steer the team himself. He
pulled them up long enough to let a big
German an' his wife get aboard ; an'
then Higgsy gave them another shock,
an' the merry-go-round act started again.
The German was going to a party,
an' when the car rushed by the place he
wanted to stop at he began to make in-
quiries.

"the German's

WIFE GAVE HER HUSBAND A HELPING HAND."

" Higgsy said it was the fault of the
driver. He reckoned that he was quite
willing to pull up if the driver would,
an' the German went out to argue the
point with the boss. The super told him
to mind his own business, an' the German
did. He brought the boss a crack over
the head with his umbrella, an' the
' lunger ' had^ to take the reins again
while the two were settlin' the matter on
the floor of the car. The German's wife
gave her husband a helping hand, an' the
super got a pretty bad mauling before
Higgsy an' a cop could separate them.
Higgsy was havin' the time of his life,
an' when he saw the boss an' the German

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

going off to the police station he nearly
wept.

" The ' lunger ' got' off the car when
they switched it into the barn to arrest
the German an' the super, an' he reck-
oned he had enough of jigger-steerin' to
last him for a week, so the starter took a
hand. He told Higgsy confidentially
that he was the best horseman in his dis-
trict when he was a youngster, an' he
nearly believed he was tellin' the truth
when he saw the way in which the new
team acted.

" Then the inventor upset his pride.
He gave the mokes a little dose of the
fluid just to stop the starter's tongue, an'
they tore around the township at a two-
eleven gait. They hit a hand-cart and
knocked it into little pieces, an' three
mounted policemen and a fire-engine
were chasin' them full speed when they
were doin' the second time round the
bailiwick.

" Higgsy didn't want to go round for
another trip, so he took the wires out an'
wrapped up the battery in a sheet of
newspaper. When they pulled up at
the depot, he stepped off an' made out
his run-card an' a few accident reports
about the breakin' up of the hand-cart
an' a collision with an ice-wagon, an'
then he found he had two full hours to

get into his glad rags an' travel to the
lady's home.

" But those six mules .didn't forget
that electric current for a while. Not
one of 'em would stop to pick up a
thistle or a bit of green grass for months
afterward, an' the ' lunger ' had to give
up the deep-breathin' stunt 'cause they
traveled too fast."

" How did the superintendent get
on?" asked Moran..

" Oh, him," cried " Whizzer " ; " he
got fined ten dollars for assaultin' the
fat German, an' Higgsy celebrated so
strong that he got fired. But he — "

The red face of Hannigan came in
the door with a jerk.

"What's up with you, Welch?" he
screamed angrily. " I've been calling
you for the last ten minutes."

Welch picked up a coat and hurried
out into the night, and the group around
the stove relapsed into silence. Pres-
ently Dan Moran stood up and felt
around for his top coat.

" Holy Moses," he cried, " me coat
is gone ! That lyin' feller whisked it
away while I was thinkin' of the 'lec-
tricity man an' the horse-car; but if I
catch him between this an' Tuckapanna,
I'll give him a bigger shock than the
horses got."

WHEN ARMOUR WAS A SHACK.

GEORGE A. SHELDON, depot master
of the Lake Shore station at Adrian,
Michigan, who died recently, after forty-six
years of continuous service with the Lake
Shore Company, was a veritable encyclo-
pedia of railroad incidents. His narrations
were confined to actualities, thus giving
them a real value, says the Detroit News.
He was for many years a conductor, and
among the best of the incidents lie related
the following:

" One day there stepped aboard my train
a well-dressed, business-appearing man, who,
as he tendered his fare, remarked :

" ' I see you are still on the road, Mr.
Sheldon.'

" ' Yes, I am still at it,' I replied, ' but
I am not certain that I remember you,
though I think I have seen you.'

" ' Yes, you have seen me before,' em-
phasized the passenger, ' and while you
doubtless have forgotten it, I still remember
that you once did me the greatest favor of

my life. Come to my seat when you get
time, and I will tell you about it.'

" When I had finished collecting fares I
dropped into the strangers seat and he con-
tinued : ' Years ago I was four days brake-
man on your train. At .the end of the four
days you took me aside and remarked1 in a
tone of sympathy, " I am sorry to have to
tell you so, but the fact is, young man, you
are too much of a fool to ever make a good
railroader. Take my advice and quit." I
took 3'our advice and went into other busi-
ness, and the result is I have made a fair
fortune. I thank you for your counsel.'

"What is j^our name?" I asked.

" ' Phil. D. Armour, of Chicago,' replied
my ex-brakeman, ' and I shall always re-
member your kindness. I was a stupid rail-
roader and you advised for my good.'

" Until this interview," added Mr. Shel-
don, " I never suspected that Phil. D.
Armour, the packer, was the brakeman I
discharged years before."

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

9Y BANNISTER MERWIN,

Author of "The Girl and the Bill," "The Sword of Tarroloys," "The Corner."

The Portrait of a Queen Plays a Prominent
Part, Which Is Not Immediately Apparent.

CHAPTER I.

The Broken Shilling.

S the dusty buggy came to a
stop and its two occu-
pants made ready to get
to the ground, the young
man at the drafting-table
in the tent looked up
from his work, laid his compasses aside,
and stepped quickly out into the open.

" Hallo, Smith," said the man who
had been driving the lathery horse — a
heavy man, with smooth - shaven cheeks
and a bunch of brown beard on his chin.

" Hallo, Mr. Garth," replied the
young man, shooting a swift glance at
the other man in the buggy.

" I've brought Mr. Briggs out," ex-
plained Garth, letting his ponderous
frame lightly to the ground and turning
to his companion. " This is Mr. Larry
Smith, Mr. Briggs."

" Glad of a glimpse of you at last,
Mr. Briggs,"- said Smith heartily, step-
ping forward and extending his hand as
the stranger followed Garth out of the
buggy. Then, after Briggs had re-
servedly accepted his greeting and
acknowledged the introduction, he shout-
ed : " Hi, there, Madden ! " and a mo-
ment later a man came running from the
corral to get the visitors' horse.

" It requires strong lungs to make
one's self heard in this din," remarked
Briggs in an aside to Garth.

The construction-work had just begun
again, at the close of the hot, silent,
noon hour, and the air sang with the
tap-tap-tap of drills, the creaking of the
straining derricks, the panting of the en-

gine, and the shouts of the foremen. The
long wall of the dam was rising stone
by stone, and the steep slopes of the
mountains, and the black cliffs that rose
from the upper edges of the slopes,
frowned grimly down upon the few-score
human ants, so busy at their Lilliputian
task.

Larry Smith stood aside to let the two
visitors enter the tent. He used the mo-
ment for a quick study of Thomas
Briggs, the Denver capitalist, whom un-
til this moment he had not seen, and he
noted that Briggs was a thin-faced, for-
mal man- of fifty, in appearance a law-
yer rather than a promoter of large en-
terprises.

Larry could imagine him as he must
have been at twenty — a very hatchet of
a youth, chopping his way through diffi-
culties keenly, and attaining at last ~ a
nervous victory over his environment.
With that success, the fountains of his
life appeared to have dried up.

Larry did not like the man. He had
keen precision, it seemed, and a certain
cool, dry way of meeting events; for
the rest, it was impossible to read much
of what lay back of his pale eyes, though
they expressed something which Larry
found disturbing.

Yet those eyes had already, in a brief
glance, taken Larry's measure. They
had unerringly discovered his alertness,
his honesty, his enthusiasm ; and they
had inferred the specific happiness that
kept him smiling.

Garth had bent over the blue-print on
the drafting-table. "What's this?" he
asked.

" Working plan for the elbow in the
pipe at the turn down there by the spur

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

of Craig's Peak. When did you leave
Denver, Mr. Briggs? "

" Yesterday — with Mr. Garth. We
have been going over matters, as no
doubt you know."

" And Briggs is well satisfied," put
in Garth, failing to see the momentary
frown of annoyance on the Denver
man's brow. " He considers that you
are making good progress. Where's
Marly?"

" Out on the line. He should be here
in a few minutes. We both had to work
into the noon hour to-day. : I was about
to go up to the shack for a bite. You
will come with me, of course ? "

Garth looked interrogatively at
Briggs. " Thank you," said Briggs,
"but I had something on the train a
couple of hours ago, and I must catch
the afternoon express on to Salt Lake."

" But Mrs. Smith — " insisted Larry.

" You have actually gone and got
married?" asked Garth with a note""*of
•surprised interest. " Congratulations ! "

" The week after you went to Denver.
We're quite comfortable up there in the
shack."

" I'm afraid I haven't the time," said
Briggs with a faint but polite show-^pf
reluctance. " Mr. Garth told me thaF"
you either just had been or were about
to be married. Perhaps, on my return
trip — "

" We shall certainly hope to have you
at our table then," said Larry. " But
if your time is so short now, you'll want
to have a quick look at things." He
went to the opening of the tent. " Here
comes Marly now," he said.

Behind the broad back of Garth, the
lace of Thomas Briggs became alive
with shrewd interest, and he shifted his
position so that he might have a view
of the approaching figure. A tall, loose-
jointed young fellow it was, ambling
easily up the road.

To a soft gray shirt and khaki riding-
breeches and puttees like Larry's, the
newcomer had added the touch of a
broad-brimmed hat and a red-and-black
silk handkerchief around his neck. He
had a long, good-natured face, not lack-
ing in strength and quizzical humor.
Pie waved his hand at Garth and nod-
ded to Briggs, greeting the Denver man
more elaborately when first introduced.

The four men went together to the
broken white wall of the rising dam.
Only a few weeks of work remained to
be done, and Murdock, the contractor,
pointed out to Briggs, at Larry;s request,
the exact condition of the structure.

Some of the sluices were not com-
pleted, and the top wall had to be raised
several feet. In the big stone power-
house below the dam the turbines and
dynamos were being, installed.

Larry Smith was justly proud of his
work on this project. He had discov-
ered the possibilities of a power-dam in
Bendwater Canon several years before,
while he was doing a job for a mining
company in Larkin City, and soon after-
ward had filed for water power, secur-
ing control for a sixty-foot fall.

At the same time he had got options
on the cheap land above the dam-site, so
as to provide for a storage of eight
miles. The one - thousand - dollar State
tax and the five hundred dollars for
the survey had used up a great part of
his savings, but he had been able to have
borings made, thus assuring himself that
the dam would have a safe foundation
in solid trap.

About that time he had met Jack
Marly, not long out of college, an in-
teresting idler, who, after hearing Lar-
ry's account of the big chance in Bend-
water Canon, offered -to put four hun-
dred thousand dollars into the venture.
The two young men had then gone to
Larkin City and interested Aaron Garth,
a local mining capitalist, who agreed to
supply eight hundred thousand dollars.

For his rights, Larry was allowed a
quarter interest in the company, so that
he and Jack Marly together controlled
exactly half the stock, and Garth the
other half. Strict provision was made
that neither party should acquire more
than fifty per cent.

Now, twelve, hundred thousand dol-
lars in cash was not enough to see the
work through. At least two millions
would be required, although the dam-
site was favorable to easy construction.

Therefore, at Garth's suggestion, a
short-term mortgage on the property had
been given to Thomas Briggs, of Den-
ver, a former associate of Garth's, by
the terms of which Briggs had paid in
eight hundred thousand dollars after his

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

confidential engineer had visited Bend-
water Canon and returned to Denver
with a favorable report.

The original plan had been to sell the
electric power on future contracts while
the dam was in process of construction,
and then, on the strength of these con-
tracts, to issue bonds, from the sale of
which enough money would be realized
to pay off Briggs's mortgage. But there
had followed a period of hard times.

The men in charge of the big stamp-
ing-mills at Larkin City were loathe to
promise to instal the power within any
given period, and several new projects
which would have used the power were
postponed. Larry and Jack stood ready
to interest Eastern capital, but Garth
apparently feared that Eastern men
would ultimately secure control of the
whole plant.

At his suggestion, therefore, he was
authorized to negotiate with Briggs for
a renewal of the mortgage. By Garth's
account, Briggs. had been reluctant, but
finally he had agreed, in writing, on
two conditions. .

His first condition was that the three
men in control of the stock should
make no effort to secure other capital.
Briggs's reason for this demand was the
necessity of keeping up the value of the
property by the strictest kind of finance.

Under the second condition, the dam
was to be completed, the machinery all
installed in the power-house, and the last
foot built of the stave pipe by which
the waste water was to be conveyed over
Klingerman Pass, farther down the
canon, into Mormon Valley — all this by
the date on which the original mortgage
expired. The irrigation of the arid
Mormon Valley was expected to prove
a highly profitable scheme.

Despite Garth's urging, Larry and
Jack had hesitated for 'some time before
accepting these conditions. They had
recognized the predicament in which
they might find themselves if the work
were not finished within the time-limit.

At last, however, after studying the
situation over and over, they had agreed.
That had been <six months ago, and now,
with four weeks to the end of the time-
limit, the outlook was that only three
Aveeks would be required to complete the
work. They were behind the original
6 R R

schedule by nearly a month, but that was
no more than was to have been expected,
considering the many unforeseen delays
that had come to pass.

Therefore, two weeks before Briggs
made his flying visit to the plant, Larry
Smith had gone, back to Michigan to
marry Mary Andros, and he had brought
his bride to the little shack which he
had built on the mountainside.

This history revolved in Jack Marly's
mind as he helped Larry show the plant
to the visitor. He found Briggs a puz-
zling, disturbing personality. The slen-
der capitalist might once have been an
outdoor man, as Garth said, but plainly
he was not of late years accustomed to
moving about over rough footing, for
he stumbled now and then, and the ex-
ertion so told on him that frequently he
pulled out his handkerchief and mopped
his brow. But his eyes traveled swiftly
from point to point, taking in every de-
tail of the work. He missed nothing.

"Where have I seen him before?"
Jack asked himself. It came upon him
with a flash, after a time, and he
straightened his shoulders with a jerk
when he remembered. But he said noth-
ing — only watched Briggs as he had
never watched a man in all his life.

It was an hour of elation for Jack
and Larry. This was their first real
triumph — the opportunity to show
Thomas Briggs how much they had ac-
complished. • And yet they were cool
about it.

As Larry was saying to Briggs : " Of
course, we have not finished yet, after
all. Murdock will have to crowd. In
fact, he may have to put a night shift
on the pipe."

" Sorry I haven't the time to go over
the pipe line to Mormon Valley."

" Well," said Larry, " you've seen
how the pipe begins, here below the
power-house, and I guess you were able
to make out its course along the moun-
tainside while you were driving up."

" You seem to have trenched it in
pretty well."

" Had to ! It must be protected from
falling rocks."

" And this Mormon Valley that is to
be irrigated — you have bought it? "

" For a song ! Without water it is
worthless."

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" A pocket in the mountains, is it
not? "

" Yes; a tract about two miles square,
with an easy grade for a road through
a narrow canon down to the plain. Any
waste Avater from the canals can run
down that canon and rejoin the Bend-
water out in the open country."

"And your water - storage here —
when do you close the dam?"

" As soon as the sluices are finished
— by the last of next week, we think —
we will close them and collect enough
water to start the dynamos on the thir-
tieth."

" Of course," Briggs wrinkled his face
into a smile, but there was a false note
in his voice, " I have never had anything
much to do with power-dams before —
except as an auxiliary in mining. Well,
Garth?"

" It looks like we'd have to start back,
if you're going to make that train," said
Garth, pulling awkwardly at his bush
of beard.

Larry and Jack saw them off — the
self-contained Briggs and their burly
partner. Then they turned and looked
at each other silently. Each felt ques-
tionings in his mind, but neither of them
was ready to express a doubt.

" Come up to lunch," said Larry.
" Mary will be wondering what has hap-
pened to us."

Jack nodded toward the drafting-
table. "How about that?"

"The blue -print? It's all ready.
Jackson will come and get it when they
want it."

They climbed, side by side, up the
slope.

" It's warm," remarked Jack.

" Yes." Larry gestured down the
canon slopes, where the six-foot stave
pipe, built of long, bevel-edged strips of
Oregon pine, wound its seemingly end-
less length.

" Looks like a big worm, doesn't it?"
he said. But his eyes were on a tiny,
distant cloud of dust which rose behind
Garth's buggy, and he would have given
much to know what that formal little
man from Denver was saying to Garth.
And Jack Marly, he knew, was also
wondering about Briggs.

Mary met them at the door of the
shack. "Who was with Mr. Garth?"

she asked. " I had a glimpse of you
down at the dam." She nodded down
toward the line of masonry.

" Briggs," replied Larry.'

She looked at him, further , questions
in her brown eyes, but he smiled quietly
and said nothing about the visitor.
"Are you going to feed us?" he asked.

But she was already setting the dishes
on the table.

" And how has the housewife been all
morning?" inquired 'Marly.

" Awfully busy," she laughed. " Wing
Fah went down to Larkin City three
hours ago to buy certain things which
he considers quite essential to cooking.
He tried to tell me what they were, but
I couldn't understand him."

"You'll get used to his lingo, dear,
when you've been in the West a little
longer," said Larry. " Did he ride
down with one of the teamsters? "

" I think he set out to walk the entire
distance — sixteen miles, isn't it?"

"Eight down, eight back!" Larry
sipped his tea.

" I'd like to know — " he continued
meditatively, then checked himself.

Mary set down the platter she was
carrying and said : " What would you
like to know. Larry?"

"I?" He started. "Something
about the work."

" Oh ! " She knitted her brows in per-
plexity. It was not like Larry to bring
his worries into this noon hour. But he
collected himself, after a glance of warn-
ing and understanding at Marly, and
turned the talk upon light topics.

After luncheon the two men did not
linger. They set off at once down the
slope, leaving Mary somewhat puzzled.
When they were out of sight of the
shack, Larry suddenly halted. Jack im-
mediately seated himself upon a boulder.

"Well?" said Larry.

"Well?" Jack Marly had taken
some trifle from his pocket and was turn-
ing it over and over in his- fingers.

" Something's wrong ! " said Larry.

" Yes ! " Jack drew a long breath.
" Yes. something's wrong."

" I wish we had seen this man Briggs
before," continued Larry. " He's a
master. He showed too much silent in-
terest in this property. The fellow is
no mere money-lender/' .

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

" I'm afraid you're right, Larry."
Marly glanced down at the dam. " Sup-
pose we get at our own suspicions.
What did you notice? "

" First of all, I noticed that he didn't
ask questions enough."

Jack nodded.

" And then — oh, pshaw ! I can't ex-
plain it, Jack. It was the man's man-
ner ; his quiet sureness ; less what he
said than what he didn't say."

" Did you get onto the fact that he
and Bill Murdock were already ac-
quainted?" asked Marly.

"What?",,

" I'm sure of it. Briggs was as in-
different as a piece of stone, but Mur-
dock gave a little jump as we came near
him, and he looked at Briggs and opened
his mouth as though he were going to
speak. I caught a frown on Briggs's
forehead. And Garth seemed uneasy all
the time they were here."

For some time they stared moodily
down the canon, their minds troubled
by vague surmises.

" I hope we haven't been blind fools,"
said Larry at last. " Perhaps it's silly
to be disturbed by one man's personality ;
but when you come to think of it, we're
in a curious position — bound not to try
to draw any new capital to our aid, and
bound to have this job done four weeks
from to-day."

" Why on earth should he have in-
sisted on that time-limit anyway? ".de-
manded Marly.

" Oh, we've been all over that ground,
Jack. As Garth represented the case,
it seemed a normal demand. Briggs
wanted some assurance that we would
push things. He didn't care to promise
to renew the mortgage unless we proved
our good faith — and all that sort of
thing."

"He's plausible!" commented Marly.
" Quite plausible! "

Larry straightened up and squared
his shoulders. " Three weeks will see
the work done," he said; " and we have
four. I don't- believe we need worry
about it."

Marly did not answer.

" After all, Jack, we have nothing to
disturb us except an unaccountable dis-
trust of a man we have seen only once
for a few minutes."

"And the fact that he conceals his
previous acquaintance with our contrac-
tor," drawled Marly. " It would be
mighty easy for Bill Murdock to delay
the game."

" But Murdock is under bonds."

" True ; but — " Marly broke off
short and tossed into the air the object
he had been fingering, catching it as it
fell.

The gleam of it caught Larry's atten-
tion.

"What's that thing, Jack?" he asked.

" Something Briggs dropped when he
was taking out his handkerchief," re-
plied Marly. " It is a broken shilling."

Larry reached for it. The jagged line
of the old fracture formed the inner
edge of the irregular half-moon of silver ;
it had cut in two the head of good Queen
Victoria, leaving the chin and lower
cheek and the neck. There was the date
-'also — 1871.

"What do you make of it?" asked
Larry.

" I don't know. It's a token or a
lucky-piece, I suppose." Marly took the
fragment of coin and slipped it back
into his pocket.

" But Jack " — Larry spoke with sur-
prise— " why didn't you give it back to
him?"

" I don't know that, either," replied
Marly slowly. . " I just kept it, that's
all. It means something — and anything
that means something about Thomas
Briggs is worth studying, isn't it? More
than that, I don't believe his kind of
man needs a lucky-piece, do you?"

CHAPTER II.

The Blue-Print.

TACK MARLY had a habit of keep-
** ing things to himself. He drifted
along amiably upon the surface of life,
and his deeper thoughts and feelings
were seldom in evidence. The explana-
tion of this trait is that he had been
brought up by a stepfather who was a
taciturn, rich, corporation attorney; and
he had learned in boyhood that persis-
tent silence was the best protection from
unpleasant criticism.

That same curious upbringing ac-
counted no doubt for the fact that the

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

lad had loafed through college, learn-
ing little from the curriculum and much
from casual acquaintance with his fel-
low students. His professors had des-
paired of him ; his stepfather had been
driven to sharp anger by their reports ;
but the total result of all this bother
was that he had managed to squeeze
through his examinations at the last.

Shortly afterward, his stepfather made
over to him the half-million dollars
which had been left in trust for him by
his mother. " Spend it as fast as you
like, John," he said; "but when it is
gone, don't come back for more."

" I sha'n't," replied John shortly.
" Good-by, Mr. Harrington" — for he
had never learned to address his step-"
father in any other way.

" Good-by," said the older man, ex-
tending the cold fingers of his right
hand for a farewell hand-shake. Then
his mouth relaxed slightly, and he
seemed about to speak. After all, he
was not altogether without sentiment for"
this likable young fellow. But Jack
had turned on his heel and was leaving
the office, and the stepfather resumed his
reading of the documents on his desk.

Jack promptly went abroad. When
he returned, two years later, he had left
nearly a fifth of his fortune at Monte
Carlo — an error of judgment for which
he felt some disgust, but no contrition.

" Why .should I regret a lesson that I
needed? " he asked himself. He sat r.o
more at green tables, however, but wan-
dered genially from New York to Chi-
cago and back -as far as Detroit, avoid-
ing old friends as much as might be, and
making many new ones. Thus he came
across Larry Smith, liked him, and de-
cided to risk the remainder of his money
in the Bendwater Canon scheme.

He had never told Larry about his
stepfather, nor about Monte Carlo ; nor
did he tell Larry now that when he saw
Thomas Briggs he recognized him.

He had never actually met Briggs be-
fore ; but once, in New York, he had
seen the man leaving his stepfather's
office, and his stepfather had said to him
afterward: "That was a man who
should be in prison."

Nothing more than that; but Jack
had never forgotten his stepfather's
words or the face of the stranger. His

stepfather Avas not a man to make such
a statement without warrant.

And now the " man who should be
in prison " held the mortgage on this
property, and Garth was his former as-
sociate. And unless the work were com-
pleted in four weeks, the mortgage
would unquestionably be foreclosed ; and
that in spite of all Garth's hearty as-
surances that Mr. Briggs was good na-
tured, that Mr. Briggs would never
dream of foreclosing,- that the only rea-
son Mr. Briggs- insisted on a time-limit
was to protect himself against the pos-
sibility of the work not being pushed
ahead so rapidly as it should be.

More than this, Jack found himself
considering various ways by which un-
scrupulous persons might easily delay
the completion of the dam. Larry and
he, in such an event, might shout " Con-
spiracy ! " till they were black in the
face, but the courts of the State would
never decide in favor of the two young
men, as against Garth and Briggs. on
such an elusive charge.

Larry was, above all else, an engineer.
He did not pretend to an elaborate ac-
quaintance with the crooked wa)^s of
finance, and while he knew that the pos-
sibilities of trickery were by no means
small in the Bendwater scheme, he was
too busy with technical problems of con-
struction to give much thought to the
other side of the game.

Though he had suspected Briggs, he
was inclined to dismiss his own sus-
picions. Jack felt, therefore, that the
greater part of the burden of watchful-
ness must fall upon him.

That was, doubtless, as it should be.
since he was of no real help in the con-
structive work. He had^ been perform-
ing such duties as Larry could delegate
to him on the pipe line, but he knew
that a twenty-five-dollar-a-month inspec-
tor could do them just as well. Here
at last was a real job for him.

Later in the afternoon Larry came
upon him in the drafting-tent. " I've
been thinking about Briggs," he began.
" Do you know. Jack, I believe that
manner of his is pure vanity — a desire
to appear sure about matters of which
he knows little. It is the pose of the
capitalist, eh? "

"Perhaps." replied Jack..

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

" Barring cloudbursts or earthquakes,"
continued Larry, " we have nothing to
worry about."

Jack meditated. " You don't really
need me on the work, do you?" he said
at last.

" Well — " Larry hesitated. " Of
course, it's a joy to me to have you with
me." The words, Jack knew, were sin-
cere.

" But there's nothing I am doing that
Ives can't do."

" I shall have to admit it," smiled
Larry; " But, you understand — "

" Then, suppose you figure without
me for a few days, Larry. There may
be nothing in^our suspicions of Briggs,
but I'm going to keep an eye out. Leave
that to me. You have your hands full
with other matters."

" Just as you like, Jack! "

A shadow darkened the entrance to
the tent. The big frame of Bill Mur-
dock stooped and came in. " Got that
blue-print ready for the elbow in the
pipe, Mr. Smith?" he asked. "The
gang needs it."

" Why " — Larry glanced at the table
— " didn't you get it? I left it here, all
ready for you, when I went up to lunch."

" Haven't seen it," said Murdock in-
differently. " Didn't want it till now."

Jack scanned Murdock's face, and it
seemed to him alive with hard cunning.

" I don't see how it could have blown
away." Larry was hunting about. " Are
you sure one of your foremen didn't
get it?"'

" The foremen asked me for it," ex-
plained Murdock.

They made a thorough search, but the
blue-print was not to be found. " I had
marked the alterations on it, too," said
Larry thoughtfully. " That's a day's
job. Well, Murdock, put your men on
the lower section. I'll mark up another
print, and you can have it by to-morrow
noon. Keep busy on the pipe."

"All right!" Murdock departed.

" So they're beginning to lose things,"
mused Jack to himself. But Larry was
saying: "Funny about that print. This
is the only time anything has been lost.
I told Murdock I would leave it on the
table for him. And it's the last im-
portant working-plan, too. The rest of
the pipe is plain, straight work."

Jack did not reply. He went down
to the corral and told Madden to saddle
a pony, and presently, mounted on a
nervous mustang, started up the canon.

He followed the bridle-path that
wound up at one side of the dam-site
and descended to the old road a few hun-
dred feet above. He wished to ride a
long way, for it was his experience that
nothing cleared his brain like horse-
back riding.

He looked down at the top of the
gray, uneven wall of the dam. Scores
of men were busy building the blocks of
stone into place. Others were working
below at the sluices.

Soon the waters of the stream would
be hemmed in behind this masonry fort-
ress, and slowly a lake would form be-
tween the narrow walls of the valley,
extending back half a mile, then a mile,
then two miles, and so on for six or
eight miles, almost to " Sweden," as the
little valley at the distant head of the
canon was known.

How the waters would press against
the dam ! How sullenly they would re-
sent their imprisonment, and search cun-
ningly for every tiny crack by which
they might secretly undermine the struc-
ture and escape to their old freedom.

But the 'dam would hold. " If it ever
goes down," Larry had often said to him,
" I hope that I shall be under it."

The mustang shied. A bit of paper
had floated* into the path.

Jack glanced down. It was a small,
irregular bit of white paper, and it was
charred at the edges. Suddenly a puff
of breeze whirled it over, and on the side
which was now uppermost its color was
a rich, deep blue.

Jack was on the ground in an instant.
As he had guessed, the paper was part
of a blue-print. Several white lines
crossed it, but there was not enough of
the original plan to admit of identifi-
cation.

The explanation seemed simple. Some
one had thrust a blue-print into one of
the forges, and the charred piece had
floated up into the hood and out at the
chimney. But he could not prove that
this was part of the plan 'that had dis-
appeared from the drafting-tent. It
might be a piece of a print that was
spoiled in the making.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

He folded the charred paper and put
it into his memorandum-book, with little
expectation that he would ever find a
use for it. Then, remounting the pony,
he continued at an easy lope on up the
canon, which widened as he proceeded
until it was a comfortable valley, with
a quarter-mile strip of bottom-land. .

Within a few months all this valley
Avould be under water. The few cabins,
separated by intervals of a mile or more,
had already been abandoned by their
owners.

Jack's thoughts returned to the blue-
print. He felt morally certain that Bill
Murdoch knew something about its dis-
appearance. If Thomas Briggs and
Aaron Garth had conspired to hinder the
completion of the work, in order that the
mortgage might be foreclosed profitably
to them, they would probably have to
work through Murdoch.

Of course, Murdock, being under bond
to finish the work on time, would so
arrange as to make Larry apparently re-
sponsible for the delays. A multiplica-
tion of such incidents as the disappear-
ance of the blue-print might easily set
the work behind a full week.

Superficially, he had only the barest
suspicion that Briggs and Garth were
planning to freeze him and Larry out.
Yet he knew that such things were often
done, and done so carefully that it was
almost impossible to prove the fact.

Briggs's character and his manner had
made Jack certain that something was
wrong ; and the prize at stake would be
very much worth while to Briggs and
Garth, for the property might easily be
worth five or six millions after a few
years.

Larry and Jack had, indeed, considered
the possibility of a freeze-out from the
■time when they first got Garth to go in
with them. But they had known that in
this regard chances had to be taken.

Until this day it had not occurred to
either of them that any one would actu-
ally tamper with the work itself. " And
Larrv doesn't believe it now," muttered
Jack.

The valley was now widening out into
an amphitheater, several square miles in
extent. This was " Sweden," comprising
a dozen well-irrigated farms, occupied by
Norwegians, who had immigrated thither

from Minnesota several years before. To
the people of Larkin City and the vicin-
ity all Scandinavians were " Swedes." a
belief which accounted for the misnam-
ing of this settlement.

Jack had not for many months ridden
so far. Formerly the people of " Swe-
den " had used Bendwater Canon as
their principal road to Larkin City, six-
teen miles away, but since the building
of the dam had begun they had been
obliged to use a longer road through an-
other canon.

One of Larry's most difficult promises
had been that, as soon as the reservoir
was full, he would have a new road dug
out of the side of the mountains in the
upper part of Bendwater Canon, to take
the place of the section of road which
would be covered by the water.

The stream, which left " Sweden " a
considerable body of water, was there
formed by several distinct branches —
rushing brooks which sparkled through
green fields of grain and alfalfa. There
was also a network of small irrigation
ditches, dug by the thrifty Norwegians.
It was a garden spot, this " Sweden," set
like a jewel among the mountains.

Jack reined in, and sat looking over
the green prospect. The only taint in
the fine clear air was the smoke rising
from the chimneys of the scattered farm-
houses, which squatted here and there
like gray excrescences amid the brilliant
fields.

" Mormon Valley will be just such
another paradise when we get the water
in," thought Jack.

He rode forward for, perhaps, a quar-
ter of a mile. It was in his mind to get
a glimpse of some of the people of
" Sweden." Presently the road turned,
and he came to a bridge crossing a little
stream.

The nearest house was still a third of
a mile beyond. He stopped at the bridge
and, throwing the reins over the pony's
head, climbed down to get a drink.

But, as he glanced up-stream, through
the green field, he saw something that
made him exclaim. Not more than a
hundred feet away, lying among the
rocks at the water's edge, was the body
of a woman. The high alfalfa had shut
her off from his view as he approached
the bridge.

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

She was motionless, and her white
face was turned up to the sky. Without
pausing to consider, Jack hurried toward
her.

CHAPTER III.

Thekla.

VITHEN Jack came close to the body
"* he saw that it was that of a girl,
dressed in a flannel blouse and a short
skirt of some rough gray material. Her
face was very lovely, 'Straight-featured,
and crowned with a glory of fine-spun
yellow hair, but the eyes were closed.

At a glance she seemed to him like a
sleeping princess, but her breast did not
perceptibly rise and fall with the breaith
of life. Dead or alive, she was not
sleeping, and, indeed, he dared not hope
that she lived.

As he knelt beside her his foot struck
something which proved to be a trout-
rod; not a clumsy, cheap pole, but a
delicate whip of split bamboo. A creel,
which was still caught around her shoul-
der by its thin strap, lay on the ground
beside her. The cover had fallen open,
and a ten-inch mountain-trout, still ra-
diantly gleaming with moisture, lay
within.

He laid his hand on the girl's left side.
At his touch she suddenly stirred, like
one in a dream, and his heart bounded
as he realized that she was not dead.

Dipping his hand in the stream, he
sprinkled her face. She sighed deeply.
The closed eyelids, which he was watch-
ing so intently, fluttered, wavered, slow-
ly opened, and two deep blue eyes stared
for a moment unseeingly into his. Then
the lids fell again.

He chafed the limp hands — fine hands
they were, and seemingly unroughened by
toil. Presently she gave a little moan
and looked at him again. " What hap-
pened?" she asked, in a dazed whisper.

" I don't know," said Jack calmly.
" I found you here. Better not try to
talk yet."

She lay silent for some time; then she
said : " I remember now. I was fishing."
She groped for the creel. " My foot
slipped, and my head struck when I fell."

She tried to struggle to a sitting pos-
ture, and he put his arm about her

shoulders and helped her. " Ah ! " she
exclaimed, with a wry little smile. " My
head aches, and I am dizzy."

" Then don't try to sit up."

" Oh, yes," she said reassuringly. " I
am hardy. The dizziness will soon pass
away."

"If you will let me help you to this
boulder, you will have something to lean
against."

Without permitting her to rise, he
drew her gently across the two or three
feet of ground, and she leaned back
against the boulder. Then she probed
her hair with her fingers.

" This was the place," she said, winc-
ing at the touch of her own fingers.

" Let me see." Jack carefully parted
the coils of yellow hair, discovering a
bump of considerable proportions. She
submitted quietly to the examination, pro-
longed by the fact that the fascination
which the hair had for him was con-
stantly distracting his attention from the
injury. In the network of those golden
strands his thoughts were much entan-
gled, but soon he seated himself where
he could look upon the greater marvel of
her face.

" There is no fracture," she said.

"How can you be sure, without an
examination?" he inquired anxiously.

She laughed in an amusement which
he did not comprehend. " I made the
examination with my own fingers," she
said.

Yet she had not objected when he had
followed her examination with his own.
He did not press the matter.

" I infer that you are feeling better,"
he remarked.

" Much. Very soon I shall get up
and go on with my fishing." She reached
for her rod, and pliantly swished it
through the air to make certain that it
had not been hurt. It bent nearly double
at the motion of her lithe wrist.

" Do you know," said Jack, leaning
on his elbow and gazing at her with un-
hidden admiration, " if there had only
been a bit of prairie-fire hereabouts when
I discovered you I should have taken you
to be Brunhild/'

She raised her straight eyebrows.
"Brunhild a fishing?" she inquired,
her mouth twitching into a faint smile.

"Why not? Even a valkyr must eat."

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" And discovered by a cowboy Sieg-
fried? "

He colored. " Oh, these things," he
said confusedly, indicating his hart; and
knotted handkerchief. " I suppose they
do have a tenderfootish look."

She smiled.

" But I enjoy 'em," he added. " And
my name, I'm sorry to say, is not Sieg-
fried. It's Jack Marly."

Through the fringes of her long eye-
lashes she searched his face. " And my
name," she said at last, " is Thekla."

" That might be a valkyr's name," said
Jack dreamily.

" Thekla Wist," she added, with 'pretty
decision.

Jack roused himself from his reverie.
" Then you must be Peter Wist's daugh-
ter," he ventured. She nodded..

Jack knew of Peter Wist, the head
man of this Norwegian settlement, the
judge, mayor, almost king, by informal
recognition of his compatriots. For the
Norwegians of " Sweden " were a law
unto themselves. They did not carry
their disputes to the courts at Larkin
City ; and as they paid their State taxes
without demur, and were as orderly as
any superior government could wish, they
were not interfered with.

Larry, however, had had trouble with
Peter Wist. The old Norwegian stub-
bornly refused to approve of the Bend-
water dam, since he would not be con-
vinced that it promised increased values
on the property at " Sweden."

He was suspicious. Formal written
promises barely assured him that the
road through Bendwater Canon would
be rebuilt after the reservoir was full,
and he resented even the temporary ne-
cessity of using -the longer, rougher road
to Larkin City, through Willow Canon.

" Well," said Jack at last, "if you
are Peter Wist's daughter, I'm afraid
you will think of me as an enemy."

" How could I," she asked simply,
" after you have been a Good Samaritan
to me? "

" But I am one of the men down there
at the dam."

" I know." She smiled again gravely.
" There are worse things than the dam,
but the people up here "are slow to see
the value of what is new. They dread
the uncertainty of change."

A trout leaped in a pool ten feet away
from them. She raised her left hand to
urge his silence, then, taking up the rod,
made a snap-cast. The fly soared deli-
cately to the water, and, under, the girl's
deft manipulation, seemed to be strug-
gling to wing its way upward again.
But the trout did not strike, and she
drew in the line. *-

" My fly-book," she whispered. " It
must have slipped from my pocket."

Jack peered about until he found it,
close to the serried edge of the alfalfa.
She opened it, and taking out a " Par-
machenee Belle," looped it at the end of
the leader, removing the " Professor,"
which she had been using.

" Isn't the ' Belle ' rather bright for
this country?" asked Jack.

" The larger trout seem to take it,"
she answered. And, indeed, the fleck
of red and white had not struck the
water before the misled fish leaped and
caught it.

"A beauty!" exclaimed Jack.

The color had returned to the girl's
cheeks. Gently, coaxingly, but firmly,
she brought the trout toward the bank.
Jack, meantime, hunted about until he
found the landing-net.

But the fish was not so easily to be
mastered. Twice he fought his way back
to the depths of the pool — now rushing,
now sulking near the bottom, and it was
fully ten minutes before Jack got the
net under it and scooped it up to the
bank, where it lay flopping in the meshes.

"Kill it, please," she said; and Jack,
with his pocket-knife, stabbed deeply
into the back of the head.

"It is at least twenty inches," he said,
estimating it with his eye. " Better carry
it in the net." :_

She nodded, and began to take her
rod apart.

" Do you feel able to walk? " he asked.

" Quite. My head aches, of course.
That is to be expected; but it will wear
away. Now — well. I will take your arm
as far as the road.'

He helped her to her feet. She
seemed a little shaky, but resolute. They
walked slowly to the bridge. Jack's
mustang was grazing near by. He went
and caught it, and led it back to her.
" You will ride," he said.
She thanked him. " But the fish ! "

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

she exclaimed. " That is supper; and I
have only one other."

So he gave her the bridle, and went
back to get the fish. When he returned
she was seated on the pony, and he
walked silently beside the animal, which
she held down to a slow pace.

"Aren't you going to say anything?"
she asked.

He looked up at her, and found her
smile pleasantly quizzical. " I am glad
I came to you when I did, valkyr," he
remarked.

She did not wound him by pointing
out that if he had not come, she would
undoubtedly have recovered conscious^
ness and made her way home alone. % In-
stead, she said simply :

" So am I. You have been very kind."
Then, she, too, relapsed strangely into
silence.

The house which they approached was
a homely, compact structure, with plen-
tiful evidence of thrift and industry in
the neatness of the door-yard and the
absence of rust on the farm machinery
under the sheds. She halted the pony
and slipped to the ground.

" This is my home," she said. " Now,
if you will just lay the fish there; and,
thank you again for being a cowboy
Siegfried/' Perhaps it was the realiza-
tion of what the allusion might mean to
him that made her blush.

" If," began Jack, twirling his hat in
his hand, " if I were to ride this way to-
morrow, do you think that you would be
fishing that same stream? "

"It is possible," she smiled; "but I
never know what I may be busy about
to-morro'w. Good-by."

He waited until she had disappeared
into the house, then slowly mounted and
rode at a walk down to the canon.
Again and again his mind reviewed the
incidents of the hour, while his imagina-
tion interrupted his thoughts with eager
questionings and surmises.

Such a vision in such a place ! A
very Brunhild, with a womanyq tender-
ness more than the valkyr' s.

And then he exclaimed aloud so sud-
denly that the pony, misunderstanding,
broke into a lope. This girl, Thekla
Wist, daughter of Peter Wist, the Nor-
wegian farmer, had spoken with an Eng-
lish as pure as his own.

She had been fishing the stream with
tackle that must have been bought in an
Eastern shop, and she had handled the
irod like an experienced fly-fisherman.
She had capped his allusions to myth-
ology— not so surprising, perhaps, since
the mythology was Norse ; but she had
talked to him with a social ease which
surely could not have been acquired in
the homes of immigrant farmers.

How could all this be, inasmuch as she
was Thekla Wist? Vainly he questioned
himself for a solution of the mystery.
He could not but believe that she was
what she had claimed to be; and his only
conclusion was that he would ride again
to " Sweden " on the following day in
the hope of seeing her.

The upper canon narrowed toward the
dam-site, and he left the road for the
bridle-path that led above the dam. Work
had ceased for the day. Already the
sun had sunk below the mountains. The
men would be at supper now, and Larry
and Mrs. Larry would be looking for
him at the shack.

He wondered how things had gone with
Larry during the afternoon ; whether he
had made the alterations on a second copy
of the blue-print. Thomas Briggs must
be well on his way to Salt Lake by this
time ; and Garth, what would Garth be
doing ?

Madden was not in the corral, so Jack
himself unsaddled the pony. Then he
walked back to the beginning of the path
that led up to the shack, passing on the
way the long tent in which the workmen
were at supper.

Fragments of their rough talk floated
out to him, and there was a steady clatter
of knives on tin plates. A little farther
along he noticed a solitary figure seated
on a log near the power-house, and look-
ing toward the dam. It was Bill Mur-
dock. No other man in the camp had
such broad, stooping shoulders.

Jack hesitated. He would give much
to know Murdock's thoughts." He stepped
quietly forward, and when he was near
the log he said suddenly:

"Hallo, Bill!"

Murdock leaped to his feet with an
oath ; then, recognizing Jack, slowly re-
sumed his seat. " You gave me a start,"
he said.
, "Hid I?" Jack inquired cheerfully,

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

seating himself. " I didn't know your
thoughts were so far away."

Murdock made no answer. Whatever
the problem in his brain, he was not dis-
posed to talk about it. His dull blue eyes
were again closely fixed on the wall of
the dam.

Slowly Jack took his memorandum-
book from his pocket, and slipped out
the piece of charred blue-print. He
fixed his eyes on it, and waited for Mur-
dock to notice it, but the contractor still
stared moodily away.

At last Jack began to make the paper
crackle in his fingers. He was conscious
that Murdock was turning his head; and
then, suddenly, the contractor shot out
his right hand, as though to seize the
incriminating piece of the print.

But before he touched it he realized
how greatly such an action might betray
him, and drew his hand back, not know-
ing that he had already verified Jack's
suspicions. When Jack glanced at him
the contractor was again looking in the
direction of the dam, but his eyes were
partly shut, in an expression of cunning.

" Well," remarked Jack, " I guess I'll
go get my supper." He arose, slipped
the bit of paper into his pocket, stretched
himself, and began his climb up to the
shack.

He was now convinced that Bill Mur-
dock had destroyed the blue-print ; and
that being so, its destruction could have
but one purpose, the delaying of the
work. Moreover, the fact, obvious to his
eyes, that Thomas Briggs had former
acquaintance with Murdock, and that
they had tried to conceal this acquaint-
ance was evidence of some collusion be-
tween the contractor and the capitalist.
Jack felt that the situation was rapidly
rounding out.

He wondered, however, whether he had
not made a mistake in letting him see the
bit of blue paper. The contractor might
realize, now, that Jack was suspicious,
and he would be on his guard.

It would have been better to turn the
matter aside nonchalantly ; to act as
though he had just picked the paper up,
and was idly curious about it ; and then
to toss it away, as if it were of no con-
sequence, instead of returning it to his
pocket with such marked care.

However, the mistake could not be cor-

rected. If Murdock was now on guard,
he himself would simply have to be more
watchful of Murdock.

More and more, Jack was determined
•to say as little as possible to Larry about
the evidence of a conspiracy, for- Larry
had his hands full with the details of
the work itself. Worry would hinder
him, and it was fortunate, perhaps, that
he had dismissed the suspicions which
sprang up in him at the meeting with
Thomas Briggs. All of Larry's energy
must be devoted to the task of seeing to
it that the plant was completed on time.

It would be difficult, Jack knew, to
defeat single-handed the machinations of
Briggs and Garth and Murdock. He
was not experienced in the tricks that
they were likely to employ ; but the
difficulties of his undertaking he found
stimulating rather than discouraging.

Dimly he realized that he had needed
a spur for his abilities — some stimulus of
combat to arouse him from his lazy in-
difference, and he was genuinely elated
by the prospect of matching his energies
against the schemes of the others.

His own money had almost all been
built into this dam and power-house and
pipe-line. If it were lost to him, he
would soon be as poor as the humblest
Irish workman on the job — poorer, in
fact, since he had no trade.
^ft. But the money, he discovered, was a
small part of his concern. Pride was
miore — pride in himself, now for the
first time in his life devoted to a serious,
constructive piece of work ; and pride in
Larry, whose engineering talent had
made this plant possible. For, like him-
self, Larry had staked everything on
success.

Now that he was convinced of the
general intention of Briggs and his allies,
he was prepared to consider more defi-
nitely the methods they were likely to
employ to carry out that purpose. An
accumulation of such delays as the one
caused by the destruction of the blue-
print ? Yes ; but such delays could not
now be made very frequent, since he
was known by Murdock to be watchful.

Moreover, there was always the chance
that Larry would find ingenious ways
of getting things done, circumventing
Murdock's efforts. Delays of that kind
could be but partially effective, and they

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

would not be the main reliance of Thomas
Briggs.

A strike? If Murdock's men were to
walk out just before the work was com-
pleted, the result would be fatal to Jack
and Larry's interests. There was no
strike clause in the contract with Mur-
dock, he remembered, for a strike in
such a place as this seemed so improb-
able that Murdock apparently had been
willing to waive all protection for him-
self in that regard.

Then, since there was no strike clause
in the contract, Murdock's failure to
complete the work on account of a strike
would leave him liable to the amount of
his bond. It was a heavy bond, too ;
but it flashed upon Jack that Thomas
Briggs could well afford to pay it, if he
could get control of the property by fore-
closure.

This thought put an idea, in his head.
After supper, while Mrs. Larry was
attempting to make the imperturbable
Wing Fah understand her wishes for
the following day, Larry and he sat.
puffing at their pipes, on the bench in
front of the shack.

The mountains loomed blackly all
around them, and in the gulf below
faint, luminous patches indicated the
location of the tents of the workmen.
Up to the shack came occasional snatches
of song, above the heavy diapason of the
Bendwater, tumbling over its boulders.

" Larry," said Jack, scratching a
match to relight his pipe, " the masonry
work on the dam is the remaining part
of the work that requires the least skilled
labor, isn't it?"

" Yes," said Jack.

And the completion of the sluices and
the pipe-line takes skill?"

" Yes ; and the installation of the ma-
chinery ! "

" Well — " Jack hesitated. " I want

(To be c

to make a suggestion. You know our
suspicions about Briggs. Of course,
there may be nothing in it; but just to
be on Ihe safe side, to minimize the dif-
ficulties that would come if Bill Mur-
dock's men should go on strike toward
the last — "

"Strike?"

"Always possible, isn't it?"

" Hardly ; not up here ! "

" But it might happen. You never
can tell fur sure what notion will get
into the heads of a gang of men. Just
to be safe, why don't you make Mur-
dock put on the pipe-line all the men
now at the dam? Then, if anything
should happen, the pipe would be done,
and only the easy masonry work left."

Larry seemed dubious.

" It won't take long to finish the pipe,
will it?" inquired Jack.

" About ten days, if we put all the
men on it," replied Larry after a swift
mental estimate.

" Then, do it! "

Larry argued that it was better to
carry all parts of the work along to-
gether, sending for extra men toward
the last, if it should be- necessary. But
Jack was pleasantly persistent, and at
last Larry said :

" Well, I'll try it for a couple of days
and see how we get along. Meantime the
machinery men, who have nothing to do
with Murdock, as you know, will go on
with their work. Still, I shall hate not
to see the dam rise a little farther every
day, Jack."

"So shall I," said Jack; "but I be-
lieve the precaution is wise."

Could they have forseen events, they
would have realized that wise precau-
tion, strength of will, and strength of
arm would scarce avail them against the
wily subtlety of their secret foe and the
crude brutality of his tools.
on t i nued . )

WHAT'S THE ANSWER?

By ike
Ligkf of
(He Lantern

Questions
Answered
for
Railroad Men

ASK US!

at least, the maintenance of these parts de-
volves upon the operator. The pay, so far
as we can learn, is about the same on land
as railroad and commercial operators re-
ceive, while at sea it is from $40 to $50 per
month and found. We have previously ex-
plained the slight variation in the code be-
tween that of Morse, and have never heard
that a Morse operator had any great diffi-
culty in qualifying for the wireless service.

THE INTERSTATE COMMERCE
COMMISSION passed two bills— one
that no private car company's cars
.could be run, and the other that railroads
could not deal in coal. When do these take
effect?

(2) Has the Delaware, Lackawanna and
Western Railroad started to build through
to Chicago? If not, when is it going to?

(3) Is there any law regulating the length
of time an engineer can work? If so, what
is it?

(4) What is the price of a D., L. and W.
R. R. Young Men's Christian Association
ticket? Can persons who are not railroaders
join the Railroad Y. M. C. A.?

H. A. O., Orange, N. J.

(1) Section 1, of the Act to Regulate Com-
merce, next to the last paragraph reads as
follows : " From and after May I, 1908, it
shall be unlawful for any railroad company
to transport from any State, Territory, or the

To insure reply, queries addressed to this Department should bear the full name and address of the
writer. See note in " On the Editorial Carpet."

HOW is the coil of an electric magnet
affected by electricity when it is
wrapped with insulated wire and has
no other electrical connections?

(2) What is the electro motive force used
in wireless telegraphy, and how many ohms
resistance are the magnets wound?

L. E., Notch, Mo.

(1) The core is magnetized if the current
is flowing through the windings about the
core.

(2) The EMF in wireless telegraphy can
be anything from 4 to 2200 volts, depending
upon the energy required, i.e., the length of
spark, and this in turn is determined by the
distance from which you wish to transmit
the message. With the De Forest system,
one generally uses 2200 AC, and steps it
down' to no. For small laboratory use, an
induction coil can be made that will, send
messages 400 or 500 feet, operating off a
few cells of batteries.

OM. F., Larwill, Indiana.— The United
• Wireless Telegraph Company, 42
Broadway, New York, New York, should
be in the best position to advise in regard to
the opportunities for operators in that serv-
ice. This company operates seventy-two
land stations, and has equipped one hundred
and seventy-one vessels of fifty-one steam-
ship lines. Familiarity with the instruments
would be an essential requirement, as at sea,

BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN.

District of Columbia, to any other State,
Territory, or the District of Columbia, or to
any foreign country, any article or com-
modity, other than timber and the manufac-
tured products thereof, manufactured, mined,
or produced by it, or under its authority,
or which it may own in whole, or in part, or
in which it may have any interest direct or
indirect except such articles or commodities
as -may be necessary and intended for its
use in the conduct of its" business as a com-
mon carrier."

The Supreme Court has recently rendered
an opinion sustaining the constitutionality
of this law. In regard to the matter of
private cars the Act to regulate commerce
defines the powers of the Interstate Com-
merce Commission. In the exercise of such
powers the law provides that if the owner
of property transported under this act, di-
rectly or indirectly, renders any service con-
nected with such transportation, or fur-
nishes any instrumentality used therein, the
charge and allowance therefor shall be no
more than h just and reasonable, etc.
Therefore, the payment or allowance of
more than a reasonable amount for the use
of private cars would be in the nature of
an advantage and result in unlawful dis-
crimination.

(2) At the present time the Delaware,
Lackawanna and Western Railroad is not
contemplating an extension of line from
Buffalo to Chicago.

(3) From the Act to promote the safety
of employees and travelers on railroads by
limiting the hours of service of employees
thereon, we quote the following:

" That it shall be unlawful for any com-
mon carrier, its officers or agents, subject
to this act to require or permit any employee
subject to this act to be or remain on duty
for a longer period than sixteen consecu-
tive hours, and whenever any such em-
ployee of such common carrier shall have
been continuously on duty for sixteen hours
he shall be relieved and not required or per-
mitted again to go on duty until he has
had at least ten consecutive hours off duty ;
and no such employee who has been on duty
sixteen hours in the aggregate in any twen-
ty-four-hour period shall be required or
permitted to continue or again go on duty
without having had at least eight consecu-
tive hours off duty."

This section covers the service period of
engineers on which you desire information.

(4) You had better take this matter up
with Mr. George A. Cullen, general passen-
ger agent of the Delaware, Lackawanna and
Western, at 90 West Street, New York,
New York, as we are in some doubt re-
garding what you mean. We opine that

persons who are not railroaders may secure
membership in that branch of the Y. M. C.
A. to which you refer.

J A. G., South Weymouth, Massachusetts ;
• M. B., Baltimore, Maryland; S. J. C,
Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, and W. M. C.
Fostoria, Ohio. — See reply to question No.
3, of " H. A. O."

JM., Dora, Arkansas. — The best thing we
• can advise you to do with the wire
where you desire connection, is let it se-
verely alone. The object, or one of the ob-
jects of a quaded wire, as you know, is to
restrict the number of instruments. It is a
very delicate arrangement at the best, and
by cutting in with a single instrument you
disturb the balance of the quaded wire, and
certainly interfere with its service.

GE. L, Reading, Pennsylvania. — -You
• might address Fairbanks, Morse &
Co., Chicago, Illinois, who will no doubt be
able and pleased to put you on the track of
what you want.

WR. Portsmouth, Virginia. — We do not
• believe that the situation for opera-
tors in the West is any better, in . the
long run, than the East. Similar inquiries
have been referred by us to many operators
in the West, and this at least is the con-
sensus of opinion.

LEASE give the names of the oldest
railroads in the United States.

J. L. O., Macon, Ga.

Common report has it that the first rail-
way line in the United States was a short
stretch of track on Beacon Street, Boston,
Massachusetts, in 1807. The first line of
which there is undisputable record was one
three-quarters of a mile long, constructed
by Thomas Dieper, in Delaware County,
Pennsylvania, in 1809.

This was followed by several tram-roads
of similar character, the most important of
which was the one from Quincy to Newport,
Massachusetts, three miles long, built in
1827. The remains of this road can still be
seen on the West Quincy branch of the
New York, New Haven and Hartford Rail-
road, but a short distance outside of the city
of Boston. The first railroad in the United
States designed and built to be operated
by steam locomotives, was the South Caro-
lina, in 1830.

Between the years 1828 and 1833, the
present elaborate system of railroad com-

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

munication in the United States may be
said to have been started by the commence-
ment of the Baltimore and Ohio, the Balti-
more and Susquehanna, the Camden and
Amboy, the Newcastle and Frenchtown, the
Hudson and Mohawk, the Charleston and
Augusta, the Boston and Providence, the
Boston and Lowell, and others.

If the Baltimore and Ohio be excepted
from the above list, it will be seen that
there was little foresight of future great
connecting systems. The Baltimore and
Ohio, and at a later date, the Pennsylvania
roads, connected the Ohio River with Bal-
timore and Philadelphia, while the Mobile
and Ohio connected that river with the
Gulf ; hence, these may be called the first
through lines.

Some of the above names of old roads
can scarcely be recognized now, but the
Baltimore and Susquehanna and Camden
and Amboy are now in the Pennsylvania
group; the Hudson and Mohawk is in the
New York Central lines ; the Boston and
Providence has been absorbed by the New
York, New Haven and Hartford, and the
Boston and Maine system has the Boston
and Lowell.

SV. M., Corry, Pennsylvania. — You ren-
• der your injector problem fairly easy
for your own solution in the statement that
other injectors will work all right on the
same line. This being the case the trouble
must logically be in the instrument itself.

The trouble, without this information,
would appear to be at first glance insuffi-
cient lift of the check- valve, but this must
be dismissed in view that other injectors
which have been tried were not affected.
Have you carefully examined the steam
ram-seat for cuts or poor seat, and are you
sure that the injector is receiving full boiler
pressure at steam-valve?

We are very much interested in all in-
jector troubles, but must admit unfamil-
iarity with the make referred to by you.
Otherwise, or had it been one of the types
found on locomotives, we could be more
definite. Your letter has been referred to
one of the large manufacturers of injectors,
and we will further advise you.

RC. B., Pomona, California. — The
• proper person to approach on the
subject of locks for freight-car doors, or,
in fact, any matter relating to car con-
struction, would be the master car-builder
of the railroad. His name can be secured
from the station or ticket agent at any point
on the road which you may have under con-

sideration. Had you mentioned the name of
any particular road we could of course have
given you the information here.

RF. B. C, Gatun, Republic of Panama.
• — We have no knowledge of the firm
which you mention, and would advise that
you refer the inquiry to the Railroad Age
Gazette, New York or Chicago, which is
in close touch with all building operations.

RS. D., Hoboken, New Jersey. — Mr. L
• H. Raymond is master mechanic at
Highbridge, New York, on the New York
Central lines, and is in a position to con-
sider your application. Less than seventeen
years is too young for a night position in
any roundhouse, in our opinion.

A CLAIMS that August Kauffman was
chief engineer of the Pittsburgh Junc-
tion Railway, comprising one of the
most difficult pieces of engineering in the
United States, and with a mile-long tunnel
under the city of Pittsburgh. " B " says that
Kauffman did not build it. Who was the
expert engineer who did build this work as
chief engineer, and where can he be ad-
dressed? S. R., Philadelphia, Pa.

The chief engineer of the Pittsburgh
Junction Railroad was the late H. A.
Schwanecke, whose home address was Mar-
shall, Illinois. Mr. Schwanecke died about
three months ago. He was also chief engi-
neer of the Pittsburgh, Binghamton and
Eastern Railroad. From what we can learn,
Mr. Gustave Kauffman was not connected
with the Pittsburgh Junction Railroad, but
did have charge of the construction work
on the Pittsburgh and Western, buildkig
connecting link between Parker and Fox-
burg, Northern division.

HM., Seattle, Washington. — We can do
• no more than refer 3-ou to Mr. A.
Stewart, assistant chief engineer of the
Great Northern, and Mr. A. Herider,
superintendent of bridges and buildings,
Northern Pacific Railroad. These officials
have offices in Seattle. Mr. E. J. Pearson,
chief engineer, with office in same city, is
in charge of that work on the Chicago, Mil-
waukee and St. Paul Railway, of Washing-
ton.

XY. Z., Casey, Illinois. — The require-
• ments for an applicant looking for
a position as Pullman conductor are set
forth in the application blank which you
can secure from any of that company's dis-

BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN.

trict superintendents. You might address
Mr. C. C. Cox, who holds that position in
Chicago, Illinois.

A A. J., Warrensburg, Missouri. — The
• time-honored cross-head question
has been thrashed over many times in this
department of the The Railroad Man's
Magazine, and, singularly enough, your
view that the cross-head remains stationary
has been gravely advocated by many good
mechanics, notwithstanding the evident fal-
lacy.

The cross-head of a locomotive certainly
moves from the front to the back end of
the guides while the wheel, to which it is to
all intent and purpose connected through
the medium of the rods, is making a half-
turn, and returns from the back to the
front end of the guides, and to its original
position, while the wheel is making the other
half-turn to complete the revolution.

Bear in mind \hat the progressive motion
of the locomotive on the rails is entirely
dependent on this action of the cross-head.
If any proof is necessary that this action
exists, we might call your attention to the
fact that the valves are so adjusted as to
admit an equal quantity of steam at each
end of the. cylinder as needed, and the fact
that four equally spaced exhausts occur
with each revolution of the driving-wheels
affords satisfactory evidence that each
cross-head has made a round trip through its
respective set of guide-bars, and that the
steam has fulfilled its mission in each end
of the cylinder.

HAT is meant by the " draft appli-
ances " of a locomotive ?

C. B., Olean, N. Y.

What are known as the draft appliances
of a locomotive include the dampers, the
ash-pan, the grates, the appliances inside the
smoke-box, and the smoke-stack. The ash-
pan and grate should be so constructed that
the air will pass to the fire with as little
obstruction as possible, and the fire gases
should pass uniformly through the different
rows of tubes. It is to regulate this flow of
the gases through the tubes that a lift-pipe,
or diaphragm, is placed in the smoke-box.
Without these the tendency of the unre-
strained gases is to pass through the upper
rows of tubes, losing the use for heating
surface of the lower tubes, and permitting
them to choke up with cinders and soot.

WJ. S. Brooklyn, „ N. Y.— One rail-
• road is practically as good as an-
other to learn to run an engine on. Often

on the smaller roads promotion is more
rapid. There is not any great discrepancy
in the pay of engineers in any section, as
on almost all lines schedules of agreement,
exist between the engineers and the com-
panies by which the latter are bound, and
these schedules regulate the rate of pay.
You are too young to have your application
for a fireman favorably considered.

It would be our advice to try to secure
employment around the shops, preferably
the roundhouse, as a helper, until you be-
come of age, or until State laws permit
your service as fireman. The master me-
chanic can much better advise you in re-
gard to what course you should follow.
Mr. J. B. Ward, road foreman of engines,
Long Island Railroad, and Mr. J. J. Dewey,
master mechanic, Erie Railroad, Jersey City,
New Jersey, will handle your application
so far as those lines are concerned.

T^ C. B., Clayton, Illinois. — The expansion
A • of any metal is uniform in all direc-
tions, but in the case of the rail you men-
tion it is more noticeable in the length be-
cause this is tremendously in excess of any
other dimension. The expansion per sec-
tion is so slight that it can be scarcely
measured.

WHEN a train that carries mail is de-
tained, whether avoidable or un-
avoidable, is the company charged so
much an hour? If so, what is the amount
per hour charged?

(2) What was the first narrow-gage
road that was run? Why is it that the
gage of the track then was not as it is
now? Was it on account of the expense of
construction ? W. H. R., Freeport, 111.

(1) The practise of fining railroads for
failure to maintain their schedules, which
was in vogue heretofore, has been discon-
tinued, becoming effective July 1, 1908, the
Postmaster-General ruling that inasmuch as
Congress had omitted this provision from
the current appropriation act, and it was
applicable only to the fiscal year to which
the act applied, it should be discontinued.
The only fines are for neglect to forward
mail, or other similar violations of the pos-
tal laws.

(2) Statistics are not entirely clear regard-
ing the exact width of the first narrow-
gage track in this country; that is, the gage
narrower than the present four feet eight
and one-half-inch standard. It is said that
the Quincy Granite road, built in 1827, was
forty-four inches wide; some say fifty-two
inches.

At one time in the United States there

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

were five different widths of track, from
thirty-six inches to six feet, and the ad-
vantage of uniformity in track forced itself
ultimately to the attention of railway man-
agement, to the triumph of the present
standard. This was the same reason which
resulted in this standard in England; not
its mechanical superiority to any other gage,
but in view of the extent of roads in opera-
tion with that width of gage.

JH. S., Chicago, Illinois. — Our reply to
• " C. W. L.," in June number that the
Lake Shore and Michigan Southern were
running on the left-hand track was correct
when written, inasmuch that the change
from left-hand to right-hand running was
noffoade until July i, 1909, some time after
the answer to the question had been pre-
pared and in type.

SR, Fort Logan, Colorado. — Supplement-
• ing information given in August num-
ber relative to extra long rails, the follow-
ing, which we have secured since that issue,
may be of interest to you. The Boston and
Worcester Electric Railway track is, or was,
laid with sixty- foot rails, eighty pounds to
the yard. This road was built and began
operation July 1, 1903. The Texas Mid-
land Railroad used sixty-foot rails, and we
have been advised that they have some few
on the line at present. These rails were not
considered desirable and they were accord-
ingly sawed in half. Some ten or twelve
years ago the Pennsylvania lines also experi-
mented with rails of that length.

GB, Waldoboro, Maine.— The easiest
• way to get this information at first
hand would be to write the United Fruit
Company direct, as the • clipping enclosed
with your letter states that they own the
line in question. We have no record of it
here. Do not place dependence to any great
extent on the alluring prospects held out for
railroading in foreign lands, and in the
tropics least of all.

You have noticed this advice frequently
in ""the Lantern Department, no doubt, and
we trust that it has at least been instrumen-
tal in causing thorough inquiry to be made
before any contract is signed. To analyze
the clipping you sent develops the conclu-
sion that it looks like a fake. These roads
in the tropics prefer to develop the native
labor in all capacities, even to running the
engines and doing the important shop work,
because the natives are acclimated, do not
become homesick, and will work for about
one-quarter of what you would expect.

There may be a few Americans, of course,
to balance this element, but it is absurd to
assume that the entire personnel of the
road will be whites — " at high salaries in
gold." The clipping may set forth the facts,
and, if so, the general manager of the line
is entitled to sincere sympathy. We cannot
think of any stiffer proposition than the ef-
fort to keep the American labor contented,
and from decamping in force on each pay-
day.

WHAT is the difference between a com-
pound and a simple locomotive?
(2) What is the largest locomo-
tive in the world?

(3) The highest paid engineer running a
locomotive in the United States?

(4) The fastest speed which could be kept
up by a very high speed locomotive for half
a mile under the best conditions?

(5) What is the highest price ever paid
for a locomotive?

(6) What will be the weight and length
of the new articulated locomotive which is
being built for the Santa Fe?

(7) What other illustrated railroad tech-
nical magazine besides those which you fre-
quently mention in the " Lantern " depart-
ment? G. D., Montreal, Que.

(1) The simple expansion locomotive,
which is the prevailing type, uses the steam
once in each of the two cylinders, there-
upon exhausting it to the atmosphere
through the smoke-stack. In the com-
pound locomotive steam enters first the
high-pressure cylinder, and after doing its
work on the piston is exhausted at reduced
pressure into the low-pressure cylinder and
thus made to perform more work before
being finally ejected to the atmosphere.
Compound locomotives made their advent
about twenty }^ears ago. The theory of re-
expansion of the steam, which is the basic
principle of the compound type, is correct,
and some roads invested heavily in them.
It was found, however, after many years of
experimenting that the complication of
parts which is the inevitable result of com-
pounding, and the ensuing excessive cost of
maintenance, more than offset any economy
in fuel, and the type began gradually to dis-
appear. There is a very small proportion
left compared with ten years ago.

The compound types then were the two-
cylinder and four-cylinder : in the former
the steam exhausting from the high pres-
sure cylinder on the left side across the
smoke-box to the low-pressure cylinder on
the right side, and thence passing to the
stack. In the latter type a low-pressure
cylinder was placed in immediately below
the high-pressure on each side, or above it
in the instance of a freight-engine.

BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN.

Later types are the balanced compound,
in which the high-pressure cylinders are
arranged to be between the frames and
drive a cranked axle, while the low-pressure
are outside the frames and connected to
the wheels in the usual manner through the
medium of the piston and rod, cross-head,
main rod and crank-pins.. The articulated
compound is a flexible engine pivoted in the
center with the high-pressure cylinders
driving the rear engine, and the exhaust
steam from these cylinders filling the low-
pressure cylinders ahead which drive the
forward engine. Quite a few of these have
been constructed of late for service on
heavy mountain grades.

(2) The largest locomotive in the world,
in the sense you view it, is the new Mallet
articulated compound built at the Baldwin
Locomotive Works, this year, for the South-
ern Pacific Company. The total weight of
this engine is 425,900 pounds, of which
394,150 pounds is on the driving wheels.
The total length of the engine is 56 feet 7
inches, and of the engine and tender, 83 feet
6 inches.

The diameter of the high-pressure cylin-
ders is 26 inches, and that of the low-pres-
sure, 40 inches. The total heating surface
is 6,393 feet, and the steam-pressure 200
pounds per square inch.

The Erie Railroad articulated compounds,
which were the largest up to the construc-
tion of the above engine, have a less total
weight, viz. : 410,000 pounds ; but, as these
engines have no truck in front or rear, all
of this weight is on the drivers, against
394,150 pounds for the Southern Pacific
engine. In consequence, the tractive effort
of the Erie engine is 94,800 pounds, exceed-
ing slightly that of the Southern Pacific en-
gine, which is 94,640 pounds.

(3) It is difficult to answer this question
with any more than approximate correct-
ness. Engineers are paid by the month, as
a rule, and the size of the check depends
on the miles which have been made since
last pay-day. We know a great many engi-
neers on many roads, but the highest regu-
lar monthly pay is $179.45, ,and this is on a
double-crewed job where each man makes
fifteen round trips per month.

(4) This would have to be determined by
a test run. It is claimed that on one occa-
sion, on the Atlantic City Railroad, 8 miles
was run in 4.8 minutes, considerably over 100
miles an hour. So many elements enter
into the problem, viz., weight of train,
weather, condition of track, etc., etc., that
to answer you any other way would be of
little value. One mile in 32 seconds is the
best authentic record, made several years ago
by the Empire State Express.

7 R R

(5) We have heard, but not authoritative-
ly, that the three Erie articulated compounds
mentioned above cost $75,000. This $25,000
per engine is a very high figure, but may not
be necessarily the highest ever paid. Had
a single, engine of that type been purchased
the price might have been $30,000.

(6) Had no information of articulated
compound being built for the Santa Fe at
this writing, and think that you must have it
confused with the Southern Pacific com-
pound described in answer to your first
question.

(7) The monthly magazine issued by the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, also
that by the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fi re-
men and Enginmen, are well illustrated and
valuable publications.

E. W., Dallas, Texas. — It would
• be preferable, in our opinion, to
enter a railroad office as a student operator.
Address Mr. S. K. Bullard, superintendent
of telegraph, Sedalia, Missouri, and if he
does not handle such matters he will no
doubt refer your application to the proper
official.

K„ New York, N. Y.— You had bet-
» ter address the general manager of
each line, viz., Mr. W. W. Atterbury, Penn-
sylvania Railroad, Philadelphia, Pennsyl-
vania; or Mr. A. H. Smith, vice-president
and general manager, New York Central
and Hudson River Railroad, New York,
New York.

JB. J., Oneonta, New York. — Your letter
o is very indefinite regarding the posi-
tion which you desire in railroad service,
but we would take the train service to be
intended. The principal railroads in Vir-
ginia are the Southern. T. P. Weston lEfnTK,
J. M. Hudspeth, trainmasters, at' Alexandria, \
Virginia, and Richmond, Virginia, respec-
tively; Seaboard Air Line, S. B. Zartman,
trainmaster, Richmond, Virginia; Atlantic
Coast Line, C. M. Cobb and G. B. McClel-
lan, trainmasters, at Pinners Point, Vir-
ginia, and Richmond, Virginia, respectively;
Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac,
E. K. Grady, trainmaster, Richmond, Vir-
ginia. The wages paid brakemen, flagmen,
and conductors are about on a par with
those in the section where you reside,
and these rates you can readily secure by
inquiring of some trainman in your vicinity,

JB. P., Brooklyn, New York. — On the New
• Haven road the road foremen of en-
gines generally consider the application of

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

firemen and recommend or disapprove of
the same to the division master mechanic.
The list is too long for this space. J. J. Mc-
Cabe is general road foreman of engines,
New Haven, Connecticut. In regard to the
Long Island Railroad see reply to " W,
J. S." this issue.

O W long does a fireman have to fire be-
fore he can join the union?

B. C. Y., Van Horn, Texas.

If you refer to the organization known
as the Brotherhood of Locomotive Fire-
men and Enginemen it is our impression
that applications for membership will be con-
sidered after a man has qualified for and
entered upon his duties as a fireman. You
understand, of course, that membership de-
pends also and to a very large extent upon
sobriety and morality, these qualifications
being esteemed as highly in this organization
as in the older body of engineers.

J«

GE, Hammond, Indiana. — The follow-
• ing appointments have been recently
made in the mechanical department of the
Chicago, Milwaukee and Puget Sound Rail-
way Company: M. M. Maine, general mas-
ter mechanic, Deer Lodge, Montana; A. V.
Manchester, district master mechanic, Miles
City, Montana, and Frank Rusch, district
master mechanic, Seattle, Washington.

CM. U., Parsons, Kansas.— (i) The
• road mentioned is now embodied in
the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific.

(2-3) Read the "Making of an Engineer"
in the August number of the 1907 Railroad
Man's Magazine.

(4) Yard and road service is not divided
on all railroads, but on some roads it is.
This is fully explained in answer to " W.
A. G." in the August, 1909, issue.

DOES a passenger brakeman have to be
twenty-one years old before he can
~~ work in that position?
(2) Does he have to have some experience
in railroad-yards or roundhouses before he
can secure a position?

(X) Where can a set of rules be obtained?
L. R., Janesville, Wis.

(1) This is generally the minimum age
for an applicant in that position.

(2) See reply to " B. R T." in August
number. On the Pennsylvania Railroad,
however, passenger brakemen become bag-
gage-masters, and are promoted from that
position to passenger conductors. On that
line passenger conductors are frequently

taken from passenger brakemen and are sel-
dom " made " from freight conductors.
On the Erie Railroad, and many others, the
procedure is as outlined in the answer to
" B. R. T." above referred to. Experience
is not necessary and largely not required to
enter on the duties of passenger brakeman.
(3) These would be hard to secure, as
they are issued by' the railroads to their em-
ployees only. These books must be returned
when a man leaves the service before he
receives his time.

HL. J., Charleston, South Carolina. — ■
• The signal engineers on the roads
you mention are as follows : Western Pa-
cific, operating department not fully organ-
ized; Union Pacific, J. C. Young, Omaha,
Nebraska; Atchison, Topeka. a'nd Santa Fe,
G. R. Cowherd, Newton, Kansas ; H. K
Ferguson, La Junta, Colorado ; H. Hanson,
Cleburne, Texas; H. Hobson, Tokepa, Kan-
sas, and P. B. Hyde, Los Angeles, Cali-
fornia ; Southern Pacific, W. W. Slater,
San Francisco, California ; Chicago and
Northwestern, J. A. Peabody, Chicago,
Illinois.

WH. P., Tchula (?), Mississippi.— The
• country is flooded with nut-locks
of every conceivable description, and the
large majority of these are adequate for the
purpose intended. For this reason it would
be rather difficult to secure a patent unless
your device is absolutely original. A sketch
is all that is required at the Patent Office,
but in such a small affair as a bolt would
suggest that jrou prepare a model. Any
railroad official is glad to look at such a
device and advise you of its merits, if any.

GE, Gadsden, Alabama. — The Self-Help
• Department of The Railroad Man's
Magazine for March, April, and May,
this year, contains articles fully describing
track operations, rates of pay, and all infor-
mation which vou seek.

AM., Arizona. — In States where " Jim
• Crow " law prevails the same amount
of baggage to be transported free is allowed
as in the instance of the white passengers.

GF. K, Emmetsburg, Iowa. — Sorry to
• discourage, but you are too old to
start railroading in any capacity except pos-
sibly at laboring work, which, of course, in
view of your qualifications, is not to be
considered. It would be the height of ab-
surdity for you to abandon your present posi-

BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN.

tion for any such undertaking. In the Sep-
tember number of the magazine you will
note reply to a correspondent who asked for
advice on exactly the same lines, and we
can add nothing to what we said on that
occasion.

BA., Childress, Texas. — Please note re-
• ply to "J. R." in the August, 1909,
number.

OW many gallons of water do engines
in most common use hold?

(2) How can I tell mathematically?
L. E. C, Denver, Col.

(1) Engine No. 1608, of the Northern
Pacific Railroad, pulls a tender with a ca-
pacity of 10,000 gallons, which capacity is
the greatest in the tabulated records of
recent construction.

(2) We are in some doubt as to what
you mean by this. The capacity of any
tank can be readily computed when all di-
mensions are given, minus the slight reduc-
tion from the total due to interior bracing.
Perhaps you would care to make this a little
more clear and we will be pleased to advise.

BA. M., Somerville, Massachusetts. —
• We don't think that the road you
mention goes into the matter so deep as to
require a man to remove his shoes for a
height measurement. This latter is not a
binding qualification at any rate for a"brake-
man. The inspector can tell by looking at
him whether he is so short that attention
would be attracted, and this is enough.

MD. W., Gleason, Tennessee. — For posi-
• tion as Pullman conductor apply to
the nearest district superintendent of that
company, who, in your instance, would be
Mr. T. C. Olney, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

FC. C, Riverside, California. — Address
• the postmaster in either of the two
cities mentioned and you will receive full
information in regard to the railway mail
service, dates of examination, etc.

CO., Canton, Ohio. — Referring to our
• answer to your question in the July
Light of the Lantern, we failed to quote a
rule for the measurement of switch-frogs.
The following, which has been submitted to
us by a prominent civil engineer, is said to
1 be that in general use for this purpose:

" The number of the frog is the quotient

obtained by dividing the length, from the
theoretical point to the heel, by the width
across the heel, gage to gage. If the last dis-
tance'be 1 foot, and the first measurement
8 feet, the frog is No. 8; if 6 feet it is No.
6. If it is required to find the angle of the
frog, the tangent of one-half of the angle
can be found by dividing one-half the width
of the heel by the distance from the theo-
retical point of the frog to the center of
the heel. The angle of the frog would be
twice the angle corresponding to the above
tangent."

CT. R., Streator, Illinois. — You might
• address Mr. U. J. Fry, superintendent
of telegraph, of the line mentioned, who is
in a position to advise you regarding the
prospects for operators in that territory. Or-
ganization on a working basis is now under
way.

FC. S., Sacramento, California. — The
• following officials, named Severance,
appear in the official guide : C. E. Sever-
ance, roadmaster, St. Johnsbury and Lake
Champlain Railroad, St. Johnsbury, Ver-
mont; J. Severance, chief engineer, East
Jordan and Southern Railroad, East Jor-
dan, Michigan ; K. J. Severance, vice-presi--
dent and general manager, Keeseville, Au-
sable Chasm and Lake Champlain Railroad,
Keeseville, New York.

f£

HAT is the largest engine in the
world? Is it the 601 of the Chicago
and Alton, or 21 17 of the B. and O.?
C. P., Pittsburgh, Pa.

Neither of these. It is Southern Pacific
No. 4000, described in answer to " G. D.,"
second question, this month.

HOW many hours is a towerman sup-
posed to work who does not issue
train-orders, and is this work con-
trolled by law? J. C. B., Peoria, 111.

That portion of the Act, Public No. 274,
approved March 4, 1907, relative to the
service of telephone and telegraph operators
we quote for your information :

" Provided, That no operator, train-
despatcher, or other employee who by the
use of the telegraph or telephone despatches,
reports, transmits, receives, or delivers
orders pertaining to or affecting train move-
ments shall be required or permitted to be
or remain on duty for a longer period than
nine hours in any twenty-four-hour period
in - all towers, offices, places and stations
'continuously operated night and day, nor for

100

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

a longer period than thirteen hours in all
towers, offices, places, and stations operated
only during the daytime, except in case of
emergency, when the employees named in
this proviso may be permitted to be and re-
main on duty for four additional hours. in
a twenty-four-hour period, on not exceeding
three days in any week;

" Provided further, The Interstate Com-
merce Commission may after full hearing
in a particular case and for good cause
shown extend the period within which a
common carrier shall comply with the pro-
visions of this proviso as to such case." It
would appear, therefore, that a towerman
not engaged as defined above does not come
within the scope of the Act.

HV. L., Brooklyn, New York.— Read
• the " Making of an Engineer " in
the August, 1907, number of The Railroad
Man's Magazine. Have no fears in regard
to the electric locomotive taking your job
away should you decide to enter railroad
service. They are running them, it is true,
but the consensus of opinion as reflected in
the reports from the various mechanical
associations, implies that they have been an
extremely expensive innovation. Doubt has
even been expressed that they will ever
encroach more on the steam locomotive than
what the present situation implies.

IF a freight-train is on a side track for
No. 85, and she comes with signals and
no markers showing, and the second
section arrives, can this freight leave with-
out a 31 order, or flag its way?

P. S. M., Petersburg, Va.

It certainly cannot leave without author-
ity, although this authority need not neces-
sarily be 31 order. A message from the
superintendent saying that the first section
of No. 85 had passed would suffice. The
fact that the first section passed without
markers leaves a doubt as to them having
the entire train, and this being the case
whether second section had arrived or not
the freight should have notification that, the
first section was intact. It is, of course,
permissible to proceed by flagging ahead, as
a flag annuls any order.

HAT are the eye-tests a telegraph
operator and station-agent have to
pass? J. S. L., Toronto, Ont.

The practise of examining the eyes of
operators and station-agents is not by any
means universal, although it prevails to a
considerable extent in the United States.

The Erie Railroad might be mentioned as
an example. The operators are examined
with the same thoroughness accorded the
trainmen, but station-agents whose duties
do not bring them in active contact with the
train service are exempt. The examination
consists in reading from wall type and Dr.
Williams's lantern, and the selection of col-
ored worsteds. The exact procedure has
often been described in this department. In
the instance of these two positions the fact
that the incumbent wears glasses need not
disqualify, provided he can pass the test.

FW. J., St. Louis, Missouri. — The ques-
• tion you ask does not permit of an
answer in this department, as it involves free
advertising; but if you will forward your
full name and address, we shall be glad to
give you a suggestion through the mail.

©. C, Miles City, Montana. — Write to
the British consul at Chicago.

MARSHALL C. SMITH, Plattsburg, New
York. — The description of the ex-
aminations for candidates for the train
service in the article on that subject in the
August number is strictly correct, so far as
general conditions go. As was explained
there are variations to be found in this as
in every other particular of railroading. A
passenger conductor whose distant vision
was perfect would not be disqualified be-
cause he had to put on reading-glasses to
examine tickets, though he probably would
find it impossible to get a new job. A pair
of spectacles consists of lenses which are
an aid to vision, while a pair of goggles has
only plain glass. Dust or steam on them,
therefore, would not so seriously handicap
a man as dust on spectacles. If it did he
could take them off and be able to see per-
fectly. Goggles are used only by engineers
as a protection against the wind, and their
use is not general. The article referred to
the train service only, and did not include
operators, despatchers, and agents.

(2) The age-limit is twenty-one years, as
explained in the article.

(3) See July Railroad Man's Magazine.

(4) A metal disk on a switch to indicate
its position.

(5) General orders are addressed to all
employees, or all of certain classes of em-
ployees. Special orders cover exceptional
circumstances. Neither has anything to do
with train orders.

(6) See July number.

(7) No difference.

Being a Boomer Brakeman

BY HORACE HERR.

OOMER " or " stinger " or " wheel-polisher " — perhaps it is all the
same. Any old-time brakeman will know what is meant by any one
of those three terms. They are taken from the good old lingo of the
railroad. Each word has its special place in the railroad man's dictionary.

Perhaps " boomer " is the best known and most widely used ; but Mr.
Herr calls him a " stinger." In the bright lexicon of the railroad there is —
But, what of that? Get acquainted with the hero of these yarns quickly.
He's delivering the real goods.

1.— BREAKING INTO THE GAME.

Railroading Was Not His Choice of a Profession, but After Butting

Against Fate for a Few Days, He Was Glad to Have

a Great Future Thrust Upon Him.

IX! Railroading was not
my choice of a profession.
Any young man who has
flirted with a college edu-
cation is apt to have in-
grown vision when i-t comes
to seeing anything heroic in the life of a
switchman or a brakeman, and he's prob-
ably more expert at shuffling cardboards
than cars.

But you know how it is when you
have been riding the rough side of a
bumper for a few consecutive days. That
sort of thing is liable to leave a marked
impression on your anatomy and impress
you with an appreciation of the fact that
a night's lodging and three squares a
day is the reward of industry.

Then a fellow dismisses any petty-
larceny grudge he may have entertained
against work in general, and gets busy
with the first job which "knocks unbid-
den " at the gate. If there is anything"
which brings home the satisfying dignity
of toil, it's the first pay-day after six
months on the hummer.

When I drifted West I wasn't really
train-broke, although I was broke in eve-
ry other sense of the word. I didn't
know the difference between an air-hose
and a Janney coupler ; and, what is more,
my ignorance wasn't keeping me awake
nights. At that time I didn't know that
those minor details were a qualification
for a division superintendent, and I real-
ly did not anticipate the necessity of ac-
cepting anything below that position.

But when I got out there in Arizona,
surrounded on three sides by red ants and
sand, and on the fourth by sand and red
ants, two thousand miles from my paren-
tal boarding-house, with an unsympa-
thetic Chinese standing guard in the door-
way of every bean garage, there was
nothing to do but break into the game
which has been worrying Harriman.

I wasn't specially qualified for a place,
but there is a great satisfaction in know-
ing that your Christian and surname are
known to the paymaster, and that once a
month there will be a few pieces of the
" taint " coming to you.

102

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

My railroad experience up to that time .
consisted of just thirty days for thirty
dollars, doing a mechanical adding stunt
in the paymaster's office of the old Mem-
phis road, a position which I decided to
leave after I found out that they had left
my name off the pay-roll. Of course,
that would hardly be considered a quali-
fication for a full-fledged stinger on any
road but a street-car line.

I Hit the Town.

But out there in Arizona, where a
switchman blows in, draws a lantern and
a meal-book, works three days and blows
out without the formality of returning
the lantern; where the heat is so intense
that you keep looking around to see if
the man with the tail, the horns, and the
pitchfork is there, where the Chink won't
stand you up for a " T-bone," where the
only thing that makes a loud noise is. an
iron man from Uncle Sam's mint, it's
work, or dry up and blow away, and, as
I always was averse to a skinny anatomy,
it was me to the toil.

I and a stock-train arrived in the divi-
sion point one morning. I dropped off
at the high switch and went down to the
water-tank and did a little wash-up stunt,
turned my collar inside out, and drifted
into the main portion of the town. It
was one of those beautiful Arizona towns,
along the Arizona In and Out Road, with
a dark-brown complexion which leads
one to believe at first glance that one of
those XXXX brand sand-storms had ta-
ken sudden leave the day before and for-
got something. On second glance you
see a Wung Chung laundry sign, and you
know you are in the right pew.

After you have looked at it several
times, you begin to love it, with one of
those great, generous loves which grows
greater and more generous in proportion
to the distance. Some liberal gringo
staked me to the price of a ham-and-egg
menu, and after I had wrapped myself
carefully around it, I was ready and
really felt equal to the task of looking
for a job.

Meets a Freckled Disposition.

The day before I broke into the quiet
life of the diyision terminal, the natives

had been treated to the excitement of a
fire which destroyed the mechanical de-
partment offices, and the chief clerk was
holding forth in a box car. ' I wandered
over that way, determined to hit him for
a job as wiper in the roundhouse.

I stepped into the car just as an Ari-
zona zephyr deposited the southwest quar-
ter of the southeast half of the north
section of the Indian Reservation in my
left optic, and for fully a minute after I
got inside I was excavating the real
estate, for I knew that in my present
financial condition I couldn't waste any
money paying taxes.

Over at the left of the car, with a
brick-colored growth on his head, sat a
young fellow who looked as if his dis-
position might be as freckled as his face.
He was sitting on a barrel and was using
a dry-goods box for a desk. He turned
around, skilfully avoiding the tenpenny
nail, and asked me what I wanted.

" A job," was my reply.

" Fireman? "

" Never fired anything more compli-
cated than a gas-stove, but I'll take a shot
at most anything this morning."

" Don't hire anything but experienced
men," and the remarks felt good in the
heat of the day, they had such a beautiful
frosty ring to them.

Chalking Up " Brownies."

I ducked and came back strong with
a new lead, and we finally got together.
They were to carry me on the pay-roll as
a machinist helper, but my heavy work
was to wear the point off a lead-pencil
chalking up the " Brownies " for the
engineers who failed to make running
time with double tonnage, or for firemen
who had had the poor form to allow the
passenger in the upper berth of the ten-
der to be seen by the traveling engineer.

My first job was sorting out and in-
dexing the personal record files, which
had been dumped, in disorder, in a little
8x10 galvanized-iron shed, when the fire
was discovered. I worked in that place
without ventilation for three hours that
first morning.

For three hours I toiled and sweated and
thought of the inviting shade under the
old apple-tree, and decided a dozen times
over that I would give it the high sign.

BEING A BOOMER BRAKEMAN.

103

and every time I remembered that it was
two hundred and eighty-six miles to Al-
buquerque and eight hundred miles to
Los Angeles, I reconsidered, for walking
was bad and the stingers were hostile,
owing to the fact that some double-cross
spotter had been over the division a few
days .before, and when he left he took
about a dozen jobs along with him.

Unless you had a fast-black recommen-
dation or the real card, you couldn't ride
unless you had full fare. I stuck, and
Brick, the chief clerk, took pity on me
just a few minutes before I went to the

I was real good and lived the month
through, I would be credited on the pay-
roll with sixty-six dollars sixty-six and
two-thirds, cents.

AN UNSYMPATHETIC CHINESE STANDING GUARD IN THE DOORWAY OF EVERY BEAN GARAGE.

floor for the count, and took me into the
box car.

After I had been meeting myself quite
regularly at the Chinaman's table for a
while the world began to look brighter,
and I finally got so independent that I
walked right up to Brick and asked him
how much real money I was to get for
this clerk job. He informed me that if

Of course, as the In and Out never
overlooked a fraction, I couldn't count
on that two-thirds of a cent. Then I
had to give up fifty cents out of that
check for the hospital fund and two dol-
lars for water rent; a few other deduc-
tions brought the amount down to fifty
pesos.

If I do say it myself, I made good as a

104

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

clerk. I could jack-up a fireman just as
hard as any other guy about the office,
hand him out a regulation load of sar-
casm, and give him just as picturesque a
spiel on the duties of a fireman as any
other clerk in the place who didn't know
the difference between a scoop and a
shaker-bar, and who probably would
have to hesitate a minute to distinguish
between a small lump of Gallup coal
and a compound liver pill.

I got just as conceited as the general
run of clerks who get small pay with lots
of authority, the only difference being
that I kept trying to back mine up With
a physical argument, which often proved
hard on my eyes and at times kept me in
bed for a few days, until the boss in-
formed me that I would have to tame
my disposition a little or search for other
fields of employment. That decided
me.

The Real Thing.

I had something like six bits in my
pocket, and it's surprising how indepen-
dent a fellow can be with all that money
to spend, so I waited my opportunity and
decided that I would change jobs. I
wanted to get into the transportation de-
partment of the road.

So I took a quiet trail after the " Old
Man," caught him on a siding, locked the
switch, and tied into him head-on for a
job in his department. I landed.

Just take it from me, there are officials
and other officials, but the " Old Man "
was an official. He was there with about
six feet of length and "four feet of cir-
cumference, and if there is a job on any
railroad which he can't handle, it's un-
known to yours truly.

You can travel over the In and Out
Railroad and back again, and you can
hear all kinds of stories about officials,
but whenever you hear any one mention
" I. L. H., the Old Man," you will also
hear him add, " and he's all the goods."

I have seen these officials who get all
swelled up over the importance of their
position like a yelloAv pup that has par-
taken too freely of an arsenic wafer.
Then I've seen the kind who never for-
gets that he came up from the ranks, but
when it came to being one of the men,
you had to give it to the " Old Man."

You simply had to pass him the striped
candy.

He could get mad — just as mad as any
one, and his great neck would swell and
turn red like a turkey-gobbler's, but even
when he was mad, you always knew he
was right, and stood up and took your
medicine like a little man. He knew his
business. That's why he commanded the
respect of every man on the road from
the boomer switchman to Old Red-Hot
Frost, who was the first conductor on the
road.

He always had time to listen to a griev-
ance, and every fellow who Went against
him found him square. That's why he is
general superintendent to-day, and that's
why he will go higher than that -before
they put him under the sod.

Well, me to the " Old Man " for a new
job. I got it. He referred me to his
chief clerk, a large, generous chunk of
anatomy who had most everything need-
ed in life except brains, a fellow who
couldn't write on a typewriter without
stuttering, and as I could out-talk him,
I landed.

They gave me a job as clerk to the
train-despatchers. My boss was a nickel's
worth of animal matter, by the name of
Dixon, and he paid me seventy round
dollars a month to figure tonnage-sheets
and take care of the train-sheets, and as
the job took a fellow with big feet and
little gray matter, I made a success of it.

In the, New Job.

I'll have to give it to those train-
despatchers, and I'll hand over the bacon
to that fellow Dixon as the wonder of
them all. I don't care where you go,
Avhat the complications are surrounding
the job, in all the world you will be
unable to find a position which carries
with it more responsibility than hangs
over the man who works a trick at a de-
spatcher's table on a busy division in a
busy season, and, be it said to their
credit, as a class they are alive to the re-
sponsibility, and, taking all together,
are as fine a set of men as ever followed
a nerve-trying occupation.

A despatcher is the whole works
around a railroad. On his wits, on his
brain, on his ability to remember and
forget, depend the success of the entire

BEING A BOOMER BRAKEMAN.

105

system and the' lives of both passengers the movement of real estate was so brisk
and crews. that one could hardly see across the

He's the fall guy, at that. The big street,
squeeze makes the policy, and he carries My old friend George Robinson was

it out. On every move he makes, on eve- working the second trick that afternoon.
ry tick of his instrument, depend the He had his orders out, and everything
earnings of the road and the
lives of its patrons and em-
ployees.

He saves or makes overtime,
he handles every detail of a
great system, and when he for-
gets — Heaven help everybody !
But he don't forget. Half the
wrecks -which catch up with
trains and furnish copy for
newspapers result from the un-
written rules of the roads them-
selves.

I THOUGHT OF THE INVITING SHADE

UNDER THE OLD APPLE-TREE, AND

DECIDED A DOZEN TIMES OVER

THAT I WOULD GIVE IT

THE HIGH SIGN.

Don't let any one tell you that a de-
spatcher has an easy take. The wonder
is that four-fifths of them don't land in
the house with the upholstered walls, for
the strain is something frightful, and
just about one wreck in a lifetime is
enough to send a good man dippy. I
never will forget the first wreck for
which I sat down and waited, knowing
that just as sure as the world kept its
trolley on the wire and went on spinning
around for thirty minutes, there would
be trouble of the real, original brand.

It was one beautiful afternoon in July
— July is always a beautiful month in
Arizona — I don't think. Sand-storms
galore, and on this particular afternoon

was running along as smoothly as a well-
greased political machine.

Regular 34 was on time coming west,
and a double - header orange - train was
running extra east. He had given the
extra east a positive meet-order with 34
at- Hulbrook, and had the order out at
J;hat station for 34.

The Orange Extra.

George was in the midst of a graphic
description of a fishing trip to Clear
Creek Canon, and the narration of that
time-worn story about the " biggest fish
which got away," when Hulbrook
" OS'ed " 34 by. George's face went

106

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

DIXON BEGAN TO LAUGH LIKE AN
IDIOT. -" GOD'S MIGHTY GOOD
TO HIS FOOLS SOMETIMES," ty'^'V ^

WAS ALL HE SAID.

white. He whirled around to. that desk
and got busy on the key in mighty short
order.

He asked the operator at Hulbrook if
the orange extra had showed up, and he
replied that it had not. He then asked
him if he had delivered the meet-order
to 34, and when the answer came over
the wire, George just left his key open
and turned around.

Every operator and despatcher in the
office had read the conversation as it
came over the wire. No one spoke for
a moment. George turned back to his
train-sheet and ran his finger down the
column in which he was keeping 34's trip,
and up the column in which was the
orange extra's figures ; saying nothing
and thinking — Heaven only knows what !

Perhaps he was thinking that Riley
Walcott, one of the engineers, was his
friend and- neighbor — and perhaps he
wasn't. While he stared at that train-
sheet, that little fellow Dixon was look-
ing at the ceiling and punishing a chew
of tobacco.

" They'll meet on the curve just be-
yond the Aztec cut," he remarked. " Ex-
tra has a Baldwin hog and a Vauclain,

and 34 has a prairie type -passenger-
engine, and they'll be running like a bul-
let out of a gun." ,

Then Dixon got busy with the yard-
master. The switch-engine ran down to
the hoodoo track, coupled onto the
wrecking - train, and backed down in
front of the despatcher's office and
waited for orders.

Fully a dozen men- sat' there in that
office and silently waited for a mix-up
that promised to be one of the worst
ever on a mountain division of a Western
road. Say, if I live to be a thousand
years old, I will never live through such
a long twenty-seven minutes again.

Saving the Train.

Then there was a click of the key — the
report of the disaster, of course — and to
show just how uncertain is a certainty,
the operator who had failed to deliver
that meet-order sent this over the wire.
" 34 is backing into the station — no harm
done," and the strain broke. Dixon be-
gan to laugh like an idiot.

" God's mighty good to His fools some-
times," was all he said, but a few rain-

BEING A BOOMER BRAKEMAN

107

utes later he got that operator on the
wire and told him to take a long vaca-
tion— just as long as he wanted, and then
ten years more.

Just to show how close it was, Engi-
neer Walcott, who had been on 34, came
into the office after he had registered in.
He had his usual smile set out on his
face, didn't appear a bit nervous, wasn't
sore at any one — just took the whole af-
fair as one of the risks of the game.

" Didn't get me that time, eh,
George?" was his greeting^ and then he
told a few of the details.

He had failed to get the meet-order
at Hulbrook and pulled out right on his
schedule. As there were no stops be-
tween Hulbrook and the terminal, he was

swinging along at about thirty miles an
hour with thirty-five cars. He hit the
Aztec curve just as a section foreman
came running out of the cut, waving his
hat frantically.

Knowing what he did about this game
of railroading, he gave that string of
cars the big hole, stopped, and backed
up just as fast as he could. The extra
poked the pilot of its first engine two car-
lengths over the spot where Riley stopped
before backing up.

A section foreman had seen the trains
approaching, had sent a Mexican one
way and had dashed down the track the
other, and his wits had saved, several lives
and a good many thousand dollars' worth
of rolling-stock.

In the November issue, Mr. Herr will tell how he went through "the smoky end"
of his career, and finally got on the salary-list as a full-fledged " Stinger."

HOW A TUNNEL IS BORED.

A Mountain Is Worked Through from Opposite Sides, and, in Nearly
Every Instance, the Borers Meet.

TUNNELS are not pleasant to ride
through. They are, moreover, fear-
fully expensive to construct, and they neces-
sitate a double inspection. But — and the
" but " in this case is a very large one —
they reduce grades and distances in whole-
sale fashion, and so in a mountainous coun-
try the engineer must be prepared to drive
tunnels and the folk who come after him to
operate them. The tunnel job is apt to be a
separate part of the work. It calls for its
own expert talent.

If the tunnel is more than a half or three-
quarters of a mile long it will probably be
dug from a shaft or shafts as well as from
its portals. In this way the work will not
only be greatly hastened, but the shafts will
continue in use after it is completed as vents
for the discharge of engine smoke and gases
from the tube.

The ordinary course of such work is by
the use of cutting shields proceeding simul-

taneously from the portals and from the
footings of the shafts. These shields are to
be likened to steel rings of a circumference
only slightly greater than the finished tunnel.

Men working on different levels of this
shield, with pick and drill and dynamite,
press forward and clear a path. Tracks fol-
low the cutting shield. Electric locomotives
are used whenever possible in removing the
material. The use of electricity keeps the
tunnel quite clear of gases and makes the
safest light for the workers.

In rare cases the rock through which the
tunnel is bored is strong enough to support
itself. But in most cases the engineers pre-
fer to line the bore with brick, as a rule,
and this lining is set in place right in the
path of the cutting shield. After long
weeks, and perhaps months, .of work the
time comes when the different bores meet
and the tunnel is a single underground tube,
from portal to portal.

Recent Railroad Patents.

BY FORREST G. SMITH.

Solving Problem of Sand-Box Valves — A Renewable Switch-Point — De-
scribing a New Coupling — New Extension Step that Is Automatic
-Torpedo That Will Not Fail — Bracing Rails Against Creep-
ing— Trip Action On Air- Brake — Improvement In Car-Stops.

A SAND-BOX SOLUTION.

Overcoming the Problem of Clogged Valves

That Has Been the Chief Difficulty in

this"Piece of Equipment.

OWING to the employment of valves in
the sand-boxes of street railway-cars,
and the fact that these valves frequently be-
come clogged with sand, considerable diffi-
culty is often experienced in properly dis-
charging the sand from the box to the
tracks, and also in closing the valves after
having been opened. In a patent (No. 926,-
586, June 29, 1909) issued to Thomas J.
Mullen and Thomas F. Brennan, both of
New Brighton, New York, there is disclosed
quite a novel form of sand-box and means
for controlling the discharge of sand'there-
from.

The box consists of the usual hopper body,
in which the sand is contained, and slidable
beneath this body is a plate having an open-
ing, which is adapted to register with the
open lower end of the body when the plate
is slid to one position. This plate is prefer-
ably supported by means of links from the
body, and a lever is connected at one end of
the plate whereby it may be moved as
stated.

A stout leaf spring, carried by the hopper
body, ihas engagement at one end with that
end of the plate opposite the end to which
the lever is connected, and this spring tends
normally to hold the plate so that it will
completely close the discharge end of the
hopper. When it is desired to sand the
tracks the lever is so rocked as to slide the
plate against the tension of the spring. This
brings the opening in the plate into registra-
tion with the discharge end of the hopper,
thereby permitting sand to flow from the

hopper and through a flexible pipe, which is
-connected with the plate at the opening and
directs the discharged sand onto the tracks.
The advantage of this device lies in the
fact that there is absolutely no chance of the
plate becoming caught or failing to complete-
ly close the discharge opening of the hopper.

AN ECONOMICAL FROG.

Renewable Point Which Saves the Replace-
ment of the Entire Switch, as
Previously Necessary.

A NOVEL railroad track structure, relat-
-**- ing to switches, mates, frogs, and the
like, is covered in a patent (No. 926,133,
June 29, 1909) issued to Arthur J. Pemble-
ton, of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ordi-
narily, as is well known, such structures
comprise a foundation or body, a point which
is cast integral with the body, and rail ex-
tensions which are integral with the ends
of the body and extend considerably there
beyond.

In such structures, however, when the
point becomes worn, which happens long
before the rail extensions begin to show
wear, the entire structure requires to be re-
placed at considerable expense. In the
structure shown in the patent, however, that
portion of the body upon which the point is
formed is separate from the portions upon
which the rail extensions are formed, and
from which they project, and the meeting
ends of the several sections are formed with
apertured lugs, through which are passed
bolts, securing the several sections together.

When the point of the structure becomes
worn so as to be useless, only that section
upon which it is formed need be replaced,

RECENT RAILROAD PATENTS.

109

the bolts connecting the several sections
being removed for this purpose. In such a
construction there will be a very consider-
able saving of material in making repairs.

SAFE-COUPLING DEVICE.

A Projecting Lever Renders It Unnecessary

for Trainmen to Go Between

Cars.

WITH the object in view of eliminating,
so far as possible, the chances of ac-
cident to members of train crews in coupling
and uncoupling cars, Jesse M. Arthur and
John P. Birmingham, both of Lexington,
Virginia, have devised a means whereby a
train of cars may be coupled or uncoupled
without the necessity of the members of the
train crew going between the cars.

In carrying out the invention there is em-
ployed the ordinary form of coupling head
and pin, but a lever is pivotally mounted
upon the car across the end thereof and is
provided at one end with a handle which
projects slightly beyond one side of the car.
The other, or inner, end of the lever is
formed with a hook, which is engaged with
the eye at the upper end of the coupling pin.

By grasping the handle end of the lever,
and without going between two cars, the
lever may be rocked so as to withdraw or
insert the pin in the head. A patent (No.
926,636, June 29, 1909) has issued to the
inventors of this device.

EXTENSION CAR-STEP.

Automatic Action and Convenient Position

Give Chance for Excellent

Results.

AN extremely simple construction of ex-
tension step for railway passenger-
trains is evolved in an invention covered by
patent No. 925,746, June 22, 1909, issued to
Edward F. Howell, of Wapanucka, Okla-
homa.

While quite a few such steps have been
devised, they are all raised and lowered
through the medium of hand or foot levers,
which project up through the platform of the
car. This is, however, undesirable, in that
they are attended to by the members of the
train crew, and this necessitates waste of
considerable time on the part of the crew.
Furthermore, they are liable to be acciden-
tally actuated by passengers, and this might
result in the steps being lowered into the path
of some obstruction.

It is desirable to provide a step of this
character which can be readily actuated, as
far as being lowered to extended position is
concerned, by any passenger leaving the
train, but which cannot be actuated except
by descending to the lowermost step of the
platform. The structure disclosed in the
patent embodies a U-shaped hanger, upon
which the extension step is secured, the arms
or spaced portions of the hanger being
slidably mounted in suitable guides upon the
sides of the frame in which the stationary
steps are mounted.

From this it will be understood that the
hanger may be slid upwardly to position the
extensible step beneath the lowermost one
of the stationary steps, or may be slid
downward so as to position the step for use
in ascending to or descending from the plat-
form. A spring latch normally holds the
step in elevated position, but is so con-
structed, preferably, that downward pres-
sure with one foot upon the extensible step
will lower it.

TORPEDO IN ONE PIECE.

Explosive in Which the Cap and the Wrapper

Cannot Become Saparated

in Operation.

IT frequently happens that the ordinary
torpedoes now employed fail to explode
owing to the fact that the contents of the
wrapper, or cap, is lost, due to splitting,
or opening, of the cap when engaged by the
car-wheels, and, in fact, the torpedoes, are
often thrown from the rails when not
squarely engaged by the wheels. Such tor-
pedoes are usually formed of a two-part
wrapper, the parts being fitted together more
or less securely. A torpedo and holder
therefor, which embodies advantages over
those at present employed, is disclosed in a
patent (No. 925,857, June 22, 1909) issued
to Edward P. S. Andrews, of West Wind-
ham, New Hampshire.

In carrying out the invention, the ex-
plosive charge is placed in the mid portion
of a metallic tube, and the end portions of
this tube are then flattened and folded under
the mid portion, with the ends terminating
at the ends of the said mid portion contain-
ing the charge. This tube is then placed
flat -upon- the central portion of a plate, the
side edge portions of which are folded
down so as to adapt the plate for disposal
upon the tread of a rail.

The plate is formed at its end edges with
tongues, which are bent up and engage with
the ends of the mid portion of the tube, and
serve to hold it securely in its folded posi-

110

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

tion and against displacement in any direc-
tion. Inasmuch as the tube, when properly
folded and arranged in the holder, is held
longitudinally of the rail upon which the
holder is disposed, the car wheels passing
over the tube will so act as to more tightly
fold the tube, and thereby prevent spilling.

NEW IDEA IN RAIL BRACES.

An Invention that Prevents the Creeping

as Well as the Spreading of Rails

to Which It is Fitted.

THE ordinary rail braces now employed,
while they are in most instances effec-
tive in preventing spreading of the rails,
do not prevent creeping. A rail brace struc-
ture, protected by patent No. 925,981, June
22, 1909, issued to Michael P. Bardon, of
Guernsey, California, attains both of these
objects.

Each of the brace structures covered in
the patent consists of a set of three rods,
two of which are disposed diagonally be-
tween the rails to be braced, and the third
transversely at right angles between the
rails. Midway of their ends these rods in-
tersect and a bolt is passed through them at
this point to secure them together.

Each end of each of the rods is engaged
through an opening formed in the web of
the adjacent rail, and nuts are threaded
upon the ends of the rods to secure them to
the rails. It will be understood that the
transverse rods serve to prevent spreading of
the rails, and that the diagonally disposed
rods serve to prevent creeping, as well as
cooperating to prevent spreading.

TRIP-LEVER FOR AIR- BRAKE.

System Which Will Act as Check on Engi-
neer Setting Brakes When Danger
Signal is Ignored.

A NOVELTY in air-brake systems is dis-
closed in a patent (No. 926,214, June
29, 1909) issued to John W. Sharp, of Chi-
cago, Illinois. It is the primary object of
the system to provide means for maintain-
ing a double check on the engine crew as
regards the observance of signals at stations
and block-houses. In carrying out the in-
vention the cars of the train are equipped
with the usual train pipe and brake cylin-
ders, and the train pipe is provided with a
branch, in which is arranged a valve having
an operating, or trip, lever connected with
its plug. This lever is so positioned as to

be engageable by trip devices, which are ar-
ranged at the stations, or block-houses, and
are set in operative position when the dan-
ger-signals are displayed.

Should the engineer of the train fail to
heed the danger-signals at any station and
run his train past the station, the trip de-
vices will engage with the valve lever
mentioned and will open the valve, thereby
setting the brakes and automatically bring- f
ing the train to a stop. The other means
embodied in the system for keeping check on
the locomotive crew is embodied in a valve
which is interposed in another branch of the
train pipe, and which is adapted to be
operated by any one of the train crew who
happens to observe that the engineer has
passed a danger-signal. This emergency
valve is provided for the event of the first
described brake-setting failing to work, or
in case any member of the crew happens to
observe some track or other conditions
which warrant the stopping of the train.

CONVENIENT CAR-STOP.

Patent Covering or Device Which is Easy

to Apply and Dismount and Does

Not Damage Track.

THE ordinary form of car-stop of that
class which is secured upon a rail, and
against which the wheels of the car to be
held rest, is embodied in a block which is
to be bolted, or otherwise clamped in place,
upon the rail. Where such stops are to be
used only for a short time, considerable
time is lost in applying and removing them,
and for this reason it is desirable that a stop
be employed which can be readily and quick-
ly secured upon or removed from the rail.

The only ones possessing this advantage
which have been so far devised have been
constructed to fit over the rail and engage
with the ties, but injury to the ties has re-
sulted from their employment. However, in
a patent (No. g2$,8j5, June 22, 1909) issued
to Robert E. Davies, of St. Joseph, Mis-
souri, there is shown a car-stop which will
fulfil these conditions.

The stop mentioned consists of a block,
which is recessed to fit against one side of
the rail, and also over the tread, or ball, of
the rail, and against which the wheels of the
car are to be held. To this block is pivoted
the headed end of a lever, which headed
end is of cam formation and firmly
clamps the block against the rail when the
lever is swung down to position beside the
rail. When it is desired to remove the stop
from the rail it is only necessary to swing
the lever in an upward direction.

A DANGER-SIGNAL WAS FLUTTERING ON THE REMAINING
PART OF THE BRIDGE.

KITTEN CARROLL'S BOOK
LEARNING.

BY KEENE ABBOTT.

It Was Good Enough, Anyhow, to Save
the Lives of Four Hundred People.

tM CARROLL, the bridge
watchman, had trouble with
his left eye. Often he ex-
plained to his wife that his
right one " got all fogged up
when he was only a boy," and
as for the other — well, she used to de-
clare that " too much readin' matter was
what ailed Jim," which only shows
prejudice on her part, for Jim held
stoutly to the notion that part of a sand-
burr had " blowed into his good lamp."
However that may be, it is a fact that
he was a great reader. Often his wife
made such a fuss about it (especially
when he could not be taken from his
book to bring in coal or chop kindling)
that he would have to soothe her by say-
ing: "Now, Kitten, don't you take on
like that. Readin' is good for a body.
It's great to brace up the cha-m^-ter of
a man."

Although she had rather outgrown

that pet name of hers — for she was big
both east and west, and her north and
south dimensions were also rather plump
— it is true that " Kitten " still remained
a very good word for Jim to use in get-
ting around her.

Ordinarily, she was not averse to his
reading.' It was really remarkable how
she had got used to it5 and that she her-
self had also learned to read a little.
The event of her day, during the first
years of their married life, was her noon-
time visits to her husband at the bridge,
when she would take him his luncheon,
and sit with him inside the watchman's
box, a little red house so small that it
reminded one of a Noah's ark.

After he had eaten the contents of the
tin pail and drunk the bottle of coffee
to the last drop, the next thing was for
him to get out his black, shiny pipe and
blow into the mouthpiece. His red,
bristly cheeks would puff out, like the

112

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

face of a cornet-player in a brass band,
and sometimes he would hold the
charred bowl to the window, shut one
eye, clamp the tip of his tongue between
his 'teeth, and try to see what was the
matter with the stem that it would not
draw.

When he had at length smoked his
pipeful to settle his dinner, he would
bring out a cinnamon-colored book kom
his bulging pocket, clear his throat as
he opened the volume, and prepare to
read.

It must be admitted that Jim was not
a very good reader. His voice rose and
fell in a monotonous sing-song, and he
stumbled on many words. Sometimes
Kitten, sitting by the stove with the baby
wrapped in a brown shawl, would fall
asleep, and then he would speak severe-
ly to her:

" Kate, look here, now. Is that a
nice way to do? I read you a story —
a good story — but what is # the use of it?
You go to roost, just like a hen. You
don't hear anything. My mouth gets
dried up with reading to you ; my eye^
ge^ts tired, and then you — shame on you,
woman! — you go to sleep."

"Sometimes I do; yes, that's so, Jim,
but not this time. This time I was only
thinkin', with my eyes shut."

" Did you hear me? "

"Not zacly — not all 'the while. No;
I was thinkin' of us, and how we live."
She put the baby into his arms, leaned
forward, and rested her cheek upon his
knee. " I get to wonderin', sometimes,
why you ever took up with me. What
a queer man! Me jest a common dance-
hall girl, and yet you used to talk to
me jest like you was my brother or
father.

" It was downright amazin' what a
good man you was. I thought you would
soon be gettin' tired of me, but you
don't. You read to me and talk to me,
and yet I am just like a child for not
knowing much."

" WeH, what's that to make a row
about?" he inquired, and he pinched
her cheek and slapped her on the arm
to let her know that she was very dear
and necessary to him.

"Don't you see what I'm thinkin'?"
she went on. " How will it be when
our little boy grows up and finds out

what a foolish mother he has? Now,
if I could only read and write a little,
maybe he wouldn't ever get ashamed
of me."

"What silly talk that is!" he pro-
tested. " You ought to know that book-
learnin' don't count for much. It's
cha.-rac-ter that counts. Look at Abe
Lincoln ; he wasn't much punkins on
book-learnin'. It was the big heart in
him and (the nobleness of him that count-
ed most."

After this lecture of his, the woman
took the baby again, and the reading was
resumed. Inspired by the notion that
his wife considered him such a man as
Abraham Lincoln, Jim put more life into
his voice, made the sentences have more
meaning, as though the people of the
book were actually talking as people do
in real life.

Sometimes he looked up from the
printed page and noted how intently she
was watching him, how full of interest
were her moist, blue eyes. Her red lips
revealed her white teeth, her arms
pressed the baby tight against her
breast, and presently, when he closed the
book at the end of a chapter, she sighed,
and shook her head, and wiped the tears
away with the back of her hand.

In a hoarse whisper, she presently
asked :

"That ain't all, is it?"

No, there was more.

And he would read it to her?

Not now — some other time.

For a while she said nothing more,
but presently she opened her lips, start-
ed to say something, but did not speak.
She sighed deeply, blinked, and her
plump, dimpled chin continued to
quiver.

" How real it is, all that ! " she whis-
pered. " Sidney Carton ! He is going
to have his head cut off, and nobody
stops him! And that little girl! She
doesn't even know why she is going to
be killed. What bad, bad people to act
like that toward a little girl ! Worse
than wild Indians. But he holds her
hand, and talks nice to her, and then
they keep on going to the scaffold. He
is a kind man, and yet it — it makes me
sort of sicklike and ashamed to hear
that. Why do -I want to hear it? It's
so real and awful and hurts so that I

KITTEN CARROLL'S BOOK-LEARNING.

113

don't know at all what makes me want
to hear it."

"You don't know? Well, it's very
simple. You see, now — the t'urribleness,
you see, ain't just for the sake of being
turrible. Sidney Carton was a good man,
wasn't he? All right, then; the good-
ness of his cha,-rac-tev had to come out."
Hesitatingly the woman inquired :
" But ain't it lies, all that? "
" Well, look here, now ; you don't
think a nice, colored-up picture is a lie,
do you? Course not; sure you don't.

nursery jingles, she began to teach them
verses that would be good for the
cha-ra^-ter. Jamie, at the age of nine,
as he stood on the table in the watch-
man's little home near the bridge, would
send his father and mother into raptures
by reciting ' to them the metrical nar-
rative about the Mississippi River pilot
who saved everybody on board the burn-
ing steamboat by holding

her nozzle agin the bank till the last
galoot's ashore.

look at abe lincoln;
he wasn't much
punkins on book-

learnin'."

So, you see, it's the same about a good
story. If it looks just like the real
thing, and has nobleness in it, why, then,
it's all right and agreeable. Now me,
Avhen I read a story like this one, it gets
a hold of me."

The woman deeply pondered what her
husband had said, and from that day she
struggled harder than ever, under his
patient guidance, to learn how to read
and write, in order that she might have
the respect of her children as they
grew up.

When the little boy and little girl
finally reached the age for memorizing
8 R R

It was in "the winter of 1876 that
Jim's eye went back on him. Inflam-
mation had set in, and he was finally
obliged to surrender his post to his
father, a veteran of the Civil War and
an Indian fighter who did valiant serv-
ice against the hostile Sioux.

In February, when some Union Pa-
cific officials and engineers were down
to inspect the bridge and the condition
of the river, it was, of course, impossible
to keep the watchman at home in a dark-
ened room, although his eye was very
painful and had swollen almost shut. A
season of anxiety had come to him —

114

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

anxiety about the bridge. It had been
a hard winter, and the river had never
before been so solidly frozen. Then,
suddenly, warm weather had set in.
For two weeks balmy winds blew across
the prairie. Snows vanished, grass be-
gan to grow.

Into the broad Missouri hurled the
ice-choked waters of many streams.
From bank to bank spread the wash and
clamorous voicings of the flood. Higher
from day to day3 higher still, and ever
more ferociously swift tumbled the gur-
gling waters beneath the bridge.

" It was never like this before," Car-
roll told the officials of the company ;
but the chief engineer, he who had
planned and superintended the construc-
tion of the bridge, complacently shrugged
his shoulders.

" What of it? " he asked. " Out yon-
der is a mass of stone and steel that
nothing can jar loose." His opinion
was shared by other builders, by the
division superintendent, and by the vice-
president of the corporation. Perfectly
safe ! All believed that — all but Jim
Carroll2 the watchman.

" It's not the water — it's the ice un-
der the water that scares me!" he an-
nounced, and gravely wagged his head
as he lifted the white bandage off his
red and swollen eye in an almost futile
effort to see how the river was behaving.
Stare as he might, he could observe only
a wet, gray blur, but the others noticed
how the current was split by the massive
piers and turned back in frothing fur-
rows on either side of every ponderous
shoulder of solid rock.

All that day and all that night, Car-
roll did not leave the bridge, and
whether it was his father or his wife
who kept watch with him, he persisted
in asking a multitude of questions. How
much higher had the water risen? Did
they think the ice would go out with
a rush? Or would it melt gradually?
Were they sure they did not hear it
cracking? Did they think it safe for
the trains to keep on crossing the bridge?

When he had been forty hours with-
out sleep, his wife at last prevailed upon
him to go home. Even then he might
not have yielded to her entreaties if his
inflamed eye had not swollen shut. It
was so very painful that finally he suf-

fered himself to be led away, and once
in the house, he ate a little, drank some
hot coffee, and then, without taking off
his clothes, lay down on the bed.

Almost instantly Carroll fell into a
trance-like sleep. Suddenly a muffled
explosion roused him. Then came an-
other, and still another. They were ter-
rific shocks. There seemed to be a rip-
ping in the bowels, of the earth. It was
as though some enormous, incalculable
power were trying to cleave the world
in two.

The house shook. The wailing wind
fumbled and shuffled at the door. The
man tried to open his swollen eye, but
he could not. He called, and no one
answered. He leaped from bed, knocked
against the furniture, felt himself
walled in by an abyss of darkness.

Was it night? He smelled the pene-
trating reek of a kerosene-lamp. But
what time of night? He listened for
the ticking of the clock. As he heard
nothing, he knew that it had stopped.
The quaking of the house might have
done that — but why had his watch also
stopped? He fumbled the time-piece
from his pocket, held it to his ear, shook
it. He heard nothing. Well, then, he
must have slept long, very long, so long
that his watch had run down.

But why did no one answer him?
Again he called, and again the house
was dumb with a terrifying silence in
which the wind cried aloud, and the
windows jarred: and the doors shook in
utter loneliness.

Presently some one came in. There
was a gallop of little feet on the floor —
feet that abruptly halted.

"That you, Jamie?" Carroll asked.

" Yes, pa."

"Well, boy?" He waited for a re-
ply; but, as the child did not answer
him, he repeated rapidly the one word :
" Well— well— well ? "

" It's down," said the boy.

" Hey? What's that?"

" The bridge—"

" Gone, is it? I knew it. I said so.
I said it would. What time is it? An-
swer, can't you? Quick! Tell me now.
Daytime or nighttime? Where's your
mother? . Is -your gran'pap — What
time is it? "

The boy gasped with fright and said :

KITTEN CARROLL'S BOOK-LEARNING.

115

" He said — gran'pap said — he said to
ma—"

" Well, out with it. Don't stand there
like that."

The boy became more confused.
Speech had been frightened out of him.

"Come, Jamie; come, now. Tell
daddy what gran'pap said."

" Two hours and a half, he said —
not quite two hours and a half till train-
time."

"Two hours, eh? Two hours and a
half ! " Carroll exclaimed, and began

it was daytime, he wouldn't have to go.
But nighttime, you see. And so, you
see, he has to keep the train from run-
ning off into the river."

In the fever of his exultation his voice
suddenly stopped short. The door had
opened. A cold gust swept in, and with
it came the noise of footsteps, the heavy
clumping of boots upon the floor.

The little boy slipped from his father's
arms. The man opened his mouth to
speak, but could not do so. His father
was there before him. Carroll's face

THE MAN OPENED

HIS MOUTH TO

SPEAK, BUT

COULD

NOT.

beating his hands against his legs.
" Time enough ! Good, my boy ! Plenty
of time to stop the 'train. He'll do it,
Jamie. Come here, you little rat ! "

The father caught the child in his
arms, laughed, kissed the little boy re-
peatedly, slapped him on the back, and
continued to talk disjointedly.

" A brave man, your grandfather !
/ wful dangerous work. He's crossing
the river on the ice. And it's night —
awful dark, I expect. He jumps from
one cake to another. Maybe he falls into
the water. Well, but he can swim good.
He gets out again. He'll make it. If

had shifted expression. There was an
interval of perspiring pallor, as though
his whole body were sickened over with
the ash and tallow of gray terror.

"What — what's to be done?" said the
man who had come in. He set his lan-
tern down, then took it up, then nerv-
ously set it down again.

With dry articulation, Carroll said:

" You — you didn't go."

" Go where? "

With an empty, colorless voice, Car-
roll added :

" Two hours and a half — plenty of
time — and he didn't go."

116

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

- Suddenly the watchman tore the band-
age from his eye. Then, with his fin-
gers, he squeezed open the swollen lid.
With terrifying scrutiny, he stared at
his father, and straightway the elderly
man became interested in the muddy toe
of his boot. The bristling end of his
gray mustache twitched against his leath-
ery cheek as With an air of bravado he
suddenly threw up his head.

" No, I didn't drown myself. Not
me ! " he exclaimed. " I may be crazy,
but I ain't no such jackass as that."

With choking hoarseness in his voice,
Carroll said :

" He didn't do it, Jamie. He didn't
go. A soldier, a brave man ; but he
won't do this thing,' Jamie, not him!
Out of my house ! Put down that lan-
tern! Get out! "

As the man made no movement, and
stood there in a stupor of amazement,
Carroll fumbled- on the stove-hearth for
the iron poker, caught it up, and jerked
back his arm as if to hurl the missile.
Then, slowly, he relinquished it — let it
drop on the floor. With quick determi-
nation, he called his son: "Jamie, come
here. Give me your hand."

The child was too much stricken with
terror to advance, and again his father
called him :

"What — -you, too? Are you afraid?
Will nobody help?" A coaxing tone
came into the man's voice as he added :
" Come, Jamie; there's a good boy. Give
me your hand."

The child winced with- pain as his
father's strong fist gripped the wee fin-
gers. The boy tried to pull back, but
the man jerked him close. " Now, Ja-
mie, grab up that lantern. Take me to
the river."

The boy fell to crying, and dropped
on his knees. " I can't," he whimpered,
and the man gave the small arm a cruel
wrench.

" Come, none of that ! Get up ! Do
as I tell you ! "

It is strange what courage there may
be in such a little boy. Commonly an
obedient child, Jamie this time could not
be cowed into obedience. He called his
mother ; at the pitch of his shrill voice
he screamed for her to come.

As the man put a heavy hand over the
child's mouth, he said :

" Get up, you little fool ! None of
that ! She's not here. I called her, and
she didn't come."

"Yes, she is — she is, too, in the house!
She was all tired out. She went to bed
right after supper. She'll come. ' Have
her take you to the river."

" Then wake her. Get her up ! " Car-
roll exclaimed. He had scarcely re-
leased the child's .hand when the outside
door again opened, this time to admit a
small woman of seven, with wisps of
tawny hair flying about her pale face and
her eyes all red with crying.

"Run, Jamie!" she panted. "Ma
says to hurry with the lantern."

"You, Rose? Is it you?" her father
asked. "Where's your mother?"

" Out there," the child moistly replied.

With parched articulation, the father
repeated the words :

" Out — out there ! " His mouth quiv-
ered, and he knocked his heavy fists
against his temples. Then, seizing his
head by the hair, he rocked it violently
back and forth.

In his anguish of despair, he said, al-
most quietly: " She got rid of you. She
sent you away. The lantern was an ex-
cuse to get you away from her. You lied
to me, Jamie. You said your mother
was here in the house. Mother? You
have no mother, Jamie. She's gone.
She thought I couldn't see how to cross
the river on the ice. She went. We're
alone, children. She's gone away from
us."

He was convinced of this. He was
thoroughly and terribly convinced, and
yet he fought against believing it. With
the children leading him, the three went
forth into the night, and called and
cried aloud to the woman who was gone
from them. The wailing of the wind
out of the darkness replied to their
shouts, and to the sobbing of little chil-
dren the wet-lipped laughter of the rush-
ing river gave forth its gurgling answer.

The spectral light of the new day dis-
closed a breech, an ugly wound in the
landscape. The icy teeth of the river
had gnawed the bridge away, broken it,
wrenched it, torn it down. On the
Omaha side of the gray-and-yellow flood
the mangled wreckage remained to tell
of the terrific force that had been at
work. Submerged telegraph wires, slant-

KITTEN CARROLL'S BOOK-LEARNlNd.

117

ing up from the water to the bank, kept
jerking and vibrating like harp-strings.
The broken back of the bridge, sloping
down into the current, but still held to-
gether by the railway tracks, continued
to pulsate and groan with the ramming
and battering of the ice cakes.

In the distance, to the north, the gray,
even field of the river was mar-
bled with yellow streaks, showing
the disintegration of ice which
came floating and herding on
down-stream, making the twisted
iron rods of the bridge heave and
clank and chatter as the frozen
blocks successively knocked them-
selves against the wreckage.

The coming of the dawn
brought no relief to the Car-
rolls, and worst of all to bear was
the uncertainty. Abashed and
taciturn, the grandfather had
joined the watchers by the bridge.
From the house he had brought
a pair of field-glasses ; and, as
the day advanced, he could make
out that a red flag, a dan-
ger-signal, was fluttering
on the remaining part
of the bridge on the op-
posite shore.

" Well, the train didn't
go down. That's sure,"
he said.

Almost timidly, the
watchman asked :

"Did she? Could she,
do you think — "

Out of pity for his son,
the old man replied :

" Maybe so. M-aybe she
stopped the train.

" You say that, but
you — How could that
be possible when she couldn't swim?
If you had known what she was going
to do, you would have stopped her,
wouldn't you? You wouldn't let her do
that thing. She sent the children away.
She kissed Rose, and Rose cried, because
her mother was crying. You see how it
has turned out. Well, engineers are al-
ways careful when the water is high.
They stopped the train. It was needless
for her to try to warn them that the
bridge was down."

" Yes, that's so. Quite needless."

"What, you can say that? It was
not. She had to go. Well, and she did
it, and there's an end of it. Only I do
hope we can get the body back."

As the day wore on, some officials of
the railway company came down to the
river to inspect the damage that the ice
had wrought ; and when they heard of

WITH THE CHILDREN LEADING HIM,

THE THREE WENT FORTH

INTO THE NIGHT.

the bereavement that had come to the
watchman's family, they were very sorry
for him. But they talked so much, they
asked so many questions that he went
home with his children and shut himself
up in the house.

He had the little boy and girl eat
something, and then sent them to bed.
Afterward he sat down at the table, fold-
ed his arms on the board, and pillowed
his head on them. He dozed a little;
but, even in his slumber, the muscles of
his face continued to quiver nervously.

118

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

It could not have been very long that
he had remained thus when a knock at
the door announced the arrival of visit-
ors. Reluctantly he bade them enter,
but did not nse from his chair. In his

her; and then, if you want to — send her
away."

In an effort to get rid of his unwel-
come guest, Carroll got promptly to his
feet.

"If I spoke harsh, please forgive
that," he said. " I can't, you under-
stand ; I can't slick up my manners now.
I can't talk nice to you. A bad time to
come.. Maybe — some other
time — we could stand it
to have you here. Much
obliged for coming. It
was good of you."

To get through the or-
deal as rapidly as possible,
he held out his hand ; and,
as the fingers of the wom-

AND SUDDENLY HER ARMS
WENT TIGHT ABOUT HIM.

apathy^ of grief his head drooped to one
side, and he was scarcely conscious of a
man's tread on the floor, accompanied by
the swish of a woman's skirt.

With gruff gentleness, Mr. Dawson,
the division superintendent, was saying :

" Carroll, here's somebody that I guess
you'll be glad to see. She's needed here
■ — a good woman to cook, take care of the
house, and sew for the children."

" Here! A woman? "

" Yes."

" You brought a tvoman here? "

"I did."

" Then, take her away. I won't have
her here."

" Come, man, wake up ! Don't you
understand that — that — At least, thank

an closed on his, there was something
so fervid in the hand-clasp — there was
something so familiar in the pressure of
those work-roughened fingers — that the
man gasped and stood mute. He strove
to speak. His lips wrenched themselves,
apart, but still there was no utterance.

"Jim!" the woman whispered, and
her hand shut tighter upon his.

" How's this? What? Who are you? "
he asked, and then sorrowfully shook his
head. "No," he added; "no, the
drowned are drowned. And yet — and
yet — for Heaven's sake, woman ! "

" My husband ! " she cried out,— and
suddenly her arms went tight about him.
She began to speak. Laughter gurgled
in her throat. Tears filled her eves.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S WATCH.

119

" I've come back," she said. " I came
in a rowboat.. Wires all down. No way
to telegraph. Signaled, but couldn't
make people understand. I'm safe. The
train's safe. But, my stars ! What a
time I had to get across ! Four hundred

on board. Only think of that — four
hundred — and all safe ! Where are the
children? "

She came to a breathless stop, and then
solicitously inquired : " Have they had
their breakfast yet? "

The Railroad Man's Watch

BY H. F. MEDDRIL.

HAVE you ever noticed an engineer, a conductor, or a brakeman take
one of these big silver-cased watches from his pocket and look at it
just as if it were a human being? To the railroad man a watch is
almost human, for it is the one thing in which he must place the most abso-
lute reliance.

It is the only " tool " that he is obliged to purchase with his own
money — everything else is paid for by his employers. But the manner in
which it is regulated, cleaned, and kept in order for him makes a story of
unwaninsr interest.

Constant Care Is Taken to Keep This, the Greatest of All Railroad

Safeguards, from Gaining or Losing the Fraction

of a Second.

NE of the most important of
the safeguards in railroad-
ing is the railroad man's
watch. In classifying a
watch as a railroad safety
appliance, there is this
distinction to be made, that while all
other safety devices are procured at the
expense of the railroad companies, the
watch must be purchased by the en-
gineer, conductor, or brakeman. The
railroad employees, however, see no par-
ticular reason for objecting to this in-
vestment, partly because their well-paid
position calls for no equipment of tools,
and partly because a good watch is a
permanent necessity in their calling.

Few of the vast army of travelers are
aware of the rigid system in force in re-
gard to the timepieces of the employees
— their grade, regulation, and repair. A
watch inspection system, or " time serv-
ice," is now in force on a great ma-

jority of the railroads. In accordance
with the inspection rules, a railroad man
is compelled to purchase a watch of high
grade ; the minimum standard being
what is known among American manu-
facturers as the seventeen- jeweled patent
regulator, adjusted to temperature, iso-
chronism, and five positions.

Must Buy a Good Watch.

While this is not by any means the
most expensive watch produced in
American factories, it has all the essen-
tials necessary to good timekeeping and
first-class service. The " time service "
calls for a watch that will run within
a variation of thirty seconds a week, and
the watch above specified, with proper
attention, will accomplish this and more.
The rules also call for a lever-set watch
in preference to a pendant set, as the
former is less liable to get out of order,

120

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

the setting device being hidden away and
less liable to be interfered with than the
pendant setting.

The Time Inspector's Duties.

The inspection system calls for the
service of a general time inspector and
a staff of local inspectors, the latter
situated at such points on the road as
will make it convenient for the men to
have their watches attended to in accord-
ance with the rules. These inspectors
are, of course, expert watch - repairers,
and are generally selected from such
local jewelers as are known to possess
special competency in this line.

The railroad man, having provided
himself with a watch of the specified
grade, is compelled by the rules to sub-
mit this timepiece once every two weeks
to a local inspector for regulation by
comparison with a standard clock.

This bimonthly examination of the
timepiece by the inspector is most pains-
taking. He ' notes whether it calls for
cleaning or mere regulation, and a com-
plete record is kept of the rate of the
watch, the date of regulation or repair,
the number of seconds gained or lost
since its last inspection, the name of the
owner, and other particulars.

This bimonthly examination of the
card, which he carries on his person, and
on which the inspector marks the rate
of the watch after each inspection,
affords a convenient means of compar-
ing the rate of the watch at different
times, and its improvement or deteriora-
tion in this respect. In addition to the
record which the inspector keeps for
himself, he has to furnish the general
time-inspector with similar information,
together with any personal report which
he wishes to make.

It is p the duty of the time-inspector
to make note of such as may not submit
their watches regularly for inspection, or
whose watches are showing imperfect
service. Prompt action is taken in all
such cases to discipline the delinquents
and enforce obedience to the rules.

It should be stated that the railroad
man is not compelled to purchase his
timepiece in any particular place or from
any particular jeweler or manufacturer.
The watch can be purchased anywhere.

provided it is of the specified grade, and
meets with the approval of the local in-
spector. Neither is the railroad man com-
pelled to give his watch for repair to any
particular jeweler or watch-inspector.

He can have the timepiece repaired by
whomsoever he wishes, the only stipula-
tion being that it be submitted for the
approval of the inspector before it is
again put into use.. This is necessary to
the thoroughness of the system.

System of Loaning Watches.

Another interesting feature of the
time system is the loaning of watches to
the men while their own are being re-
paired. The watch thus loaned must,
of course, be similar to that left for
repair, as the companies can take no
chances on any imperfect timekeeper.
Under the system of Avatch - inspection,
which is generally regarded as the most
perfect now in use, the inspectors are
furnished with standard railroad watches
in nickel cases, which they are free to
loan to the railroad men while their own
are being repaired. The loaned watch
must be strictly up to the requirements
laid down in the rules.

As the railroad " time service " speci-
fies a standard for all watches, it is to
the interest of the various watch com-
panies to produce a grade which cor-
responds exactly to this standard. The
railroad man is free to purchase any
make he chooses, provided it is up to
this standard. There is absolutely no
discrimination, as is sometimes charged,
and the best interests of the railroad
men are carefully looked after.

Five Thousand Inspected.

Some idea of the number and value of
the watches used on the railroads may be
had from the reports furnished by the
chief inspector. For instance, on- the
New York Central lines alone, a total
of about five thousand watches were
regularly inspected last year ; and if we
calculate the value of these watches at
an average of twenty-five dollars (which
is somewhat low), it will be seen that
on this railroad the system calls for an
investment of one hundred and twenty-
five thousand dollars.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S WATCH.

121

This is not taking into account the
standard watches loaned to the men
when their own are being repaired, nor
the system of standard clocks, which is
also an essential of the " time service."

The watch-inspection system is long
past the experimental stage, and has
proved its full value, both to the rail-
road companies and to the men. There
is no record of any railroad having dis-
pensed with the system once it is in-
stalled, and doubtless the time is not far
distant when some form of " time serv-
ice " will be made compulsory on rail-
roads.

An interesting result of the system is
the great pride taken by the railroad
men in the time-keeping performance of
the watches. It is quite customary to
see these men comparing their time
records and engaging in friendly dispu-
tation over the achievements of their
watches on time-keeping. This spirit
appeals most favorably to the railroad
companies, and it also strikes a respon-
sive cord in the traveling public, who
have come to regard the railroad watch
as a factor in their safety, and the
only unerring authority on the exact
time.

BIG SHIPMENT OF BUFFALOES.

The Canadian Northern Carries 347 Head, in a Special Train of 23
Cars, a Distance of 315 Miles.

UNIVERSAL and exceptional was the
freight train of the Canadian North-
ern Railway that left Lamont for Wain-
wright, Alberta, one day this summer,
laden with three hundred and forty-seven
of the wildest buffaloes of the plains, to be
shipped to new pastures in the rich northern
prairie lands.

The train was made up of twenty-three
of the best appointed stock cars, fitted with
feed and water-troughs, especially built in
the cars for the journey. Each car was ar-
ranged with separate stalls, for .the buffaloes
had to make a trip of three hundred and
fifteen miles to a place where conditions
more consistent with their nature — such as
pasturage and shelter — are to be had, and
Where it is expected that the benefits derived
from a milder climate will prolong the lives
and increase the herd.

This consignment was only part of a herd
bought by the Canadian government from
Michael Pable, an Indian breeder in Mon-
tana, who, with singular foresight, herded
together about twenty-five years ago some
twenty-five of the animals.

The herd was bought in a lot, which was
conservatively said to contain four hundred
head. The price paid was about two hun-
dred and fifty thousand dollars. When
the last buffalo is lassoed and conquered,
preparatory to being loaded and shipped to
his new home, the herd will number about
seven hundred.

The shipment meant an astonishing

amount of hard and dangerous work. The
animals are wild, and their powers of en-
durance are marvelous. The horses used
are reenforced many times before a single
buffalo is safely penned. The cowboys are
experts in their line, and when their work
is completed each- should come in for a
benefit from the hero fund.

The train-load of animals was in charge
of Howard Douglass, who was assisted by
nine typical cowboys, in whose physique
could be discerned the healthful glow, the
agile, graceful' step, the piercing, cautious
eye so strongly developed in men of their
calling.

The Canadian Northern handled the ani-
mals with great care, because each buffalo
had to be pulled onto a car and separately
stalled. It took three days to get the entire
' consignment aboard. No effort at record-
breaking speed was attempted, but right of
way was accorded the train in all cases.
Feed and watering facilities were had in the
terminal yard at Saskatoon, where Superin-
tendent S. S. Foley and Chief Clerk Barry
and their assistants looked after every de-
tail that meant comfort for the animals.
Watering and feeding was done without
unloading.

Two of the buffaloes died en route, one a
small calf too young for the strenuous jour-
ney ; the other a three-year-old cow that
died from a bursted blood vessel, due to her
wild attempts for freedom. Each buffalo
is said to be worth one thousand dollars.

The Railroad Man's
Brain Teaser.

CAN YOU ANSWER THIS ONE?

is a fortunate magazine whose readers can anticipate the re-
quests of the editor. Whether it is that this magazine is in
such close contact with its readers that the wishes of the
readers and the wishes of the editor are apt to be the same
we do not know, but this seems a likely solution.

Last month we expressed a wish to have our readers send
in some puzzles in response to a request that we continue the puzzle de-
partment. Before we could get the request in type, along came Mr.
Charles G. Cook, of Newport, Rhode Island, with the following little
mystery. Mr. Cook does not give us his postal address, but if he will
send us his own solution of it we will hold it as the authoritative one, as
is our custom.

Sound, as we all know, travels at a velocity of about one thousand
one hundred feet per second. Let us assume that it takes just five seconds
to travel one mile. A train standing two miles away on a track blows
the whistle. It will take the sound about ten seconds to reach us.

Let us suppose that we are standing at a certain spot along a railroad
track. A train is approaching us traveling at the rate of a mile a minute.

At a point exactly two miles away from us the engineer pulls the
whistle-cord and holds it down for two minutes, or until the train
reaches us. We see the steam coming out of the whistle when the cord
is pulled, but do not hear the sound of the whistle for about ten seconds.
When the train is opposite us the engineer releases the cord.

The whistle has been blowing for two minutes, but we hear the sound
for only one minute and about fifty seconds. If the conditions are re-
versed, the train going in the opposite direction, and the whistle blown
for two minutes, we hear the sound for two minutes and ten seconds.

Question: What becomes of the ten seconds of noise in the first
case, and where does the ten seconds of noise come from in the second

THE TWO-TWENTY LOCAL.

BY EDGAR WELTON COOLEY.

How the Obstacles of Fate Prevented James Junkins
Jentz from Keeping an Engagement with Cupid.

[AMES JUNKINS JENTZ turned
softly on his swivel-chair and
glanced suspiciously at the ac-
countants at work at their
desks.

A deep furrow creased his
forehead between his brows, his eyes
traveled restlessly from one to another
of his employees, and his 'head was bent
a trifle forward, as though he was anx-
ious to catch any whispered comment
that might be made.

But knowledge of his intense gaze was
not made manifest by any of his subordi-
nates ; neither word nor sign betrayed
any suspicion on the part of any one.
Wherefore, Mr. James Junkins Jentz,
having satisfied himself that there was no
eye to witness what he might do, turned
softly back to his desk, carefully unlocked
a small drawer in front of him, and took
therefrom a letter.

The letter was enclosed in an envelope,
but the envelope was not of that appear-
ance which characterizes business station-
ery. It was square in shape and pale blue
in color, and , the single sheet which it
enclosed was of the same tint. The
writing was unmistakably feminine; to
paper and envelope clung the faint scent
of heliotrope.

Mr. Jentz unfolded the letter quietly.
A bright glitter illumined his eyes, his
lips parted in a smile.

The epistle had been in the possession
of Mr. Jentz for ten days, and during
that time he had read it many times, and
its every word was perfectly familiar
to him.

But he read it again, partly because it
was a new experience to Mr. Jentz, and
partly because he wished to assure himself
that nothing, not even the most trivial

bit of information, should escape his
memory.

" It will be glorious," it ran, " to fool
my friends. None of them, so far as I
know, even suspects our engagement. If
you are careful, dear, no one need know
of your presence in Arlington. You
should arrive on the local at two-twenty
in the afternoon. We can be married in
the presence of only my immediate fam-
ily, at six o'clock, and quietly take the
eight-ten train for the East."

When Mr. Jentz had read thus far he
carefully refolded the letter, replaced it
in the envelope and slipped it into his
pocket. Then he turned once more in
his chair, and regarded with renewed
suspicion the clerks in the other room.

But as even the office-boy, at that mo-
ment deep in the allurements of a dime-
novel, bestowed upon Mr. Jentz not so
much as a single glance, he drew a deep
breath of relief and looked at his watch.
It was 9.30, and his train was to leave in
an hour.

Mr. Jentz arose from his chair in a
very casual and indifferent manner. He
struggled heroically to conceal from vul-
gar gaze or prying eyes the trepidation
that suddenly had seized him.

He softly closed the roll-top of his
desk, put his hat on in the most careless
manner, passed into the hall, walked
slowly and deliberately to the elevator,
and was soon out upon the street.

But once clear of the office-building,
Mr. Jentz hailed a cab, and was driven
rapidly to his hotel. Without waiting to
take the elevator he hurried up two flights
of stairs to his apartments, grabbed his
carefully packed suit-case, rushed down
again, climbed into the cab, and was
whirled away toward the railway station.

123

124

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Upon entering the waiting-room he
glanced uneasily abcoit to make sure that
nobody in the crowd recognized him.
Beholding no familiar countenance, he
strode boldly to the ticket-window and
purchased a ticket for Arlington.

Making his way through the gate like
a culprit eluding the law, Mr. Jentz
sought an inconspicuous seat in a coach,
pulled his hat well over his eyes, and al-
most shivered with apprehension until
the train started.

But, once beyond the town limits, he
drew another long breath of relief, raised
himself to his full height and began to
mentally review what would be expected
of him when he should reach his desti-
nation.

He wondered what the boys at the
office would say when they heard that he
had slipped away to marry. The thought
brought a broad grin to his face.

But one disturbing thought, one poign-
ant fear, intruded itself upon Mr. Jentz's
meditations. There were but ten min-
utes for connections at Arlington Junc-
tion. Suppose something should occur
to delay his train, and he should fail to
catch the local on the other road.

The mere supposition made him ner-
vous, so nervous that presently, when a
series of short, shriirblasts of the whistle
was followed by a 'severe jarring and
jolting that nearly threw him from his
seat, he grew excited.

" Heavens ! " he gasped, when the train
came to a stop, " we're off the track! "

He threw up a window, and through
the narrow opening he thrust his fat face
and broad shoulders as far as possible.

At a road-crossing a herd of cattle was
on the track. A farmer's boy was.using
his utmost to drive them off the right of
way, but they had become entirely un-
manageable.

A brakeman, standing upon the front
platform of the forward coach, swearing
vigorously, added much to the confusion
that prevailed.

As the moments passed, Mr. Jentz
manifested many evidences of impatience.
He glanced repeatedly at his watch,
thrust his head out the window only to
draw it in again, cast frequent indignant
glances at a timid little man across the
aisle, as though he was .to blame for the
delay, and mumbled incoherently.

But the impatience of Mr. Jentz, in-
tense though it was, was not potent to
clear the track. So, finally, arising and
making his way to the platform of his
car, he addressed the conductor stand-
ing beside the train.

" Why," he demanded in a loud and
rather boisterous voice, " doesn't that boy
get those cattle out of the way? "

" I don't know,", replied the conductor,
struggling to keep his own temper under
control.

" You don't know ! " James Junkins
Jentz regarded the conductor with un-
disguised contempt. " Why don't you
know? Isn't it your business to know? "

" I don't think so," responded the con-
ductor, heroically calm and unruffled.
" I don't believe there is anything in the
book. of rules which requires a conductor
to know why a cow, or any number of
cows, persist in going in every direction
but the one in which you wish them to
go."

" I don't suppose there is," snapped
Mr. Jentz, who was not in a pleasant
mood. In the excited condition of his
mind 'the delay seemed of unusual dura-
tion, and he was growing decidedly anx-
ious regarding that connection at Arling-
ton Junction.

" But I had thought that conductors
were required to use every effort to get
their trains through on time; that they
were not supposed to sit down and wait
until some blamed brindle bovine makes
up its mind to get off the track!

" It would seem to me " — Mr. Jentz
inserted his thumbs beneath his suspend-
ers and glared crushingly at the con-
ductor, "that passengers who have paid
their fare and are anxious to reach junc-
tion points in time to catch connecting
trains, have as many rights as any
freckle-faced boy that deliberately drives
his cattle in front of a train."

" If I were you," advised the conduc-
tor consolingly, " I'd go and sit down.
I should try to keep cool. It is a very
warm day, and one should avoid getting
unduly excited."

Mr. Jentz drew in his breath violently,
opened and closed his fingers spasmodic-
ally, and puffed out his cheeks. But he
did not speak.

For the moment words adequate to do
his feelings justice failed to manifest

THE TWO-TWENTY LOCAL.

125

themselves to his agitated mind. When
finally his accumulated indignation was
just about to relieve itself by verbal ut-
terance, the conductor shouted: "All
aboard ! "

Mr. Jentz returned to his seat, but he
did not keep cool. His face grew pur-
ple, and he shifted his legs from one knee
to the other with nervous frequency.

His agitation, accentuated by the re-
marks of the conductor, increased rather
than diminished, and he was very irrita-
ble when, a half-hour later, the train sud-
denly stopped again in the midst of far-
stretching fields.

Mr. Jentz thrust an anxious face
out of the window, but could see noth-
ing to cause the delay.

A brakeman ran hurriedly through the
car. Mr. Jentz hailed him, but the
brakeman did not pause nor answer, so
Mr. Jentz contented himself with scow-
ling after his retreating figure and mum-
bling to himself.

But, as the train did not start imme-
diately, Mr. Jentz presently strode wrath-
fully out upon the platform. A number
of trainmen, with a bucket of water, were
apparently doing something to one of the
wheels.

"What's the matter?" demanded Mr.
Jentz. " What are you stopping here
for?"

" A hot box," replied the conductor
shortly, favoring Mr. Jentz with one
brief look of disgust.

" So ! " resumed Mr. Jentz irritably.
" First, it was cattle on the track, and
now it is a hot box. What will it be
next?"

" I don't know," admitted the conduc-
tor impatiently.

" Of course you don't know," resumed
Mr. Jentz. " You haven't had time to
make up your mind yet, have you? But
you seem determined to make me miss my
connections. If you do — "

Mr. Jentz did not say just what would
happen in that event, but the altogether
savage expression of his countenance
boded ill to some one in the event the
dire calamity should occur.

Plainly, however, any wrathful express-
sions which Mr. Jentz might utter were
of little assistance in cooling a hot box,
and so he returned to his' seat and tried
vainly to conceal his anger.

When the train again got under way,
Mr. Jentz glanced at his watch, and the
light of renewed hope came into his eyes.
So far as he could determine, fully
fifteen minutes had already been lost ;
but, as he had still some distance to
travel before reaching Arlington Junc-
tion, it was possible that at least the nec-
essary five minutes of time could be
made up.

For perhaps an hour nothing more oc-
curred to ruffle Mr. Jentz's feelings; but
at the end of that period the train again
stopped suddenly, far from any town.

This incident, occurring at a moment
when Mr. Jentz's nerves were far from
being in a tranquil condition, precipi-
tated him into a state of great mental
excitement, and he again hastened to the
front platform to investigate the cause
of the delay.

" What — ■" he began, then paused.
The conductor and brakeman were ex-
changing significant glances. The brake-
man was laughing.

" What's the matter with you fel-
lows?" roared Mr. Jentz suspiciously.
" Are you laughing at me? What? "

" Not exactly," replied the brakeman.
" Only I bet the con you'd be the first
passenger to rubber. I won."

"Indeed?" Mr. Jentz was almost
fuming. " And why shouldn't I ' rub-
ber,' as you call it? Why shouldn't I
be anxious about these numerous and un-
necessary delays? I've got to catch a
train at Arlington Junction, and we're
late now."

" You seem to be very greatly ex-
cited," ventured the brakeman soothing-
ly. " You must have an important en-
gagement to keep."

" I have," snapped Mr. Jentz pom-
pously. " A very important engage-
ment, indeed."

"Weddin'?" asked the brakeman
slyly.

Mr. Jentz's mouth opened like a fish
gasping for breath ; then it closed again
with a snap, and his face turned scarlet.
" You — you — " he began, breathing
heavily; then his wandering vision be-
held a number ' of freight-cars standing
at the bottom of a steep grade ahead.

"What — -'what's those cars doing
there?" he finished.

" Too heavy a load," replied the train-

126

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

man laconically. " Had to double the
hill."

"Double the hill?" Mr. Jentz was
plainly puzzled. " I do not understand."

The brakeman regarded Mr. Jentz
with infinite disgust.

" They couldn't make the grade," he
explained, " and had to cut the train in
two. They'll be back after the rest in
a few moments."

" Oh ! " A great light broke in upon
Mr. Jentz's understanding, then his brow
darkened. " And we have to wait here
until they do?" he demanded.

" Reckon so," replied the other.
" There seems to be only one track."

" It's an outrage ! " Mr. Jentz broke
forth, all his pent-up indignation over-
flowing. " A monstrous outrage ! "

He got off the steps and paced back
and forth, his eyes downcast, his pudgy
hands clasped behind his back.

" That's nothin'," rejoined the brake-
man flippantly. " If you were a rail-
roader, you'd get used to it."

Mr.. Jentz turned suddenly and glared
at the trainman.

" If I were a railroader," he ejacu-
lated^ " I'd run my train on time, or I'd
know the reason why."

" And if I were a passenger," retorted
the brakeman calmly, "I'd keep my seat
and not get excited over trifles. It
doesn't do any good."

" No," admitted Mr. Jentz sorrow-
fully ; " it doesn't do any good. When
trainmen are determined to miss connec-
tions, you can't say or do anything to
make them change their minds."

And with this sarcastic rejoinder, Mr.
Jentz climbed laboriously aboard the
train and sought sanctuary in his seat.

After many moments — an age it
seemed to Mr. Jentz — the train got un-
der way again. He assumed a morose
attitude and glared at his fellow passen-
gers.

- When at last he reached Arlington
Junction, he disembarked hurriedly,
hastened into the waiting-room, and pre-
sented himself at the ticket-window..

"Has the local gone West yet?" he
asked excitedly.

" Yes, sir," replied the agent quietly.
" It has. It left about five minutes ago."

For a brief instant a sulfuric explo-
sion trembled upon Mr. Jentz's lips, but

it did not materialize. A woman and a
babe occupied an adjacent seat, and the
woman appeared as though she were shy
and easily frightened.

Heroically Mr. Jentz controlled his
deep emotions and fixed his burning eyes
upon the agent.

" Where," he inquired in a quavering
voice, " can I find a secluded spot where
eye may not see nor ear hear ? I want to
swear." i

" Don't," admonished the agent sym-
pathetically. " Sit down and save your
breath. The limited will be along in a
few minutes."

"The limited?" Mr. Jentz was
breathing more easily. i

" Yes, sir. It leaves here only a half-
hour behind the local."

For exactly three seconds Mr. Jentz
regarded the agent in calm and unde-
monstrative silence; then his lips parted,
in a smile, the smile broadened to a grin,'
and he once more pulsated with the joy
of living. j

When the limited arrived, Mr. Jentz
boarded the rear Pullman. He thought
he could disembark therefrom at Arling-
ton in a much less conspicuous manner
than would be possible from one of the
forward cars.

And presently, when the train whistled
for Arlington and slowed down for the
station, Mr. Jentz, suit - case in hand,
stepped out upon the rear platform. He
hoped he would be unnoticed by any one ;
he trusted that the crowd on the station
platform would be small ; that there
would be none there who knew him.

He realized that secrecy must mark his
movements; that at all hazards he must,
so far as possible, avoid the public eye.

When, therefore, the train stopped and
Mr. Jentz surveyed with anxious gaze
his surroundings, he drew in his breath
with a loud noise. The station platform
was black with a gay and enthusiastic
crowd of men, women, and children, and
all eyes seemed fixed upon him.

Flags were waving, and at one corner
of the station building a band was play-
ing " Hail to the Chief " ! although its
strains could scarcely be heard above the
cheers of the multitude when they beheld^
the portly form of Mr. Jentz.

Presently, from out the throng, Mr.
Jentz beheld, pressing its way toward

THE TWO-TWENTY LOCAL.

127

him, what appeared to be a reception
committee.

The members of the committee caught
him by the arms; they fairly pulled him
from the Pullman ; they grasped his hand
in theirs and shook it till it ached.

Then, with the assistance of several
policemen, who drove back the surging
crowd, they escorted him to waiting car-
riages.

And all the time Mr. Jentz was so
overcome with surprise that he could not
utter a word. Vainly he tried to think
what it all could mean ; vainly he en-
deavored to fathom the mystery of this
unexpected and most demonstrative re-
ception.

And then it dawned upon Mr. Jentz's
comprehension that a procession had
formed ; that it was marching up the
main street of the town ; that the top of
the carriage in which he was seated was
down so that every eye might see him ;
that the three other occupants of the
vehicle were total strangers to him, al-
though, from their appearance, promi-
nent residents of Arlington.

Mr. Jentz felt the chills run up and
down his back ; he felt his temples burn-
ing as though r'ed-hot coals were pressed
against them. On every side the popu-
lace seemed bent upon doing him homage.

He felt that upon any other occasion,
under any other circumstances, he could
have enjoyed himself immensely, but now,
when secrecy was so desirable — Heavens !

Presently he became aware that the
carriage had drawn up beside the town
square; that he was being escorted to a
platform about which another large
crowd had congregated.

He drew a hand across his eyes and
pinched himself, then allowed his bewil-
dered vision to rest upon a well-groomed
individual who had advanced to the front
of the platform and was addressing those
assembled.

" Fellow citizens," he was saying, " I
will not take any of your time this after-
noon. You did not come here to listen
to me, but rather to harken to the elo-
quent words of our distinguished visitor."

Mr. Jentz gasped. Cold perspiration
broke out all over him.

" Ladies and gentlemen," the other
continued, " it is my great pleasure to
introduce to you our next Governor."

A wild cheer swelled up from the
crowd. . The well-groomed gentleman
had turned and was looking at Mr. Jentz.

Like one in a dream, Mr. Jentz found
himself trying to rise, but his knees for-
sook him, and he sank back weakly in
his chair.

" Gentlemen," he exclaimed desperately
to those about him, " you have made a
mistake- — a very amusing mistake."

He attempted to laugh, but the effort
was a feeble one. He could feel ten
thousand eyes upon him. " I am not
your candidate for Governor. I am not
a candidate for any office. I am only — "

He paused suddenly. He must not re-
veal his name. His large business in-
terests had made it a familiar one in
Arlington. He must conceal his identity
in the presence of what appeared to be
the entire population of the town.

"Who are you?" "What's your
name?" "Why did you attempt to im-
personate the Governor?" A dozen ex-
cited persons seemed speaking at once.

Mr. Jentz groaned inwardly. He was
not feeling in the best of spirits.

" Gentlemen, gentlemen," he expostu-
lated. " I came to Arlington for a cer-
tain purpose; a legitimate purpose, 1
assure you, but one which will not per-
mit of my revealing my identity at pres-
ent. __ I was not trying to impersonate
anybody. I did not force myself upon
you. If you will remember, you dragged
me from the train and compelled me to
accompany you. I am sorry if I resemble
the next Governor, but I mean no harm
by that. Had it not been for the per-
verseness of trainmen on another road, I
should have arrived here on the local,
and this unfortunate incident would not
have happened. I have not seen your
candidate. I do not know where he is
or why he failed to come to Arlington — "

The next few moments were moments
of great embarrassment to Mr. Jentz.
He managed to get off the platform,
but was painfully conscious of suspicious
glances and derisive words.

A block distant he paused to again
dry his damp brow. " Heavens ! '• he
exclaimed fervently.

Then he turned and gazed down the
street toward the home of his fiancee.

" Heavens ! " he repeated. " I wonder
if she was there! "

INDUSTRIAL ROLL OF HONOR.

More Chapters in the Never-Finished
History of Self- Sacrificing Heroism.

Police Duties Need Men,
but Bring Honors.

AS well as the regular recognition of the
- police authorities, the policemen of New-
York who have been fortunate enough to
save people from drowning at the risk of
their own lives, receive medals of recogni-
tion from the United States Life-Saving
Corps. This year thirteen medals were dis-
tributed, and of two other men who had
earned medals, one died in the meantime,
and the other was absent on sick leave.

The winners of silver medals were : Pa-
trolman Joseph Heckley, Patrolman John F.
Murphy, Patrolman Alexis Kleinmeir, and
Patrolman John Lynch. The recipients of
bronze medals were : Patrolman Thomas J.
Craddock, Patrolman James Travis, Patrol-
man Stephen Crowley, Patrolman Thomas
O'Loughlin, George Cadger, doorman of the
Bath Beach station ; John J. Noonan, Henry
L. Lobdell, and James Dugan, of the traffic
squad, and James Hughes,- of the harbor
squad.

The patrolman absent on sick leave was
Frank A. Wolf, who receives a silver medal.
Lieutenant Callahan was to receive a bronze
medal, but he died of heart-failure some
weeks before. Commissioner Bingham dis-
tributed the medals, and learning that John J.
Noonan, of the traffic squad, had in the
meantime become the father of twins, he
called him forward, shook hands with him,
and hoped that there would be at least one
good policeman in the two.

Youth Whose Pluck Was
Backed by Strength.

FROM Black Lake, Michigan, comes an-
other story of youthful heroism. A
Chicago boy of fifteen years rescued from
the waters of the lake his father and a
woman whom the father had made an in-
effectual attempt to save.

Arthur Wakeford, the father, saw the boat
of Mrs. Frank G. Mason capsize and swam
to her rescue.

He reached her as she came up the second

time, but the frantic woman flung her arms
around him and dragged him down. Mr.
Wakeford was helpless, when his boy, Addi-
son, who was rowing near by, dived into
the water.

He succeeded in releasing his father from
the grasp of the woman and got him into the
boat. He then went after the woman,
whom he also managed to drag into the boat.

When he got them to shore the man was
in the worse plight, and it took considerably
longer to bring him out of danger than it
did to restore the woman whom he had tried
to save.

•J*

Blind Devotion, but
Instinctive Heroism.

BECAUSE she stayed to save her baby
sister, Carmella Landfia, a little Italian
girl, of New York, was crushed to death by
a trolley car. The only details that could
be gathered came from the distressed motor-
man who had narrowly escaped a lynching
from a crowd of infuriated Italians.

It seems that the little girl, twelve years
old, was taking her little twenty-months-old
sister across the street. The little girl had
toddled on a few feet in advance, and was
half-way across the tracks, when a car was
suddenly seen to be bearing down on her.

The motorman flung on the brakes, but he
was too near. Instantly the older sister
dashed forward, practically diving under the
car, and pushed her baby sister forward.

Retreat for her was, of course, impossible.
The car caught her and bore her under its
wheels, and when she was extricated life
was extinct.

The baby was caught, also, but only one
foot was injured, and she will recover.

Quick Witted and Prompt
at the Age of Five.

DETERMINATION and pluck were
written all over the- feat performed
by the five-year-old daughter of William
Williamson, who lies near Findlay, Ohio.

128

INDUSTRIAL ROLL OF HONOR.

129

The child, with her older sister, aged seven,
and several other children, was playing
around a bonfire, when the older girl's cloth-
ing caught fire.

The rest of the children ran away in a.
panic, and the seven-year-old girl herself
was quite helpless with fright. The little
one was anything but helpless.

First she tried valiantly to smother the
flames with her tiny hands, but in this she
was unsuccessful. Then she seized her sis-
ter and dragged her to the yard pump,
pushed her under the spout, and pumped
water over her.

This was effective, and although the girl
was badly burned, her life was saved. The
younger girl was badly burned about the
hands, but happy in the outcome of her feat.

Great Bravery of
a Rescued One.

IF the matter is carefully weighed, it will
probably be conceded that the most
heroic part in a certain rescue at Bath Beach
recently was played by one of the rescued
ones. Two young boys, Joseph Heck and
Edward Frost, ten and twelve years, respec-
tively, had got into a rowboat while pad-
dling around on the beach, and were so in-
tent on their play that they did not notice
that the boat was drifting from the shore
until it was three hundred feet away.

There were no oars in the boat, and
neither boy could swim. They called loudly
for help, but the crowd on shore thought it
was part of their play, and their only notice
was to laugh and jeer.

Soon, in his panic, Heck upset the boat.
Frost managed to grab the bottom, but
Heck was pitched several feet away, and, in
spite of all his struggles, could not reach it.
Then Frost, unable to swim, did. the heroic
thing.

On the off-chance that he would be able
to struggle back to the boat, he let go his
safe hold and floundered to his friend. But
Heck had lost his nerve, and his struggles
soon had both boys in the gravest peril.

Just then two young men on the beach,
with more intelligence than the others, saw
the plight of the children, and swam out to
their help, getting them safely to shore. One
of the young men, John Russel, is said to
have thirty lives to his credit.

Fire Made and
Nearly Killed a Hero.

POLICEMAN PHILIP BERNSTEIN,
of Brooklyn, came pretty near to being
a dead hero after saving a man and woman

9 R R

in a Brooklyn fire, and but for the efforts
of a fireman this would assuredly have been
his fate.

When Bernstein discovered the fire at 799
Flushing Avenue there was no time to give
an alarm before attending to the inmates.
The policeman clambered on the roof of a
shed and broke into the burning building
by a second-story window.

There he found Frank Brenner and his
wife, Teresa, both of them sixty-five years
of age, lying on their bed stupefied by smoke.
He first took the woman on his back and
climbed out onto the shed with her, and then
returned for the old man.

He again returned and assisted a boarder
of the Brenners to safety. He was pushing
his way through the flame and smoke-filled
house when the floor on which he was walk-
ing collapsed and he was thrown into the
hall below, being rendered unconscious by
the fall and the smoke. In the meantime
somebody had given the alarm and a fireman
dashed into the blazing house and rescued
Bernstein from his perilous position.

Dwight's Pluck Gives
Him a Long Swim.

WITH what is described as a reckless
disregard of his own life, Lester S.
Dwight, night wire chief of the American
Telephone and Telegraph Company, New
York, saved the life of a young woman at
Bath Beach some weeks ago.

Dwight lives in a forty-foot sloop off
Bath Beach. He had boarded a small boat
at Captain's Pier with the intention of pull-
ing out to his sloop, when he saw a young
woman run to the end of the pier and hurl
herself into the water.

Instantly he jumped in after her, though
the tide vv«as running strongly out and the
night was pitch dark. A moment later, the
water having cooled the enthusiasm of the
young woman, she began to shout lustily for
help, and by the time Dwight had reached
her she was so intent upon living that she
clutched him around the neck, to the danger
of both.

He fought her off roughly, and although
he is a strong man, he had to use all his
strength to subdue the fear-crazed woman.

Dwight's strength was fast giving out,
when he bumped against the side of a small
boat, which he managed to grab. For half
an hour he had to cling to the boat before
his friends, directed by the woman's screams,
could get help to him. He refused medical
attention, but the woman was taken to the
Coney Island Hospital, fortunately suffering
nothing worse than exhaustion from immer-

THE COURAGE CLUB,

BY JOHNSTON McCULLEY,

Author of "Richard Hughes — Railroad Detective," "At Bay on the

Limited," " Shipmates With Horror," Etc.

Nos. 5 and 6— Parks Conquers His Peril, and Though Druke Fails

to Find Himself, He Graduates from the

College of Odd Jobs.

VII.

CARCELY had the clock struck
nine-thirty that evening, when
Parks, accompanied by the
captain, left the precinct sta-
tion and made his way up-
town. The captain had prom-
ised him a speedy death should
he attempt to escape. He did not ask
Parks where they were going, but jour-
neyed with his prisoner by trolley, trans-
ferred to another line, and stepped to the
street in a fashionable part of town.

" What are you going to do up here
among the silk-stockings? " demanded the
captain.

Parks smiled and consulted his watch.
" You shall see soon," he replied. " It
is five minutes of ten, and we have only
a block to go."

Presently Parks turned in at the door
of a large house. The captain followed,
wondering. Parks stepped to the door
and rang the bell. Before his hand could
drop to his side the door was opened
by a young man in evening dress who
fairly caught Parks in his arms. Behind
him were other men in evening dress,
who crowded close and asked a multi-
tude of questions. '

" Just a moment," said Parks, pushing
them away from him and laughing. " I
am under arrest for murderous assault
and have been refused bail. Captain
Deek here is guarding me. Allow me to
present him. Captain Deek — Mr. How-
ard Rockington ! "

Began in the June Railroad Aan's Magazine

130

" Rockington ! " gasped the captain.
" Not—"

" Yes," muttered Rockington, reaching
for the captain's hand. " I'm the mil-
lionaire, if that's what you mean. Come
in, captain."

" But this man — this teamster — " The
captain indicated Parks.

"Don't you know him?" Rockington
asked.

" He gave his name as Walter Parks."

" Well — er — that isn't exactly his true
name, you know. His real name is Wal-
ter Parker ! "

" Not—"

" Exactly ! " said Rockington. " The
Walter Parker ! "

" But — " began the captain.

Rockington laughed.

" We'll go into the other room and ex-
plain," he said. " Come."

When they were seated in the other
room, and the captain was thankfully
sipping a glass of wine, Rockington ex-
plained.

" Have you ever heard of the Courage
Club? " he asked.

" I have heard something of such an
organization," the captain admitted.

" All the gentlemen present are mem-
bers," continued Rockington, " with the
exception of yourself and Mr. Parker.
Parker will be a member, I expect, within
an hour. Some time ago, you will remem-
ber, Herr Burgher, the eminent scholar,
declared in an article that the rich young
men of America were moral and physical
cowards ; that they were unable to go

Single copies, (0 cents.

THE COURAGE CLUB.

131

into the world penniless and make their
own livings; that they were wanting in
courtesy to women, and a number of dis-
agreeable things like that.

" We took exception to Herr Burgher's
statements, and the Courage Club was
formed to prove them false. Every ap-
plicant for membership is compelled to
undergo a test for one month. Mr.
Parker has finished his test to-night.

" He had orders to leave his home
without a cent in his pocket, obtain a
position of some sort, and exist for a
month on what he earned. He was not
to appeal to friends or relatives for help ;
he was not to disclose his real identity ;
he was to show courage if an opportunity
presented itself, and he was to be cour-
teous to women at all times."

Parker smiled.

"I' got in trouble by going to a wom-
an's aid," he said. Then he turned to the
captain. " You understand now," he con-
tinued, " why I said I could get bail after
ten o'clock to-night. My test would be
ended then, and I could use my own iden-
tity and the influence it exerts."

" If I had only known you," began the
captain.

" It was against the rules of the club
for me to tell you my real name."

" If you had called your lawyer — "

" That would have been contrary to
the club's rules also."

" I see," said the captain.

" If you will remain in this room, cap-
tain," said Rockington, " while we listen
to Mr. Parker's story and admit him to
membership in the club if he deserves it,
I'll pledge you my word of honor that
I'll return your prisoner to you after-
ward."

"It isn't necessary," said the captain.
" Mr. Parker may go on his own recog-
nizance."

" But I am charged with murderous as-
sault," protested Parker.

" I pray you will not feel annoyed.
I'll see that you are not bothered. Per-
haps— perhaps I have been too hasty ! "

" But you think I am a smooth thug,
you know," said Parker, smiling.

" I hope you will forget anything I
may have said. I — I am sorry for what
has occurred."

" Just one thing," said Parker. " Are
you saying these things because I am a

rich man, or because you know I was un-
justly accused and held?"

" Because," faltered the captain, " you
were — er- — unjustly accused and held."

" Thank you," replied Parker. " You'll
know where to find me if I am wanted."

" Yes, sir. But I think you'll not be
wanted, sir."

" As for Miss Adley's case, I'll be on
hand to testify," continued Parker to the
captain, " and if the thug who assaulted
her gets his just deserts, I may forget
what I know concerning the part the
police played in the affair. But if there
is the least hint of an attempt to let him
off easy — "

" He'll get his just deserts," said the
captain. " I'll bid you good evening,
gentlemen."

" Are you the chap," Jack Adley de-
manded, " who helped my sister out of
that scrape? "

il I am," Parker answered. " And I'd
like to be properly introduced to her as
soon as this club is done with me. I've
never met her, you know.

" She came back from school just as
I went to Europe ; and just as I returned
from Europe I was detailed on this
Courage Club test. I — well, I want to
meet her ! "

"I'll see that you do ! " said Adley.

The captain, weakly cheerful, took his
departure, and Parker turned to the men
who were soon to call him a fellow mem-
ber.

" Well, I'll be shot ! Here's my most
intimate friend, Richard Druke. Dick,
will you tell me how you could be a mem-
ber of the Courage Club without my
* knowing it?^?'

Rockington laughed. " There are
many things happen that the novitiates of
the Courage Club do not understand," he
said, " as Druke, here, can testify. He
was admitted last night, and his conduct
well deserved it, as you will see from the
Record ©f the Club after you have been
admitted."

Druke grinned, and looked embar-
rassed. " Well," he said, " I don't sup-
pose I'll ever get over the ' goat ' feature
of that adventure, but when Parker reads
the record I think he'll agree that it was
anything in the world but a joke to me
at the time."

Parker did read the record, and, sub-

132

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

stantially — though the modesty of Druke
somewhat spoiled the formal narrative —
this is the story he read.

Of the Story of Druke's Failure to Find
Himself.

V/TR. CHARLES ELLSWORTH
*■*-*■ sat on a park - bench, his head
bowed in his hands. The clothes he wore
were indicative of poverty, there was a
stubby beard on his face, and his hair
was snarled and unkempt.

It was five o'clock in the morning of
a beautiful summer day. Ellsworth had
occupied the bench since ten o'clock the
evening before. He was aware of the
fact that the light of day brought its dis-
advantages, such as gardeners and park
policemen. It was undoubtedly time for
him to move; but he had no particular
place to go.

Hunger gnawed at him. He wanted
to wash his hands and face, and finally
managed to accomplish this feat at a
fountain when there was no one about,
drying them on a bunch of grass he tore
from the lawn. Then he shuffled down
the walk toward a side entrance. He
knew from experience that the main en-
trance was to be avoided at that hour of
the morning ; for the officer stationed
there had a knack of asking searching
questions of ragged gentlemen who looked
as though they had spent the night on a
bench.

He passed through the side entrance
safely, and started down the street. He
was hungry ; he had no money with which
to purchase food; and, for certain rea-
sons, it was denied him to beg. As he
left the street which ran alongside the
park and turned into another, he was
joined by another man, whose appear-
ance indicated that he, too, had spent the
night on a bench.

" What suite did you have? " this man
demanded, hurrying to Ellsworth's side.

Ellsworth smiled at the other's op-
timism.-

" I fail to remember the number," he
said.

" There's one thing I don't like about
this open-air hotel," the stranger com-

mented. " It doesn't serve meals, and
you have to get out and hustle for your
breakfast."

" I've noticed that," remarked Ells-
worth.

" What particular cafe are you going
to patronize this morning?"

" My physician says I should not eat
of heavy breakfasts," replied Ellsworth,
smiling grimly. " He declares that, at
times, it is beneficial to go entirely with-
out food until the day is well advanced."

The other man ceased to smile, and
regarded Ellsworth searchingly.

"It isn't as bad as that, is it?" he
asked. "Are you down and out?
Haven't you the price of a meal?"

" I haven't the price of a toothpick,"
admitted Ellsworth.

" Are you hungry? "

" Am I ? Say, I'm used . to three
square meals a day — three big, fat,
luscious, well-done meals per day. Or, at
least, there was a time when — "

" I know," replied the other. " All of
us can say that there once was a time."

" I could eat anything that had the
slightest resemblance of food," said Ells-
worth.

The other man took Ellsworth by the
arm.

" My name's Hodges," he said. " I
like you. I'm going to whisper some-
thing in your pearl-like ear. Bend your-
head this way. That's _ right ! Now,
listen ! I have, in my left-hand trousers-
pocket, a quarter of a dollar ! "

" No ! " cried Ellsworth.

" Yes ! " affirmed Hodges. " I couldn't
sleep last night because I was afraid some
^one would touch me for it. I don't want
to lose another night's sleep, so suppose
we go to the nearest restaurant and eat
twenty-five cents' worth of what we can
get the most of for the money."

" I couldn't think of it — " began Ells-
worth.

" See here! " said Hodges. " You're a
green one at this down-and-out business.
You don't understand. It needn't hurt
your confounded pride at all. I mean
I'm making you my pal, and we're part-
ners from now on ; and when I have
money, half of it is yours. When you
have money, and I'm out, you'll have to
split with me. See ? It's a straight busi-
ness deal. I'm not giving you anything.

THE COURAGE CLUB.

133

You're not getting any charity, if that's
what bothers you. Come on and eat."

" Thanks ! " said Ellsworth. " I will."

A few minutes later they were sitting
at a greasy table in a restaurant of ques-
tionable cleanliness. Before them was
meat, soup and bread, and black coffee.

Ellsworth, who had in his life eaten
many excellent dinners, did not turn, up
his nose at the food before him. Hodges,
who had also seen more pleasant days, ate
with relish.

"Anything on v to-day?" he asked,
looking across at Ellsworth.

" No."

" Looking for a job? " >

" Sure ! "

"So am I. We'll get through here
and then go down to the college."

" College! " gasped Ellsworth.

"Sure! You must be green! Don't
you know about the college? It's a cer-
tain saloon not far from here. You can't
find it unless you're wise.

" It's the place to go when you're
down and out and simply must>- have a
job. There's always something doing
there. The pay's good, but sometimes the
jobs are shady."

" But — you said college."

" Sure ! That's what we call it — the
College of Odd Jobs."

"I see!" said Ellsworth. "But I
don't want to mix up in anything shady."

" Don't be afraid, son. We'll just go
down and look over the ground. If there
isn't anything that suits us, we'll walk out
again. They can't boss us around. We
don't have to take a job! Why, man,
we've had a meal ! "

II.

The College of Odd Jobs was also an
odd college of jobs. It was a saloon, as
Hodges had declared, in a blind-alley,
where you knocked three times at a half-
hidden door and then walked through a
dark hall before emerging into the bar-
room.

When Ellsworth and Hodges arrived,
there were but a few men sitting at the
tables, the most of them engaged in
earnest conversation. Hodges nodded to
the bartender, and was invited over to
have a drink. Ellsworth was included in
the invitation.

" My friend and I," began Hodges,
" have had a meal this morning, and are
feeling like sons of wealth. But if you
know of anything easy that holds out
promise of great reward, we don't mind
soiling our hands with a little work just
for the sake of the exercise."

" So ? " said the bartender. " Well, do
you know Gordon? "

" I know he's the craziest crook in
town! " exclaimed Hodges.

" He has a deal on that's straight,"
continued the bartender. " He wants a
man or two. He's in one of the rooms
now. Shall I call him out?"

"Sure!" said Hodges. "We'll hear
what he has to say ! "

The bartender walked across the room
and knocked on a door. It was opened
immediately. There was a short con-
versation, and then there stepped into the
main room a typical prosperous crook,
dressed in the approved fashion for gen-
tlemen of that sort, his silk hat, loud ap-
parel, large diamond stud, red face, and
shaggy brow advertising him for what he
was.

He looked at Hodges and Ellsworth
searchingly for a moment, then beck-
oned them to step into the little room.
Closing the door and seating himself op-
posite them, he continued his inspection ;
then, apparently satisfied, he spoke.

"Want to earn some money?" he de-
manded.

" Depends on the job," replied Hodges.

It was evident that Hodges was not a
stranger to such dealings, and Ellsworth
wisely left the entire matter in his hands.

" This job is legal enough in its way,"
said Gordon, leaning over the table and
speaking in a hoarse whisper. " It takes
a little nerve and a mighty quiet tongue."

" My friend and I have plenty of nerve
and know how to keep our mouths shut,"
said Hodges.

" This is the deal," said Gordon. " A
certain young millionaire has it in for
another young millionaire. The second
gent is trying to do a certain thing ; the
first gent wants him to fail. The second
gent is to be taken care of until after a
certain time. He isn't to be injured or
mistreated. But he's supposed to be at
a certain place at a certain time, and the
first gent doesn't want him to be there."

"Wedding?" asked Hodges.

134

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" No," smiled Gordon.

" Does the gent you want detained
drink?"

" He does not get foolishly drunk, if
that's what you mean, and you'll not be
able to hold him by giving him liquor.
But you ought to be able to carry out
the scheme without getting into trouble.
It looks easy to me."

"What about it?" asked Hodges,
drawing one eye down into a wink.

" The first gent supplies me with a cer-
tain sum if I succeed. I'm too" busy to
take care of the second gent myself. You
two men take the job, and I'll give you
fifty dollars each now for expenses and
five hundred between you if you succeed.
But you'll have to play fair. You know
me ! If you take my fifty dollars, you
have to do your best to succeed ! "

" See here ! " said Hodges. " How are
two tramps like us to get our hands on
a young millionaire and keep him out of
sight unless we hit him on the head with
an ax? As a usual thing, we don't chum
with millionaires."

" That part will be easy enough," said
Gordon. "Do you take the job?"

" Tell us all about it," said Hodges.
" If it suits, we'll take the job. If it
doesn't, we'll keep mum about what you
tell us. You needn't be afraid."

" I'll tell you," said Gordon. " Did
you ever hear of the Courage Club? "

" Can't say that I have," said Hodges.

" Well," continued Gordon, "a lot of
fool young millionaires in town have
formed what they call the Courage
Club. Before a man can become a mem-
ber he has to go out for a month and
make his own living, and while he's do-
ing it he has to show nerve if he has the
chance, and be kind and gentle to women,
and a lot of rot like that. They're doing
it because some German author said
young millionaires of America were sissy-
boys.

" This second young gent I mentioned
is somewhere in town, dressed like a
tramp, trying to earn his own living for
a month. In order to qualify for mem-
bership, he has to report to the club at
a certain hour on a certain night. If he
doesn't, he fails to become a member.
See?

" The first young gent is sore on the
second young gent. He doesn't want the

second young gent to become a member.
If the second young gent fails, it will be
noised abroad, as they say, and may reach
the ears of a certain young lady in whom
both young gents are interested."

" Oh, I see ! " said Hodges.

" You are to find this tramp mil-
lionaire, and keep him from reporting at
the appointed hour. You ought to be
able to spot a millionaire in disguise in a
minute."

"What's he look like?" Hodges
asked.

" Six feet tall, dark hair, dark eyes,
and that's about all I can tell you. He
looks like lots of other men. You'll have
to use your wits to find him."

" How long do we have to take care
of him? "

" This is Tuesday morning. He is to
report to the Courage Club at ten o'clock
Friday ' night. You see, your time is
short. You'll have to hurry. One min-
ute after ten o'clock you can let him go.
See? But don't hurt him, because I
promised there'd be nothing of that sort
done."

his

name

demanded

" What's
Hodges.

" His name is Richard F. Druke."

" I've heard of him," said Hodges.

Ellsworth leaned across the table, _and
looked directly into Gordon's eyes.

" And the other gent — the one who
wants this Druke detained — what is his
name?" Ellsworth asked.

Gordon smiled.

" I can't tell you," he said. " And it
doesn't make any difference, because
you'll get your money just the same. I'm
a man of my word."

"I'm willing to take the job," said
Hodges, " if my friend — "

" I am willing," interrupted Ells-
worth.

Gordon gave each of them fifty dol-
lars in bills, and instructed them to re-
port to him each evening. Then he
called for drinks, and bade them start on
their mission.

Hodges led the way through the alley
to the street.

" How's this for a snap? " he asked.

"It isn't such a snap as it looks to be."
replied Ellsworth.

"Why?"

" You'll not succeed."

THE COURAGE CLUB.

135

" Don't you think we'll find him? "
" Yes — but not hold him! "
"Why?"

" That's just my opinion."
" It's easy," said Hodges — " easy! Just
follow me ! "

III.

Tuesday evening, Wednesday eve-
ning, and Thursday evening, Hodges, ac-
companied by Ellsworth, journeyed to the
College of Odd Jobs, and reported to
Gordon that they had not found the
slightest trace of Richard F. Druke. ■

On Thursday evening Gordon grew
somewhat furious.

" You must find him ! " he cried. " I
stand to lose a good fee if you don't !
I tell you he's somewhere in the city,
dressed like a common laborer and try-
ing, to make his living. Can't you spot
a millionaire made up for an honest work-
ingman? Every move ought to give him
away. Watch all the cheap lodging-
houses."

" We have," said Hodges. " And
we've made the rounds of benches in the
parks, and peeped into jails, and kept
our eyes and ears open. And we haven't
heard of a tramp that acts like a mil-
lionaire, and we haven't seen one that
looks anything like a millionaire."

"You must find him!" repeated Gor-
don emphatically. " See here ! I said
I'd give you five hundred between you if
you succeeded. I'll make it six hundred
— that'll be three hundred each."

" We're on the square ! " declared
Hodges. " We're not making a play for
more money. Five hundred is enough —
but we can't find him! "

" Six hundred I've made it, and that
goes," said Gordon. " You go out again
and get on the job ! Remember, the
time is up at ten o'clock to-morrow night.
You must find him before that time and
keep him a prisoner until after . the hour
of ten. It will be all the easier now —
you'll not have to hold him so long."

" Well, we can try again," said
Hodges.

Ellsworth spoke up.

" I know a little about this business,"
he said. " I don't believe I've mentioned
it before, but— -I know this man Druke."

"You know him?" gasped Hodges
and Gordon together.

" I've seen him lots of times," said
Ellsworth.

" What club gave you a job as a wait-
er?" sneered Hodges.

" I'm telling you the truth. I knoM
him. And I guess there are a few cards
that haven't been played yet. You be
here at ten o'clock to-morrow night, Gor-
don. You wait here until Hodges and
myself come. We'll be here soon after
ten. I'll show you something that'll star-
tle you."

" You know where to find him? " asked
Gordon.

" Yes."-

" Why haven't you done it, then? " de-
manded Hodges.

" Never mind why I haven't. You be
here at ten to-morrow night, Gordon, and
wait for us. T don't know how much
that man was going to pay you for hold-
ing Druke, but I guess you'll not lose the
money whether Druke is found or not."

" You talk mighty funny," said Gor-
don. " I don't like it."

"You'll be here" at ten?" asked Ells-
worth.

Gordon looked at Hodges, and the
latter gave the former a glance which
meant that he would see no underhanded
tricks were played.

" Whatever you do, and wherever you
go, I suppose Hodges will be with you,"
Gordon said.

" Certainly," replied Ellsworth. " And
you needn't be afraid of anything ! I'll
not try any dirty work ! You be here at
ten, and you'll be amused.''

" I'll be here," said Gordon.

Ellsworth and Hodges left the College
of Odd Jobs, ate dinner at a convenient
restaurant, and spent an hour walking
about the streets. Hodges was naturally
inquisitive. Ellsworth wouldn't explain.

" You said you knew where to find
him," Hodges complained.

" I do. But we're not going to find
him."

" Not at all?"

" Not at all," replied Ellsworth.

"And lose- three hundred apiece?
That's not being the good pal! "

" You'll not lose your three hundred,
and you may get more," said Ellsworth.

" You mean you're going to hold up
this man Druke for more by putting him
wise to the plot? "

136

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" Not exactly," said Ellsworth.

" I give you up ! " exclaimed Hodges.
" But are you sure I!ll get that three hun-
dred?"

" Absolutely sure ! "

" No chance of anything spoiling it? "

" Not the least chance."

" You may be crazy," remarked
Hodges, " but I'll take your word."

They spent the remainder of the eve-
ning loitering about town, slept well, and
loafed all day Friday. It was evident
that Hodges was losing faith in Ells-
worth. He asked him repeatedly whether
there was any chance of losing.

As they sat at dinner that night Ells-
worth issued his orders.

" We're going up to a swell part of
town," he said. " We're going to the
apartments of Howard Rockington, an-
other young millionaire. He's the presi-
dent of the Courage Club. This man
Druke is to be there at ten o'clock. You
heard Gordon say that."

"But what are you going to do?"
Hodges demanded.

" Just leave that to me," said Ells-
worth.

Ten minutes before ten o'clock they
stood on the corner nearest the apart-
ments of Howard Rockington, in the
shadow of a high wall, and watched car-
riages and automobiles drop their passen-
gers before Rockington's door.

" It is five minutes of ten," said Ells-
Avorth finally. " I'm going in that place
— where the others are going. You wait
for me here. I'll not be over half an
hour. Be ready to hurry back to the Col-
lege of Odd Jobs with me as soon as I
come out."

"If you need any help — " began
Hodges.

" There's not a particle of danger," re-
plied Ellsworth. " I tell you I know this
man Druke."

Hodges watched from the shadow of
the wall as Ellsworth walked quickly
down the street, up the steps, and pulled
at the bell. In an instant the door was
opened, and Ellsworth stepped inside.

IV.

Howard Rockington stopped in the
middle of a story he was telling as the
valet touched his arm.

" Well? " he questioned.

" Man to see you, sir. He says it is
very important."

Rockington excused himself, and
stepped into the hall. The other mem-
bers of the Courage Club talked on, re-
telling their own experiences, wondering
whether Druke, the latest candidate,
would have a thrilling tale to relate.
Presently Rockington returned.

As he resumed his seat he appeared
thoughtful. He took little interest in the
conversation. Finally he looked at his
watch.

" One minute of ten," he said. " I
wonder — "

The door was thrown open.

" Am I in time? " some one asked.

" It's Druke ! " cried the others, spring-
ing to their feet and crowding about
him.

After congratulations were over, the
men settled back in their chairs to hear
Druke's story.

" Before I tell you my experiences,"
he said, "-there is a little matter that de-
mands attention. I want to go away for
perhaps an hour, and I want Rockington,
Fred Gale, and Bulkand to go with me —
or, rather, follow me. I'll give my in-
structions to Rockington, and he will tell
the other two what to do. If the rest of
you will chat and smoke and play cards
until we return, I promise you a sensa-
tion."

Druke took Rockington to one side and
talked to him for several minutes.

Then he left them and went into the
street.

Hodges, waiting under the wall, saw
Ellsworth come from the house and walk
toward him. He stepped out to meet
him.

" Come on," Ellsworth said. " We
must hurry and get to the College of Odd
Jobs as soon as possible. I'm going to
hail that cab."

" All right, if you've got money to
spend on cabs."

" Ellsworth did not reply, but hailed
the cab, gave the driver an address, and
they got in. They whirled through the
streets rapidly, and stepped from the
vehicle at the corner nearest the college.
An automobile was following less than a

THE COURAGE CLUB.

137

block behind them, but neither gave it any
attention.

Gordon was waiting for them in one
of the little rooms, an empty bottle be-
fore him. He looked up angrily as they
entered.

" It's nearly eleven o'clock," he said.
" I've waited here until I'm tired. Now,
out with your story. What is it you have
to tell? What have you done? Where
does the money come in — or does it come
in?"

Ellsworth seated himself by the table,
and motioned for Hodges to do the
same.

" You wanted us to find this man
Druke and prevent him from snowing up
at the headquarters of the Courage Club
at ten o'clock to-night; is that it?" he
asked.

" That was the scheme," replied Gor-
don.

" I knew the moment we started out on
the job that we would never do it."
S "You knew? Why?"

" That doesn't matter just yet. What
I want to know before I go on with my
story is, who was the man that offered
you money to get Druke? "

" I'll not tell you ! "

" But I insist on knowing," said Ells-
worth.

"It doesn't make any difference. He
wasn't to be mentioned in the deal. What
right have you to insist? "

" Every right in the world ! " cried
" Ellsworth, bringing one fist down upon
the table. " I am Richard Druke!"

" What ! " cried Gordon and Hodges,
in a breath.

" And you hired me to capture and de-
tain myself ! "

"Eh?" gasped Gordon.

" And you gave me expense money to
do it, and offered me more when it was
done ! "

" Of course — " Gordon began. •

"Why didn't you tell me?" Hodges
demanded angrily.

" Because I was on my word of honor
to the Courage Club to exist for one
month as Ellsworth, earn my own living,
and under no circumstances to reveal my
. identity. Therefore I couldn't tell you
I was Druke. Also, being in honor bound
to report to the club at ten to-night, I
couldn't conscientiously allow myself to

be made a prisoner by myself. Isn't that
good?"

" I don't see anything funny in it,"
said Gordon.

" It isn't exactly funny."

" What do you mean by that? " Gor-
don demanded. " Do you think you'll
hand me over to the police?" Gordon
sprang from his chair, his face purple
with rage. " Millionaire or no million-
aire, you don't play double with me ! "

" Sit down ! "

" I'll see you- — "

Druke drew a revolver quickly and held
the muzzle at Gordon's breast.

" Sit down! " he ordered.

Gordon sat down.

" I have said nothing about the po-
lice," said Druke. " I have no intention
of giving you into custody. But I want
to know one thing — who paid you to have
me captured and detained?"

" I don't like to squeal on a man."

"Was it Bulkand?"

" I don't—"

" Was it Bulkand? " demanded Druke.

" Yes ! "

"Ah! And now sit perfectly still,
please, until I admit a few friends of
mine. You neeedn't be alarmed, Gor-
don ; they are not officers. They are mem-
bers of the Courage Club. I just want
to convince them of Bulkand's perfidy."

Druke arose and left the room. Gor-
don leaned across the table and whis-
pered to Hodges.

"Think he's playing double?" he de-
manded.

" I don't know, but I don't think so.
He's not that kind of a man."

"A lot you know about it ! " scoffed
Gordon. " You've been running around
with him for a week, and haven't been
wise ! You're a — a — "

" You needn't get sassy ! " exclaimed
Hodges. " Dont I lose that three hun-
dred? I'm just as sore as you! But it's
a mighty good joke! "

" Joke ! " sniffed Gordon.

The door opened again, and Druke
entered, ushering in Rockington, Gale,
and Bulkand.

"Now, Gordon," said Druke, "I want
you to tell the truth. You were hired to
find me and prevent me from reporting
at the Courage Club on time to-night,
were you not? "

138

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" I was," answered Gordon.

" Who hired you to do it? "

" That man there ! " said Gordon,
pointing to Bulkand.

Druke turned to Rockington.

"Is that convincing? " he asked.

" It is."

"I wanted you and Gale to hear it,"
Druke continued. " And I wanted Bul-
kand to be here. This gives me as much
pain as any of you. It is the first time, I
believe, that any of the men in our im-
mediate set have been guilty of such un-
gentlemanly conduct. Of course, we can
do nothing, except where the Courage
Club is concerned.

" Bulkand has not exactly committed a
crime. But he has been guilty of such
underhanded work that none of us can
call him friend again. He has cast a
shadow on an organization formed for
the purpose of showing the world that we
are honest, straightforward men. He has
*been untrue to the foundation principles
of the club, and — "

Bulkand laughed heartily. " Stop him,
Rockington ; he's giving me an awful
character!" he exclaimed.

" You can laugh at such a thing as
this? You consider it a lark?" cried
Druke.

Rockington stepped forward and put
a hand on Druke's shoulder.

"There, there, old man; we'll all
laugh," he said. " Can't you under-
stand? Bulkand isn't half the villain
you've painted him. We watched your
progress during the month, and^saw that,
while you were having a hard time of it,
you were not meeting with any expe-
riences that were a test of physical
courage. I got Bulkand to hire this man
to capture you. We thought you might
have a chance to fight your way out."

Druke gasped.

" Then — " he began.

(The

" You owe your apologies to Bulkand,"
continued Rockington, smiling. " This
man here was in earnest — he didn't know
but that Bulkand was sincere. He'll get
the money promised him, just as though
he had succeeeded. And you have been
given some exciting experiences, after all.
Not every man is engaged to make a pris-
oner of himself."

" You fellows are making me dippy ! "
complained Gordon weakly.

" And the foundation principles of the
club are preserved," added Rockington.
" May we call Bulkand a friend?"

" It seems I have made an ass of my-
self," said Druke.

" Not at all. Your deductions were
natural," said Rockington. " And now,
if you have no objections, we'll return to
club headquarters and allow you to re-
cite. The other fellows are waiting to
hear your story, remember."

Rockington led the way to the door.
After him Avent Gale and Bulkand.
Druke stopped midway and looked back
at Hodges. Then he returned to the ta-
ble and clasped him by the hand.

" The first time I met you," said Druke
— " when you had never seen me before,
and knew absolutely nothing of me, when
I was hungry and tired and almost worn
out, you divided with me all you had in
the world. Do you think I am going to
forget a thing like that? Here's some-
thing to keep you going for a day or two "
— he handed Hodges some bills — " and
in a few days I want you to come to me.
Here's my card. Come to that address,
and I'll have something to tell you.
Hodges, old man, you'll never go hungry
again, as long as I have plenty."

" Then, you're not — not sore, be-
cause— ■"

" Bless you, no ! " said Druke.
" You've helped me to graduate from
the College of Odd Jobs ! "

End.)

OAILROADS are like the human race. They have
their stopping- places and their termini; but, unlike
the human race they can make a return journey.

E. P. Day.

Riding the Rail from Coast

to Coast.

BY GILSON WILLETS,
Special Traveling Correspondent of "The Railroad Man's Magazine."

THE Oregon Short Line runs from Green River, Wyoming, across the
picturesque valleys and mountains of southern Idaho into Oregon.
The boys of that line know the Indian and the prairie — the real tang
of the West is in their blood.

They have lived close u> danger ; they have endured the hardships of
the snow-bound ; they have known real hairbreadth escapes. But their stories
are touched with humor — in fact, in these later years they see only the bright
side of their experiences.

No. 8.— TALES OF THE OREGON SHORT LINE.

McKinney Had to Deliver the Mail or Die. What It Really Means

To Be Snow-Bound. The Wonderful Heroism of " Idaho

Mary," and the Man Who Lost Both Feet.

only about 4
scheduled to

the Oregon Short . Line
station at Butte, Mon-
tana, the train for Po-
catello, Idaho, backed
upjto the platform ready
to pull out. It was then
p.m. The train was not
leave till somewhere near
five. Yet, in the accommodating fashion
of Western trains, Number 1 1 had al-
ready opened her doors to traveling sales-
men, Indian agents, redskins, squaws,
cowboys, miners, and the writer, who
had arrived early to have a chat with
Phil Dreer, the railway mail-clerk.

My sole object in getting to the sta-
tion early was to get from Phil some fur-
ther details of the story of one George
McKinney, a railroad man who had
turned mail-carrier and had lost his life
in the discharge of his duty. McKinney

Series bcc an in March Railroad Man

was frozen to death in the mountains —
the foothills of the Sawtooth Range in
Idaho — while carrying the mail from
Atlanta to Rocky Bar.

" It was Christmas morning, 1907,"
said Dreer, " and though snow was
falling with that sort of promise of evil
to him who gets caught in it thereabouts,
McKinney swore he wasn't in any doubt
about getting to Rocky Bar that same
night, and, therefore, didn't need any-
thing more to eat than his usual cake of
chocolate.

" McKinney always was ' the very
darnedest of conscientious men. When
he worked over in Oregon on the Short
Line he was so conscientious in perform-
ing his duties as section-hand that he
simply couldn't work as fast as othei
men. He insisted always upon giving
the hand-car a little extra grease, and

• Ma ear inc. Single copies, 10 cent*.

140

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

every spike he drove was given a few
additional taps of the hammer. That
meant delays that got on the boss's
nerves — and McKinney was let go.

" That was in the spring of 1907. Mc-
Kinney decided he weren't no railroad
man — and he lit out for Idaho, fetched
up at Atlanta, and got the job as mail-
1 carrier. He always made the trip on
foot, and on this particular Christmas
morning some fellers over to Atlanta
said to him:

" ' McKinney, the wind and snow is
all blizzardy. You better wait till to-
morrer and let the mail go hang. Be-
sides, this here's Christmas.'

" ' If it's Christmas,' replied McKin-
ney, ' then all the more reason why I
should get the mail over to Rocky Bar
to those folkses. They'll be wantin' their
Santa Claus rememoratings.'

" And with that McKinney slung the
mail-bag and his snow-shoes over his
shoulders and struck out toward the hills
through a falling snow that was even
then blinding.

Among the Missing.

" Well, that Christmas night, Rocky
Bar miners and the like gathered in the
' Chamber of Commerce '—that's the sa-
loon near the post-office — shook the snow
from their clotihes, hugged the stove,
looked at one another significantly, and
remarked : ' That mail man hasn't shown
up yet.'

" The bartender of the Chamber of
Commerce ventured to suggest that, as
it was Christmas Day, the mail-carrier
was probably drunk. That bartender
was there and then given to understand
by his customers that any further guesses
of the kind relating to the mail-carrier
would lead to a boycott of the place in
favor of the Board of Trade, farther
down the street — as McKinney, they
stoutly insisted, was not a man to take
even a nip while in the performance of
his service in Uncle Sam's pay.

" The day after Christmas passed,
and the second day after, and still no
sign of McKinney, still no mail for
Rocky Bar from Atlanta way. On the
third day after Christmas, Pheolix, the
other mail-carrier on the same route, al-
lowed that it was about time some one

went forth in search of the missing Mc-
Kinney.

" Pheolix himself then started out
through the deep snow as a relief com-
mittee of one. A mile and a half from
Rocky Bar he stopped at the ranch-house
of a Mr. Kehno and asked if McKinney
was sheltering there. No, McKinney
had not been seen, nor any sign of him.
Pheolix plodded on, and, about six hun-
dred feet from Mr. Kehno's door, he
came upon a sight that nearly froze his
blood.

" The sight that met the eyes of Pheo-
lix was the body of a man lying in the
snow in the attitude of one who had de-
cided that that place was as good as any
in which to go to bed. On each side of
him was a snow-shoe. One of the snow-
shoes, Pheolix perceived, was broken.

" In that broken snow-shoe Pheolix
read the whole story.

" McKinney had floundered in the snow
for three days and nights. He had at-
tempted to mend the snow-shoe and had
fallen asleep. That he had lost his
bearings was evident from the fact that
he had perished so near to Mr. Kehno's
house. In his hand he clutched the mail-
bag as only a dead hand can clutch the.
thing for which, in his last moments, he
struggled in vain.

One Lonely Letter.

" They carried McKinney's body to
Rocky Bar and took the mail-bag to
the post-office. And here comes the fact
that makes this old, old story brand new.
When the mail-bag was opened, only a
single letter was found. It was ad-
dressed, ' George McKinney, United
States postman, Rocky Bar, Idaho ' —
and was postmarked at McKinney's old
home town in Oregon."

A few minutes after Phil Dreer, rail-
way mail-clerk, finished telling the above
tale of the conscientious McKinnev; I
boarded the waiting train for Pocatello.
By the time we passed High Bridge, the
first station in Idaho, the snow Avas no
longer coming down in mere bunches,
but was beating against the car-windows
with terrific gale-blown force.

Our train would go ahead a little,
then rest, as if getting its breath for an-
other struggle, then push on a little far-

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

141

ther. With almost tornado force the
wind struck us, as if bound to lift our
car out of the train, tear it from its coup-
lings, and carry us off down the mountain.
In the smoking-compartment of the
Pullman there were four besides the man
from Bonner's Ferry and myself, there
was a traveling salesman from the East
and a government Indian agent, of the

of Wild- West stories which that Indian
agent related about his thirty years of
experience on the railroads of the West.
His duties called him to all the Indian
reservations west of the Mississippi.

He had just come from the White
Earth Reservation at the very north of
Minnesota, and was working his way
down to a reservation in southern Cali-

MCKINNEY SLUNG THE MAIL-BAG AND HIS SNOW-SHOES OVER HIS
SHOULDERS AND STRUCK OUT TOWARD THE HILLS."

inspection department, from everywhere
west. We were scheduled to arrive at
Pocatello at one in the morning, and we
deemed it not worth while to turn in.

" We might as well get some sleep,
gentlemen," said the Indian agent, " for
at this rate we won't get to Pocatello till
morning."

But we did not turn in for some hours
later — all because of the wondrous fund

fornia, below San Diego — below the rail-
road.

A Flying Caboose.

But it was the traveling salesman who
spoke first :

" You say this wind seems determined
to lift this car out of the train. Well, if
the wind did that to us, it wouldn't be the
first time in railroad history. It would

142

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

be the second time, and it would be the
second time within one week. For, ac-
cording to records, that has happened
only once in the annals of railroading.

"It was over on Sherman Pass, on the
Union Pacific, near Cheyenne — and that's
not so very far from where we are now. A
gale there the other day — the eastern end
of this same gale we are getting here and
now — lifted the caboose of a work-train
bodily, tore it from its couplings, and
carried it thirty feet down into a gorge.
The caboose turned somersault in its
flight, killing two Japanese laborers, and
injuring a lot of others seriously, in-
cluding Conductor Jimmy Lowery and
Roadmaster Bill Curtis."

It was here that the Indian agent
joined in the talkfest.

" That was a peculiar and unusual ac-
cident our friend here tells of," he be-
gan. " I am not surprised that it hap-
pened on the Union Pacific. For, from
Cheyenne west, the whole Union Pacific
country is notoriously the worst in the
Rocky Mountain region for blizzards
and stalled trains.

Lost in the Snow.

" But the blowing of that caboose out
of the train was an accident that was
over and done with all in a jiffy — except-
ing, of course, for those who were in-
jured. Besides, it happened to soldiers
on duty — for railroad men are but as
soldiers and must expect such* things.

" So now I'm going to tell you, not
of a mere accident, but of exquisite tor-
ture lasting all of two weeks and involv-
ing not only soldiers of the rail, but a
number of passengers.

" To get you to appreciate this tale of
torture, gentlemen, I ask you to imagine
this train as becoming stalled now. It
is dark, so you cannot see what sort of
country we are stalled in. But I know
the place, and nowhere can you see hu-
man habitation. Imagine us as being
stalled here for fourteerxKys. We have
a diner, to be sure ; but how long would
the food last among all these passengers?

" Well, to this condition, add the fol-
lowing : A branch road for which no ro-
tary snow-plow is available, all such
plows being at work night and day on
the main line ; a train consisting of en-

gine, two day coaches and caboose, stalled
in the mountains .with only three small
ranch-houses within five miles — snow in
front and behind you, sixteen feet high,
so that even a relief-train cannot get to
you. On board your train there are fifty-
two souls, including five trainmen, twen-
ty-five section-hands and twenty-two pas-
sengers, among whom are four women.

And no food except a small quantity
of beans and bacon ; no way to cook ex-
cept inside the car-stoves ; the fuel giving
out for both engine and stoves, so that
your beans and bacon can no longer be
warmed, and your engine dies. No heat
in your cars, and no blankets, and the
temperature from ten to forty below zero
— and you have an approach to the con-
ditions of torture that figure in my story.

" Now, I was in Cheyenne when this
happened on the Cheyenne and Northern,
a branch of the Union Pacific. The
superintendent of that branch was my
friend Rasbeck. He himself was aboard.

" The train left Orin Junction,
Wyoming, only fifty-four miles from
Cheyenne, on February 26, 1899. All
hands expected to make the run through
the snow-storm in one day. Yet, at the
end of forty-eight hours of struggling
with wind and snow, the train had gone
only as far as Iron Mountain, only a
few miles from Orin Junction.

" Iron Mountain was a way station
where there was nothing but one small
ranch-house. There they found they
could go no farther, and there Rasbeck
took active command.

" Water for the engine, Rasbeck said,
was the first essential. He ordered the
engineer to run back five miles to a
water - tank. When the train started
forward again the drifts were too much
for them, and they had to shovel snow
for two whole days to get back over the
five miles to Iron Mountain.

The Two Heroes.

" They had an abundance of food on
the train at the start of the stall, but
this quickly vanished. Rasbeck then
took the four women to the ranch-house.
Two days later they came back to the
train, saying that the food had given
out at the ranch-house, and so their only
course was to return to the train.

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

143

HE DIDN T PUT IN NO BUTS NOR ASK
ANY QUESTIONS."

" Rasbeck then sent out two train-
men to hustle for bread, and four section-
hands to kill a steer. The trainmen came
back with the bread, beans and bacon,
but the section-men returned empty-
handed. In one day the bread gave out,
and they were left once more with only
a small quantity of beans and bacon.

" Rasbeck showed them how to cook
the rations inside the car-stoves — till the
fuel gave out. Now came the period of
the worst suffering. Raw food, no heat

in the cars, no blankets, and terrible suf-
fering from cold, hunger, thirst, and ex-
posure.

" Meantime, Rasbeck had kept the
section-men digging snow. Well, those
men actually wore out the shovels, and
wore out their shoes and their gloves in
digging — so that many of them fell sick ;
and on the tenth day of the torture
less than half the entire force on the
train was available for work.

" On the twelfth day out, the fires died

144

>THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

for lack of fuel. The passengers be-
lieved they were succumbing to imminent
death. Every stomach refused raw ba-
con and beans— and all this time not a
single sign from the outside world, not
a word from Cheyenne, about relief.

" On that twelfth day Rasbeck went
to the strongest man on board, a section-
man, who seemed the least weakened
physically, and said :

" ' Oapeley, the rescue of this ship's

" Suddenly — the tingle of a sleigh-
bell was heard. And with that tingle,
gentlemen, your own imagination will
complete the tale."

Lost Both Feet.

" But that section-man, Oapeley," said
the Indian agent, " who went on the
snow-shoes, and saved -em all — he froze
his feet, and the railroad doctor at

ONE OF THE INDIANS APPEARED AROUND THE —

company now depends upon you. I can-
not do the job myself — for I must not
desert the sinking vessel. There are
snow-shoes on board — you must put on
those shoes and get away from here, and
walk — walk, God . knows where — but
walk you must, till you reach some place
or some means of sending relief to us.

" ' If they can't get a relief-train
through, see that sleds or wagons are
sent. This is the commission I give you.
It is a forlorn hope. Heaven help us —
for only a miracle can save us.'

" Oapeley started off on his snow-
shoes. A day and a night passed — and
to the stalled train came no aid. An-
other day, another night, passed, and
nearly all hands were lying on the seats
and floors of the cars, too weak to raise
a finger.

Cheyenne, who happened to be in attend-
ance at the time, had to cut 'em both off."

Another silence, and more harkening
to the shrieks of the gale. Then, again,
from the Indian agent:

" Which reminds me of Billy the
Bear — who, through the same cause, had
to get a Union Pacific Railroad surgeon
to perform the same operation. Billy
the Bear lost both feet and eight fingers,
leaving him with only his thumbs.

" The real name of Billy the Bear is
Yeager. He's living to-day, at Chadron,
Nebraska, though he lost those append-
ages twenty-five years ago, back in 1883.

" For physical endurance, and for
sheer pluck and will-power to survive
five days lost in a Wyoming blizzard,
Billy the Bear has held the record all
these years.

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

145

" He was a cowboy on the Bar M
Ranch, thirty miles from the tracks of
the Union Pacific at Rock Creek,
Wyoming. Our friend here from New
York" (meaning the writer), "says he
was at Rock Creek a couple of years ago
in a mild blizzard. He has some idea,
then, of what it means to be in the Rock
Creek country in the worst blizzard
which the men of that region have ex-
perienced— the blizzard in which Billy
the Bear was lost for five days.

CORNER OF THE STABLE."

" One morning Billy's boss at the
ranch came to him, saying : ' Billy, here's
a telegram for our owners at Chicago.
It's of the utmost importance that they
get this message at the earliest moment.
I want you to carry it to the railroad
station at Rock Creek, and get the oper-
ator there to send it.'

" Billy looked at the sky and at the
distant Rockies, and instinctively felt
that snow was about to fall heavily.
Nevertheless he saddled up, believing
that he could outride the storm and
reach the railroad before nightfall.

"Talk about messages for Garcia!
Billy the Bear was just such a messen-
ger. He didn't put in no buts", nor ask
any questions, nor express his opinions
regarding the weather. He mounted and
loped away with the telegram, and be-
10 R R

fore nightfall the blizzard overtook him
— and he had to sleep in the snow.

" The next day, and the next, and for
four days, he and his horse stumbled on
blindly through the gale of wind and the
blinding snow, Billy only guessing
where he could be.

All But Dead.

" On the morning of the fifth day
Billy and his cayuse were dragging
themselves along — all but dead. In that
condition he came in sight of a log
cabin, the home of a prospector whom
Billy knew. In sight of that haven,
within sight of the smoke coming from
the chimney of the cabin — neither Billy
nor his horse could go a step farther.
The horse fell, exhausted, and so did
Billy.

" As he lay there helpless, Billy in-
stinctively took his gun from its holster,
aimed at a tin bucket which he could see
standing on a bench outside the cabin-
door, and fired.

" Billy made a good bull's-eye on the
bucket ; and out rushed the prospector,
spied Billy, rushed to where he and his
horse lay, and managed to get them to
his cabin, where he rubbed Billy's frozen
feet and hands with snow and cared for
the cayuse. ,

" The next morning was bright with
sunshine — the blizzard had spent its
force, though it was still bitterly cold.
' I must deliver that telegram,' said
Billy. And, despite ' the protests of his
host, he compelled that gentleman to
strap him on his horse — and once more
away rode Billy, this time bound, sure
enough, for Rock Creek -Station, which
was not many miles from the cabin.

" That station, as our New York
friend may recollect, has a platform
built above the ground about on a level
with a horse's back. Up to that plat-
form rode Billy — and there he just
reeled sideways onto the platform.
There the station-agent found him,
strapped to his saddle, the horse stand-
ing, and Billy unconscious — the telegram
grasped in his outstretched hand.

"It was then that a Union Pacific
doctor took charge of Billy, and de-
prived him forever of both his feet and
his fingers, leaving him only his thumbs.

146

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

"the chief of police nabbed the fat stranger

and walked him double-quick back

to the depot."

" Billy drifted to Chadron, Nebraska
— and there you'll find him to-day, a
prosperous merchant. ' Ask for Mr.
Yeager, the man who delivered the mes-
sage at a time when he should have
stayed in bed."

" Idaho Mary's " Pluck.

One more story told by that Indian
agent may well be included here. It
is the remarkable story of a woman of
marvelous courage — " Idaho Mary."
' It was only natural that a man who
had lived rso many years in close con-
tact with Indians should entertain us
that night with all sorts of tales of red-
skins of the past- and present. After
no less than a half dozen brief recitals
of fights between the builders of the
Union Pacific Railway and the Indians
in Wyoming, the agent related his most
important and most thrilling tale of the
night :

" Well, the most extraordinary of all
the Indian fights here in Idaho was the

one in which the heroine was
' Idaho Mary.' I knew ' Idaho
Mary ' well. She died— let me
see, I should think about ten
years ago, at nearly sixty-five
years of age — over at Rocky
Bar, Idaho. I knew her as the
widow of Colonel Sexton, whom
she married in very early life,
but who died. when Mary was
somewhere in middle life.

" Colonel Sexton was one of
the most respected settlers of
his day in Idaho. He was re-
spected by Indians as well as
whites — and that's saying a
lot, for the redskins in those
days wTere particularly incensed
against the whites because of
the coming of the railway north
of Salt Lake.

" The time came when the
warriors of Chief Gray Wolf's
band took the war - path here
against any settlers. whom they
suspected of having anything
to do with the railroad engi-
neers and others who were sup-
posed to be blazing a trail
through here for a railroad.
" The Indians knew that the
government had decreed that the Union
Pacific should run north of Salt Lake.
But just exactly at what point the In-
dians did not know. Unfortunately, just
at that time a sub-chief of Gray Wolf's
band, named Red Rock, happened to
find Colonel Sexton in camp writh a num-
ber of white men who were looking for
a pass for a railroad through the moun-
tains.

" Red Rock told Gray Wolf what he
had seen ; but Gray Wolf commanded
that Colonel Sexton be left in peace.
It seems that Red Rock then got to-
gether nine bucks of the tribe, and the
ten redskins then plotted the death of
the colonel and his wife.

" Going without war-paint, in order
not to arouse the suspicion of Gray Wolf,
and stating that they were starting on a
hunting trip, they began a march of
thirty miles to the colonel's home.

" It so happened that on the day of
the arrival of the redskins on the colo-
nel's claim, the colonel himself was
twenty miles, away, in camp with the

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

147

railroad surveyors. The trail which that
little band of white men was blazing at
that time is the very one followed to-day
by the Oregon Short Line across Idaho
from Boise to Pocatello.

Red Rock and His Bucks.

" All alone at the Sexton cabin was
Mrs. Mary Sexton, the colonel's wife —
when Red Rock and his nine bucks
loomed up. As the redskins approached,
something sneaky in their actions made
Mary suspicious. She went into her
bedroom, where she quickly loaded a
revolver and hung 'it about her waist, un-
der her apron. The colonel's Winches-
ter rifle she also loaded, and also placed
within reach, yet out of sight, behind her
bedroom door.

" She saw the Indians come to the
cabin-door, and, to her joy, saw them
leave their guns outside — and take note,
right here, that the Indians' weapons
were old muzzle-loaders as against
Mary's Winchester and six-shooter.

" The Indians filed into the cabin,
and found Mary placidly sewing. She
greeted them amiably, but warily, speak-
ing in their own language ; for she, like
the colonel, knew the red tongue.

" ' Red Rock and his friends,' said the
leader, ',have come over the hills
from where the water flows to this
place, where the fire-water flows.
We have come to drink of the
strong water. Also,' he added,
with a kind of growl, ' we want
meat.'

" ' Shame on you ! ' cried Mary
Sexton. - • To come to a woman
for meat when game is plentiful in
the hills. Are you turned squaws?
And fire-water? Away with you!
My husband shall tell Gray Wolf
how you have broken the word he
passed to leave us in peace.'

" ' Gray Wolf has no ears, and his
heart is as the chicken's,' said Red Rock.
1 Gray Wolf does not hear that the Great
White Feather is sending the big noise,
that goes without pony, to scare away
the deer and the buffalo from our hunt-
ing-grounds.

" ' But Red 'Rock has ears, and he
hears the big noise coming. Red Rock
has eyes, and he sees your man powwow
with those who will bring the big noise.
And so ' — here he unsheathed his hunt-
ing-knife— ' Red Rock has come to roast
you in the ashes of this wigwam. And
after that, Red Rock will slay your
man.'

, " That was Red Rock's last earthly
word. A shot rang out — Red Rock fell
dead at Mary's feet. Another shot, and
another — and two more redskins fell
dead in the cabin.

" In the society in which she moved
the redskin was never spoken of as he
was in the East, as ' Lo, the poor Indian.'
Mary knew that it was of no use to
argue with an Indian, save to engage
in an argument whereof the logic was
bullets.

The Fourth Dropped.

" Mary, seizing her Winchester, fol-
lowed them to the door and, before the

"he entered out of curiosity, just to see what the place contained."

148

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

redskins could level a weapon at her,
killed her fourth man.

" Then followed what you might call
a general engagement, with the exchange
of many shots — without even a wound
for Mary. Just as she was about to fire
the last cartridge in her rifle, she paused,

" There were the three men bringing
the hay — to pile it against the cabin and
fire it. She would be roasted alive ! To
attempt egress by either the door or the
window meant sure death by a bullet.

" Here was a situation to unnerve any
woman, let alone one who was not five

PUT UP YOUR HANDS

instinctively suspecting that she had bet-
ter save that last shot for some crisis.

" That crisis came just then. One of
the Indians flew at her with his knife.
When he was within ten feet of her,
Mary keeled him over with her last shot.
Thus, number five was slain.

" The five remaining redskins now
split up into two parties. Two men
guarded the cabin — the one with a gun
leveled at the door, the other with a
gun trained on the window. The other
three began fetching hay from the corral.

" This, however, gave Mary a chance
to reload her weapon. But then — what?
Here was the most serious plight she had
been in since that first moment when the
Indians first filed into the cabin.

feet in height, and who weighed only a
hundred pounds. But Mary was a quick
thinker. She thought of the little win-
dow in the bedroom at the rear. And
she flew to it, and crawled through.

" The first inkling the Indians had
that she had got outside of the cabin
was when the one who was leading the
three carrying the hay fell dead in his
tracks. Mary was shooting from behind
a log fence at the corner of the cabin.

" The death of the Indian seemed to
disconcert the remaining four, so unex-
pected was this new attack. They beat
a hasty retreat. Mary kept her eyes on
them, however, as she could easily do
in that open country. She knew Indian
ways. She knew that they would return

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO ' COAST.

149

stealthily, in the hope of catching her a man who would kill her husband. And

.off guard

" She was right. She became con-
scious that one Indian had vanished in
the brush. The other three remained in
plain sight — probably as decoys. It was
the one who had disappeared for whom
Mary watched. And,
surely enough, all of a
sudden a bullet tore its
way under her arm, ma-
king a slight wound.

" The puff of smoke
from the discharged
weapon was sufficient for
Mary to locate her man.
She dropped, feigning
death — and the Indian,
who had fired the shot
from a ditch through
which he had crawled
near, sprang up to signal
to his comrades.

" He never made that
signal. A shot from
Mary's rifle pierced his
heart.

" The three remaining
redskins advanced reck-
lessly and desperately to
the attack, as if bent upon
getting Mary's scalp in
sheer revenge. They ran
forward till they reached
the shelter of the stable —
Mary withholding her fire
till the right moment
should come. In a few
minutes one of the In-
dians unwisely peered around the cor-
ner of the stable. Bang! He fell,
pierced through a lung. So died number
eight.

" Only two remained. Fortunately for
Mary, those two were silly enough to

BUCK YOUNG ! THANKS !

without further hesitation, she shot him.
" Think of the scene confronting
Colonel Sexton when he returned to his
cabin that night, in company with two
of the railroad surveyors and three In-
dians ! Here and there about the cabin
lay the bodies of seven
Indians, and inside the
little home the bodies of
three more. And there, on
the door - step, sat Mary,
her Winchester across her
knee, her face as white as
a sheet, but still nervy
enough to say :

" ' Colonel, you may
cut ten more notches in
this gun.'

" And that's how Mrs.
Mary Sexton, of Rocky
Bar, Idaho, came to be
christened ' Idaho Mary '
by Chief Gray Wolf, who,
when he heard the story,
presented her with the
ponies and guns belonging
to the Indians she had
killed, adopted her as his
sister, and made, her a
member of the tribe.

"There's a pile of rocks
over there to-day that hold
up this sign :

" Here occurred the fight in
which Mary Sexton wiped out
Red Rock and nine other Indians
belonging to Gray Wolf's band.

At Pocatello, Baggage-
man Ketchum filled out the check that
would set my bag down in Salt Lake
City, meanwhile making these few re-
marks :

" Say, why don't you fellows give us
baggage-smashers a showing once in a

empty their guns at her as they started while? We have our hairbreadth escapes
on the rush, so that, upon leaving cover, all the same as engineers. No, I don't
they had no weapon to depend on but mean such things as being squashed

their knives. Another of Mary's trusty
bullets sent the one to his happy hunting-
grounds. The second turned to flee.

" With that last man in sight, Mary,
for the first time, hesitated. Should she
shoot him in the back? No, she could
not, would not. But then came the

under an avalanche of trunks from an
overloaded truck. I mean such things
as getting shot.

" Why, it was only the other night.
Kenneth Hannum — that's the name of
the baggageman I'm talking about — was
unloading trunks from a truck. Those

thought of her husband. If she allowed trunks had just come in on the train
this man to live, she would surely spare from Walla Walla. He came to a big,

150

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

iron-bound, chesty piece of baggage that
weighed some more or less than a ton.
He just let it tumble from the truck.

" Say, there was consequences right
then that made H annum make a noise
like a battle. There was a report and
the ping of leaden death. The next
thing Hannum knew blood was stream-
ing down his hand. His coat-sleeve was
in rags, and a crimson furrow ran up
his arm from the elbow to the shoulder.
A bullet had struck his elbow and
plowed its way up his arm.

The Guilty Trunk.

"'Help!' yelled Hannum. 'Some
one in that trunk there has got a bead
on me.'

" All hands at the station came flying
to Hannum's rescue. Smoke and flame
were issuing from a hole in the port-
side of the trunk. In the gathering
crowd was a fat, sleek man, with pudgy
hands and a diamond as big as a chande-
lier glistening on one of his fingers.
This man, seeing some of the railroad
men attack the trunk with such weapons
as came to hand, cried :

" ' Hey, there — what you doing? That
trunk belongs to me. Let it alone.'

"'It's yours, is it?' yelled some of
the angry railroaders. Other bystanders
fell upon the fat man with ' the lust of
gore blazing in their eyes, and the owner
of the trunk had to flee.

" The mob chased him through the
railroad yard, and then up the main
street, no end of indignant citizens of
Pendleton joining in the pursuit, till,
finally, the chief of police loomed up
and made official inquiry as to all the
fuss.

" ' He carries an arsenal of loaded
weapons in his trunk,' the crowd shouted,
' and Hannum, at the depot, has been
riddled with bullets.'

" Thereupon the chief of police nabbed
the fat stranger and walked him double-
quick back to the depot, where Hannum
was found, nursing his wounds. There,
too, the chief found the guilty trunk
wide open and railroad men scattering
its burning contents to the four winds,
while the depot-master displayed a forty-
five Colt's, with every chamber -loaded
excepting one.

" ' Look here, chief,' cried the depot-
master. ' It's your duty to arrest this
man.'

" And, say, that fat man with the
diamond left a little of his side-show
money in Pendleton, you bet, in the
form of a fine. There wTas not a living
baggageman in or around Pendleton
who would check so much as a suit-case
belonging to that fat man.

" One day a cowman, well known in
Big Timber, walked into the railroad
station and delivered to the agent a bag
to be expressed to a place in Idaho.

" ' What value? ' asked the agent.

" ' Three thousand dollars.'

" That same night the shipper disap-
peared from Big Timber and did not
show up again for two weeks. Within
that fortnight news came that the stage
on which that bag was forwarded to the
station had been held up by a bandit, who
took nothing but the bag in question.

Costly Newspapers.

" Upon the reappearance of the ship-
per of the bag in Big Timber, the ex-
press agent there heard that the shipper
had declared that he would claim three
thousand dollars to compensate him for
the loss of his bag. The result was that
when the shipper showed up in the sta-
tion, he was confronted by a square-
jawed agent who held a gun.

" ' Put up your hands, Buck Young.
Thanks ! Now, will you be kind enough
to identify the bag you shipped that was
worth three thousand dollars?'

" With that, the agent stood before
Buck Young the identical bag which he
had brought there to be expressed to the
Idaho town. ' Is that your bag? ' asked
the agent. 'It is? Well, then, open it.'

Buck Young lowered his hands long
enough to do as bidden, and the opened
bag revealed contents consisting entirely
" cf old newspapers.

" ' Pretty high price for newspapers,
Mr. Young,' the agent said. ^' That bag
you look from the stage when you held
it up was a decoy bag, an exact duplicate
ctf your own, with contents also dupli-
cated. About face, please, and keep
your hands up till I deliver you to jail.' "

Another story told by that Wells,
Fargo man at Pocatello was this :

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

151

" The night-watchman on the Oregon
Short Line was one Riley. One night in
April he entered an old, unused outhouse
near the tracks — entered out of curiosity,
just to see what the place contained. He
found a much-worn package bearing a
Wells, Fargo Express Company label.

" The next morning our agent in Salt
Lake, Mr. Carey, was sitting ih his office,
when Riley came in.

" ' Good mornin',' he said. ' Mr.
Carey, findings is keepings, ain't it, when
no owner shows up? In that case, then,
Mr. Carey, I'll be resigning my job right
now, because I'm worth three — hundred
■ — thousand — dollars, sir.'

" Mr. Carey pretended great serious-
ness and asked what Riley's property
consisted of.

" ' Railroad bonds,' quoth Riley.
' Here they are, sir.' And he explained
how he found the bonds.

" Mr. Carey looked the bonds over,
then said : ' Yes, Riley, findings is
keepings. These bonds are yours.'

" Riley took his bonds home with him,
hid them under his couch, then went
forth to begin spending his- fortune.
Late that afternoon he again dropped
into Mr. Carey's office, saying :

" ' Now, Mr. Carey, please tell me
who it is that I take the coupons to.'

" ' Oh, just take them to anybody that
happens to strike your fancy,' replied
Mr. Carey. ; I've wired our San Fran-
cisco office about your bonds, and learn
that they were shipped from Frisco by
our company to Salt Lake, with a view
to their sale here. You will notice that
your bonds are those of a railroad in
Hawaii. Well, that railroad was never
built, and the people who subscribed
money for the bonds got their cash
back.'

"'Got their money back, did they?'
cried the indignant watchman. ' Well,
who's to give me back the money I've
spent to-day on these bonds? I've blown
in over five dollars ! Well, ain't this
a — Oh, what's the use? ' "

ANOTHER TRAMP KING.

Some of the Tricks He Works on Conductors — Task of Getting Free
Transportation over the Railroads.

WE thought, when we hecame acquaint-
ed with " A No. i," that we had dis-
covered, or been discovered by, the chief
tramp of trampdom, but it seems we were
wrong. We have, by way of the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, the word of Penn, the Rapid
Rambler, that he is the individual who can
lay claim to the honor, and that any other
claimant is a faker, a usurper, and impostor.

Penn's real name is Frank C. Welch.
He has been on the road since he was four-
teen, and says he has traveled 526,000 miles
without paying one cent.

The story of how he tricks the innocent,
unsophisticated conductors is enough to
bring tears. Here it is as the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch tells it:

" He first announces casually that he will
be on his way to Chicago, and the reporter
asks him where he will get the money.

' ' I make my own ticket,' he answered.
'How? Out of a hat-check. I have trav-
eled one hundred and fifty times between
St. Louis and Chicago on this trick which
I invented.

'"I go into the railroad-yard with over-
alls on, and make my way to the train as
it stands in the shed. As she pulls out I
get on the steps under the vestibule floor.

" ' After the train pulls out of East St.
Louis, and the conductor has picked up his
fares in the forward smoker and gone back
through the train, I take off the overalls and
unlock the door of the vestibule from the
outside. That's another of my specialties.

' ' I know pretty nearly every conductor
that travels over the line I patronize and
his punch-mark. I know what conductor is
going out, and I fix up a hat-check, making
a close imitation of the punch-mark with a
pointed, keen knife-blade.

" ' After I open the vestibule-door I roll
up my overalls, go into the car with the
check in my hat, and lie down in a seat and
go to sleep with my hat over my eyes. The
conductor, going through, sees the Chicago
punch in the check and passes me all
night, and in the morning I am in old Chi'.
It's as easv, almost, getting from Chi' to
N* Yawk.'"

WITH COMPASS AND CHAIN.

BY EDGAR WELTON COOLEY.

Written for "The Railroad Man's Magazine."

OME, comrade! Match courage with courage, firm
step, and steady breath!
It is you and I and the unseen path through the

yawning gates of death;
It is you and I and the wilderness, and the crags
where the senses reel,
Together we'll fight creation's might and chain it with bands of
steel !

Let cowards flee from the fears that be, for theirs is the heart of

a child,
By the lonely hours and the grit that cowers, together we'll tame

the wild;
By the God above, by the ones we love, by the tears in a woman's

eye,
As man to man, as true men can, we'll conquer chaos or die !

From the snarling whine of the wind-blown pine, o'er the chasm's

hungry jaws,
We'll drag the chain by might and main and never go back or

pause.
We'll drive our stakes where the red rock breaks through soil

where the foot of man
Was never pressed since the sun caressed the dawn and the world

began !

To the uttermost deeps, where the midnight sleeps; to the peaks

where the wild winds ride,
With compass and rod, if it pleases God, we'll go, what may

e'er betide!
Where the gaunt wolves lope on the barren slope, with their hot

and hungry breath,
WTiere the wild things hide on every side and we're glove in

glove with death;

152

WITH COMPASS AND CHAIN.

153

Where the lightning leaps from steeps to steeps and the 'torm

beats down in wrath,
We'll crawl on the edge of the treacherous ledge and chisel the

engine's path,
Though the blizzards wail and we lose the trail, and the avalanche

lies in wait.
For Success a cheer, and only a sneer for the fabulous thing called

Fate.

We'll never turn back till we've staked a track wherever the brain

may plan,
Till the wilderness sings that the King of Kings and the Master

of Things is Man;
Till the task begun is the task well done, till the dream that was

is real,
Till we're face to face with the innermost place and have pierced

its heart with steel!

With carbine and blade the ranger may raid where the tuft of

the Indian shows,
With a pack at his back, o'er the beaten track, through sand or

drifting snows;
From the canyon's wall the bugle's call may echo to Heaven's door,
But the soldier to-day has only play, since the rails stretch on

before.

It's to scale the steep where the shadows sleep and conquer the

dizzy height,
And blaze the trail for the iron rail that demands of man man's

might !
It's to measure the miles to the afterwhiles, though the face may

freeze or tan,
Up over the grim mount's furthermost rim that calls for the nerve

of man!

The compass and chain forerun the train, as the night foreruns

the morn,
So it's hew to-day the swift highway for the millions yet unborn !

Then, comrade, come! Courage for courage; firm step and steady

breath !
It's you and I and the path unknown through the white-capped

peaks of death !
It is you and I and the solitudes so deep that the senses reel,
With compass and rod, if it pleases God, we'll shackle the wild

with steel!

HELP FOR MEN WHO HELP
THEMSELV ES — NUMBER 26.

MEN WHO HUNT FOR
COSTLY TRIFLES.

BY G. F. GARTER.

THE railroad of to-day bears about the same relation to the railroad of
to-morrow as the newly quarried block of marble to the finished
statue. Our forefathers had all they could possibly do in blocking out
roughly the pioneer roads without any effort at " polishing them up."

While we lave polished and polished, we can never effect the "final
polish. Our railroads will never reach a stage of absolute perfection. There
will always be room for improvement of some kind. Their wonderful
growth and progress demands it.

Why It Is Necessary to Employ Able Men to Think Out Schemes of

Economy, and How Those Schemes Are Put

Into Operation.

IKE woman's work, of the ancient
proverb, a railroad is never
done. On the contrary,
the problems confronting
railroad managements are
always growing more for-
midable, though their forms may-change.
In the beginning the great problem was
to build something that in some sort of
fashion would meet, the growing need of
transportation. From the very nature of
conditions, everything had to be done in
an experimental, makeshift sort of fash-
ion, but this did not mitigate the difficul-
ties that had to be overcome- to arrive at
the railroad of to-day.

To the development of the railroad the
pioneer builders brought an amount of
energy, enthusiasm, daring enterprise,

and faith in the future unparalleled in
the world's history. So zealously did
they play their part in construction that
the second generation of railroad men
found themselves confronted with the
still more formidable problem of finding
traffic enough to enable the lines already
built to exist.

Unlike any other business enterprise, a
railroad, once completed, cannot be aban-
doned because it is unprofitable. It is
not merely a private undertaking; it is
a public work as well. Trains must con-
tinue to run whether they earn interest on
the bonds or not. If they do not pay,
the traffic managers must give way to men
who can make them pay.

In coping with the second phase of
their problem, railroad men played a

Series began in the August, 1907, Railroad Man's Magazine,

154

Single copies, 10 cents.

MEN WHO HUNT FOR COSTLY TRIFLES.

155

more important part in the development
of the nation than they have been given
credit for. If it had not been for the
incredible labors of the railroad-traffic
builders, the United States would be very
far behind its present stage of evolution.

Millions were lavished by the railroads
to create revenue-producing traffic in the
wilderness. Immigration agents scoured
Europe, and coaxed population over by
the hundred thousand.

Then the railroads sent out instructors
on seed - corn specials and seed - wheat
specials to teach the farmers how to raise
bigger and better crops. They sent
" good - roads " specials to teach the
farmers how to haul their improved crops
to the station economically. They did it
in order that they might have more car-
loads of freight to haul, but the policy
deserves none the less to be characterized
as practical philanthropy.

Scientists, employed by the railroads,
studied the natural resources of the
country, discovered raw material avail-
able, and told how this material could
best be manufactured.

Representatives of the traffic depart-
ments hunted up small capitalists with a
knack for manufacturing, and stuck right
to them until they were safely established
in factories along the line. Finally, rate
clerks figured themselves into premature
baldness trying to concoct a tariff on the
products of the new factories which
would enable infant industries to grow.

The Second Problem Solved,

The fact that the railroads did all this,
not for the sake of the trusts they were
creating, but for a few extra car-loads of
high-class profitable freight, detracts
nothing from the value of the service to
the country. Thus was the second great
problem of the railroads solved.

Fortunately for the country, the solution
business was decidedly overdone. The
railroads were soon overwhelmed with the
traffic of their own creating. This situa-
tion has brought out the third and final
phase of the railroad problem, and now
the transcendent task confronting the
railroads is to improve their facilities
sufficiently to take care of the business
forced upon them.

In early days, when each new utility

had to be invented as the need for it was
recognized, the only test was, " Will it
do?" Now, instead of seeking expe-
dients within their available means, man-
agements are compelled to find scientific-
ally correct mechanism and method
regardless of first cost. The rule of
thumb no longer answers. It is not
enough merely to handle the business
offered ; it must be handled well, for the
sake of the stockholders quite as much
as for the well-being of the public.

When the Chemist Talks.

The situation has placed a new auto-
crat on the transportation throne. The
promoter with the constructive imagina-
tion and dauntless courage, and the mira-
cle-worker in finance, have been obliged
to abdicate in favor of engineers and
chemists and other experts with myste-
rious initials affixed to their names.

When these learned gentlemen an-
nounce that such and such things must
be done because they know they are the
right things to do, the directors dare not
talk back — they simply dig up the money.

From the spectator's point of view, the
solution of present-day problems is no
less pictureque than like achievements of
earlier days. P'or one thing, the process
involves an exhibition of team-work on
a larger scale than has ever before been
attempted.

The ^magnitude and complexity of rail-
road activities, by creating a necessity for
organization, has developed to a remark-
able degreee its capacity. This capacity
has been taxed to the utmost in grappling
with the problems involved in reducing
railroading to a science. While dealing
with its own peculiar perplexities in its
own way, each line lends its unstinted co-
operation to all the others in mastering
their common difficulties.

Specialists in each line have their own
national organizations, which systematic-
ally take up and work out every question,
great or small, bearing upon their own
particular calling. There is a long list
of the national organizations, all hard-
working and very much in earnest, such
as the Engineering and Maintenance of
Way Association, the Master Car Build-
ers' Association, Master Mechanics' As-
sociation, and many others.

156

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

The American Railway Association —
made up of the higher executive officers
— interests itself in every subject that
concerns railroads, and seeks to coordi-
nate the efforts of all the other organi-
zations to the common good. To make
sure that no vagrant idea escapes, dele-
gates are sent to international railroad
congresses to round up any desirable
wrinkles that European experts may
chance to hit upon.

Never before have so many clever
brains, so many skilled hands, and so
much money been focused upon the at-
tainment of any single object as are now
engaged in trying to improve the rail-
roads of the United States up to a point
that will enable them to handle the traf-
fic offered, and perhaps make a little
profit in doing it.

In striving after the perfect railroad,
the engineers quite properly begin with
the track, which is, literally and figura-
tively, the foundation. To the unprac-
tised eye the railroad track of to-day
looks the same as the track of a dozen
years ago. Moreover, in all human prob-
ability, the track of fifty years hence will
look just like the track of to-day.

As inventors have been wrestling withy
the monorail for three-quarters of a cen-
tury without producing any practical re-
sults, it may safely be assumed that trains
will continue to struggle along indefinite-
ly on two rails, and that those rails will
be laid exactly four feet eight and a half
inches apart.

Track Improvements.

But appearances are proverbially de-
ceptive, and nowhere more so than in a
railroad track. Great improvements have
been made in many details of the track,
and still greater ones may be expected
in the future — for the one thing upon
which all engineers agree is that the best
of railroads is not as good as it might be.

Perhaps some idea of the amount of
room for improvement in a thing so
seemingly simple as a railroad track may
be gathered from the fact that, at its last
annual meeting, the American Engineer-
ing and Maintenance of Way Association
instructed seventeen committees to inves-
tigate and report upon seventy-eight sub-
jects pertaining to the permanent way.

On a good track the traveler is scarce-
ly conscious of the curves and grades
'over which he rides. Even if his atten-
tion was called to them, he -would be un-
able to perceive therein any possibilities
for spectacular achievements. But if he
only understood that a reduction of
grades from 52 feet to the mile to 21 feet
would double the hauling capacity of the
locomotives, reduce the number of trains
one-half, and lop off one-fourth of the
cost of operation, he might begin to take
notice.

The Engineers' Troubles.

If he further understood that a loco-
motive has to exert half a pound of its
meager tractive power per ton of load
per degree of curvature to drag its train
around curves, and that, assuming the
average cost of hauling a train one mile
to be 85" cents, the straightening of each
degree of curvature means an annual
saving of 35 cents on each daily train, he
would be still further qualified to under-
stand why ' the straightening of kinks,
both horizontal and vertical, is the big-
gest problem confronting railroads to-day.

The difficulties are by no means ended
when the large sums of money required
for the work are raised ; the engineers
have their troubles, too. Sometimes it
takes years to find a practicable way to
eliminate a stretch of objectionable track.
One of the greatest undertakings of the
kind yet accomplished Avas the rebuilding
of the Southern Pacific, formerly the
Central Pacific and Union Pacific. In
Nevada and Utah alone, $9,000,000 was
spent in reconstruction, b)^ which 50 miles
in distance were saved, while 16,542 de-
grees of curvature and 3,064 feet grade
rise were abolished. Part of the work
was done by building thirty miles of new
main line right through the middle of
Great Salt Lake.

More millions were spent in reducing
"curves and grades in Wyoming, while the
Lane cut-off in Nebraska, recently com-
pleted, saves another 1 1 miles in distance
and some very bad grades and, curves.
A single cut on the new line is 1 mile
long, 87 feet deep, and 400 feet wide at
the center.

The Northwestern Railroad, a -few
years ago, spent a round million of dol-

MEN WHO HUNT FOR COSTLY TRIFLES.

157

lars to build a cut-off 7.4 miles long be-
tween Boone and Ogden, Iowa. It saves
3 miles, reduced the total curvature from
902 degrees to 68 degrees, and reduced
the heaviest grade from 79 feet to 26 feet
per mile.

Studying the Road-Bed.

Once a line is located, the next point
to be considered is how to construct the
road-bed so as to make it render the best
service at the lowest cost. That sounds
very simple, but railroads do not find
it so.

After years of effort to solve the prob-
lem in actual service as it went along, the
Pennsylvania Railroad decided that it
was not making satisfactory progress. So
a special commissioner of maintenance-
of-way engineers was appointed in 1905
to experiment with road-beds and fix a
standard. Fifteen miles of experimental
track were built in the two- years devoted
to the study of the subject. Then the
commission made its report, and the re-
construction of the great Pennsylvania
system was begun in accordance with its
specifications.

Drainage is the one great point on
which special stress was laid by the com-
mission, for water is a railroad's worst
enemy. Extremely wide ditches were
recommended, and the sides of all slopes
are sodded or covered with vines to pre-
vent detritus from washing into the
ditches and filling them up. Large cast-
iron drain-pipes were to be placed under
the ballast at frequent intervals. Each
mile of standard track is to have 5,127
cubic yards of crushed-stone ballast to
keep it steady.

Next to the reconstruction of the
trunk-lines on a standard that will make
the economic handling of traffic possible,
the matter of maintenance is the most im-
portant problem connected with the per-
manent way. This means the work done
by the humble section-boss and his gang.
HoAvever obscure the section-boss may
seem in the eyes of the public, he is a
very important man in the railroad or-
ganization.

Under his orders one-sixth of the to-
tal cost of operating is expended, and
upon his skill depends the ability of
trains to make time.

E. H. Harriman knows how to appre-
ciate the section-boss. In order to make
him satisfied with his lot and keep him
up to concert pitch, the little wizard of
Wall Street has established two hundred
library centers on the Harriman lines,
from which an abundance of good books
and periodicals are circulated among the
section men on all the Harriman lines.

One of the section-boss's problems, that
is causing his superior officers a vast
amount of worry, is the matter of ties.
Every railroad in the land is making des-
perate efforts to solve the problem of tie
supply. Twelve different models of re-
enforced concrete ties have been tested,
but none have fully met the requirements.
Steel ties of every conceivable pattern
have also been tried, with but poor suc-
cess ; while a dozen different methods of
treating wooden ties to preserve them
from decay are in use.

While one set of experts is grappling
with the tie problem, another is trying
to find something better than the present
spike to fasten the rail to the tie. Re-
cent tests by a Columbia University pro-
fessor demonstrated that a side pressure
of 17,000 pounds by the rail was suffi-
cient to cut off the head of a spike. The
strength of spikes is therefore ample, ex-
cept possibly under most extraordinary
circumstances.

Troubles of the Spike.

The trouble with the spike is not that
it isn't strong enough to withstand the
shearing movement of the rails, but that
it is a tie-destroyer. It cuts and bruises
the tie, and so hastens decay. For this
reason there is a great deal of talk about
introducing the screw spike, extensively
used in Europe.

Ever since the first railroad was built
the rail has been the most vexatious
problem with which engineers have had
to deal, and it seems as far from a sat-
isfactory solution to-day as ever it was.
No single detail in railroad construction
has been the subject of such heated con-
troversy as the shape and size of the rail.
Whole libraries have been written on the
theory of rail-making.

Although the American Railway As-
sociation has adopted certain specifica-
tions for steel rails, and has recommend-

158

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

ed their adoption, the controversy is by-
no means settled. But the distinctions
in specifications between the most widely-
different types of rail are altogether too
fine for the lay mind to grasp.

The Pennsylvania Railroad is obliged
to use 140,000 tons of rails every year
for renewals. As this involves approx-
imately $2,500,000, the company is nat-
urally anxious to reduce this item if
possible. As rails wore out first at the
ends which were battered down by the
wheels of passing trains, it was the cus-
tom to take up the rails at the end of
their average service of ten years, cut off
about 18 inches from each end at a cold-
sawing plant, redrill holes for. angle-iron
bolts, and relay on branch lines, where
they would last another ten years.

As this was only half the service a good
rail should render, a corps of engineers
was set to work to make a systematic
study of the problem nine years ago.
Copies of the patents for the 861 differ-
ent kinds of rail- joints offered by indus-
trious inventors were procured and care-
fully examined.

Of the lot, six of the most promising
were selected and introduced in sections
of experimental track. These various
joints are now being tried out in actual
service, and the one that makes the best
showing at the end of ten years will be
adopted as the Pennsylvania standard.

Economy in Fence-Posts.

In a business where thinking is done
exclusively in millions there are no tri-
fles. Problems that might seem inconse-
quential to the outsider involve results
that are rather startling. For instance,
the proper distance between fence-posts
would seem to be a matter more worthy
the attention of a small farmer than that

The next article in this series is also
subject of motive power.

of the high-salaried director of operation
and maintenance of the Harriman lines.

Yet that capable official took time to
observe that the fence-posts along the
lines under his charge were one rod apart,
while two rods would answer equally as
well. If his order to set fence-posts two
rods apart, instead of one rod, were to
be applied to the 30,000 miles of railroad
more or less under "the Harriman influ-
ence, it would effect a saving of some-
thing like $350,000 a year on renewals of
fence-posts, which is equivalent to five
per cent interest on $7,000,000.

Railroad fence costs all the way from
$300 to $1,500 a mile. At the average
of these extreme prices it would cost
$195,300,000 to fence all the railroads in
the United States.

The Woodpecker's Ravages.

Not the least of the trifles that are
great things is the woodpecker problem.
In the South and Southwest the wood-
peckers alight on the telegraph-poles,
and, upon hearing the humming of the
wires, jump at the conclusion that some
particularly fat and luscious worms must
be at work inside the poles. Thereupon
they set to work to dig them out. They
don't get the worms, but they do run the
cost of renewing telegraph-poles up to
appalling proportions.

In California, Arizona, and Texas,
fifty per cent of the poles are riddled so
that they are dangerous for linemen to
climb, and they go down with the first
wind-storm. One inspector in California
found 25 poles with 200 to 300 -holes
bored in each by the woodpeckers. Along
the Illinois Central in Tennessee 110 of
268 consecutive poles were so badly rid-
dled by woodpeckers that they had to be
replaced.

by Mr. Carter. It deals with the important

A BO AND A BULLDOG

BY EMMET F. HARTE.

Stealing a Bulldog from a Baggage - Room
Doesn't Always Lead to the Paths of Glory.

^ HE fact that I sat dozing in
the shadow of a ram-
shackle corn-crib at York,
Nebraska, does not signify
that I was ditched, be-
cause- I wasn't. I was
doing window-glass signs at the time in
that section of the State, and had cleaned
up a very genteel little stake at that par-
ticular county seat.

Under such circumstances you'd think
I would have bought a ticket for Grand
Island, whither I was bound, and rode
in on the red plush along with the law-
abiding and otherwise uninteresting
traveling public — but not me. A minion
of the B. and M. once swindled me out of
two dollars due for arduous labor as a
section-hand under the rules and regula-
tions, down at Red Cloud.

In redress thereof I don't pay over no
money of mine to that company for rail-
road fare. I bide my time until the ef-
facing shadows of nightfall envelop the
surroundings, and then effect a hiatus per
the blind, the trucks, or the breeze-fanned
Pullman-roof, and -save my money.

Thus, -true to conviction and un-
harassed by either hunger, conscience, or
weather, I sat nodding until four hours
should elapse and the west-bound train
should potter along as scheduled. There
always intrudes a note of discord, how-
ever, into every serene and poetic lan-
guor of mine.

A local rattled in a while before sun-
down, a local pulled by an antiquated
din-maker rigged with a blower, and they
coughed, buzzed, and sputtered around
there, switching up and down past my
shed for half an hour, making much dis-
turbance of my peace. Finding, finally,
that I couldn't sleep, I sat up, looked

about me and there, not ten feet away,
I saw Fitz Souders in the company of a
white bulldog, the two of them engaged
in the eating of a pie.

I've known Fitzhugh Souders for
years and years, but the bulldog was air
entire stranger. Fitz is a bo of the un-
abashed stripe. A few of us pretend to
have some means of support; he don't.

He's hobo, true to name and war-
ranted, flotsam pure and simple, and not
ashamed to approach the grandest dame
that ever made swishing sounds along a
cement sidewalk, in the garish light of
high noon, to ask genially for a dime or
a quarter. I threw in my clutch and
honked over to renew affiliations.

" Well, well ! " he said, in recognition.
" W'ich way, bo? Who'd have thunk
it? Have a piece of pie? It's pumpkin."

" Thanks ! " I said. " I'm headed for
Grand Island. Where'd you get hold
of the pup? "

" That," he remarked, " is another
story. Sit down and make yourself at
home. Happen to have any makings?
Ah! — " a pause; silence broken by the
snuffling of a nose, the hurried exhaust
of the freight-engine kicking a car off,
some- distance away, the crash of draw-
heads when it hit a fellow victim, then
Fitz struck a match, lit up, and resumed :

" He's an English bull; thoroughbred,
pedigree from A to Izzard, with a line of
ancestors to make our great American
fir'st families sky-blue with envy. Look
at him, don't he show up select? "

" He's stumbled into grievous bad
company," I commented.

" ' True 'tis, 'tis pity ; pity 'tis, 'tis
true,' " quoted Fitz, unruffled, " but it
might be worse. In fact, it has been
worse, as I was goin' to tell.

i59

160

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" You ought to seen the bunch that had
him in tow when I got him. Box-car
thieves, depot-sneaks, and suit-case-lift-
ers, that was the kind of company he
was in then ; and a kick in the slats when
he didn't wag his tail to suit; eh,
Bench ? "

The dog flicked his ears and turned an
adoring eye in Fitz's direction.

" It was down in St. Jo," continued
the narrator, " Jesse James's town ; a
tolerable - like village, with aspirations,
and boastful of being the healthiest
speck on the map, but smudged with some
of the worst two-for-a-nickel thieves
from Sioux City to St. Louis.

" I hung around there almost a week.
The coppers are an easy-going lot of
peace-promoters, having a grudge at only
two kinds of people, namely, gun-tooters
and lid-lifters.

" Once in a great while they catch a
stick-up artist or a porch-climber; just to
show their versatility; or a cycle-sleuth
chases an automobile up a telephone-pole
or into the river for exceeding six miles
an hour; but, on the whole, St. Jo isn't
boisterous.

" Its river-front and frame-shanty
districts are, as I said before, pretty con-
siderably frequented by a class of light-
fingered gentry, however, who steal eve-
rything they can from the railroads, from
the coal that scatters off in the yards, to
the wheels off of the passenger-coaches.
There waS a regular gang operating in
and around the place.

" They would secrete themselves into
box cars of merchandise in the yards.
Then when the train pulled out through
the edge of town, they'd slide the door
open and heave out caddies of tobacco,
cases of canned goods, cigars, tomato-cat-
sup, shoes, bananas, kegs of bad booze,
and bales of cotton piece, to be picked
up by other members of the association
who were waiting for that purpose, and
hauled to town in a wagon.

" Easy, wasn't it? Huh! It was like
gathering manna on a bumper-crop year
of that commodity ! It was a cinch !

" All this I found out later. I stum-
bled on the thing by accident — as good a
way as any, I guess.

" I was loafing on a hickory settee op-
posite the baggage-room of the Union sta-
tion, one dusk, arguing with myself

whether to go to Omaha or K. C, when
I saw a man frisk this pup here from the
baggage-room and make his getaway with-
out a soul seeing him but me, I do believe.
The dog was tethered to the handle of a
trunk by the door, and the party with
the ' sticky fingers just sidled along,
clipped the cord and slipped across the
street between a trunk-van and a street-
car, leading the dog^ ducked into a cross
street, and did the vanishing skiddoo.

" I whipped up and took his trail. It
wasn't hard to follow the guy; a blind
man could have done it. He went to:
ward the river a ways, then he turned
and took down the Terminal tracks along
the bank.

" I kept him in sight until he finally
went into a house somewhere down south-
east of the bridge. Then I sized up the
same as to locality and general aspects,
so I'd be able to find it again if neces-
sary.

" I went back the way I had come,
concluding to stay over another night.
The morning papers would probably
have an ad in the Lost and Founds :
' Ten dollars reward for the return of a
white bull pup and no questions asked,'
w'ich would look good to me.

" I had an inkling in my own mind
as to what I'd do if such proved to be
the case. While I was going along cogi-
tating with myself about the matter. I
fell in with another bo. He was a
stranger to me, though he was evidently
an old-timer in the profession, for he was
seedy, sloppy, and shy several shaves.

" ' S'y, friend,' he said, ' c'd yeh stake
meh to a match? ' I could, would, and
did. In return for the favor he asked
about freight-trains, outgoing, north, east,
south, and west. He wasn't seemingly
particular about w'ich way he went.

" You've got me faded,' I told him.
' I only ride passengers. No freights for
mine. I couldn t tell you within six
hours of the leaving time of any one of
them, because I don't know.'

" That seemed to interest him consid-
erably. He studied it over. Then we
talked on a while about this, that, and
the other, and the first thing I knew the
man was pumping me.

" Quite a sweater he was, too ; doing it
in a roundabout way, mixed in with other
conversation of no moment, and a few

A BO AND A BULLDOG.

161

stories, strictly new, clean, and well told.
As soon as I tumbled to the catechism
game I played dead and told him the
history of somebody else's life, acknowl-
edging the same modestly as mine. We
went over and sat on the river-bank and
made friends each with each, quite chum-
my and good-humored, for two
hours or more.

" The upshot and outcome of
my nice little story of hard luck,
which he snaked out little by lit-
tle, was that he told me his name
and address, and also revealed
his line of business. He was a
' Q.' detective. Andy Byers was

night after .night, between St. Jo and
Rushville on the south, and Amazonia on
the north, keeping both eyes peeled for
the thieves, it would give him more time
to watch the yards.

" It was strictly a commission con-
tract, he said; no catch-a the t'ief, no

"who'd have thunk it? have a piece of pie? it's pumpkin."

his handle, and he needed some assist-
ance, he said, to get a line on a bunch
of box-car robbers who were doing a
land-office business in that community.

" Night after night cars were broken
into, either at the* freight -houses or in the
yards, and stuff of all kinds carried off.
It was getting fierce — the company was
getting about all they wanted of it.

" I suggested that maybe employees of
the road themselves were doing the frisk-
ing ; but he rather thought not, as he said
he had been watching the daily life and
habits of every man and his family to
the third and fourth generation, who ever
even applied for a job with their com-
pany. No, he thought it was a gang of
home-talent pilferers who did but little
else and had it down to a fine system.

" What he wanted me to do was this :
If I would beat my way back and forth,
11 RR

make-a the mon', but if I happened to
get next to a clue that would lead to the
identity of the rascals he'd undertake to
say that the company would do the right
thing by me.

" I didn't much like the idea of riding
freights but there was nothing else for it,
so I hired to him for a week and got my
assignment — a train then making up in
the lower yards for the Southwest. It
was a clear, warm night — only three
weeks ago, you know — we drilled over
and took a prospect along the train for
broken seals or suspicious characters loi-
tering around, if we could find any; at
the same time keeping out of the sight of
railroad employees.

" Everything looked all correct and
regular. We examined every car; noth-
ing doing.

" Byers told me where I could find

162

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

him if anything turned up, and rambled
for the Hannibal yards to inspect a train
going out over there. I ensconced my-
self in an empty on a parallel track then,
and did some heavy sleuthing.

" Fitz Souders, secret service ! That
was me. And, Aunt Annie ! Didn't I
have the good luck that night?

" Why, bo, it was all cut and hung on

" All I had to do was watch out for
the first package that bumped the ballast ;
if he threw anything out, get off and
camp by it till somebody came after it,
then see where it went. If he didn't
throw anything out, then I would simply
go on and on to see what he did do. It
was an easy voyage either way for Hawk-
shaw Souders.

"nothing but an old woman, blind in one eye."

the line. for me! It Avas too- nice for
anything.

" When the train started I slipped out
of the empty and slid in under a car,
and I'll make you a jurat that we didn't
go a distance of twenty car lengths until
a man hopped up out of the dark onto
the very car I was stowed away under,
and began to juggle with the door. By
moving along the rods a few feet I could
have reached out and grabbed him.

" He clung on while they were creep-
ing out of the sidings, and then he drew
up his legs and disappeared. I guessed
he had got the door open and crawled in-
side. Great business, wasn't it?

" Along down the bottom, a little
ways below the yard-limit post, my pirate
began to get busy. He heaved out a box
of canned tomatoes or lemon extract or
something, and the minute I heard it
bump the gravel I gathered myself to-
gether to follow it.

" Ever get out from under a box car
going a pretty good hickory? It's hard
on the features. I guess that train wasn't
running over twelve or fifteen miles an
hour, as they had a fair string of loads
and only one engine, but I plowed up
the road-bed with my nose just the same.

" I tried to light clear of the ballast
and did, all spraddled out, in the raspiest

A BO AND A BULLDOG.

163

lot of weeds I ever mowed. Didn't
break anything, though, by good for-
tune, so I crawled a little farther into
the tall timbers and laid low.

" The pick - up party must have
been ready and waiting, for it wasn't
more than five minutes before two^ fel-
lows came sneaking along the side of the
track looking for spoils. Hist-sh-sh !
Sherlock, that was me ! D'rectly they
came back carrying a box between 'em,
and I slipped along behind on their trail.

" There was a wagon road a short dis-
tance back, and there they had a horse
hitched to a delivery wagon, waiting. I
burrowed under a near-by culvert and
hid while they loaded up the rest of the
stuff.

" The fellow who had thrown the loot
out of the car evidently got off himself
with the last box, for there were three of
them when they finally drove off. I
hope he had better luck getting off than
I did. If he didn't he lost some hide,
I'll bet.

" I loped out after them when they
started, keeping far enough behind to
be out of sight in the darkness and close
enough to not lose them. They didn't
go up through South Town ; they went
round back of the packing-houses along
a by-road through the river-bottoms, stri-
king the end of South Fourth Street.
We didn't meet very many people, and
it was dark enough so that what few we
did meet" didn't likely see me, and I
never lost that grocery wagon not for one
minute.

" Try dog-trotting six miles over a
country road once. Phew ! Hawkshaiv
was pretty much all in when they landed
up at last in an alley quite a ways up in
the village, but it was great sleuthing
for an amateur. Fine !

" And say ! Where do you think they
stopped? It was the same place the guy
had sloped to with the white dog.

" I was just naturally too tired to
wiggle my little finger when I got that
far, and the thought of drilling away
beyond Sixteenth Street to see Byers, and
report, was beyond me. I couldn't do
it ; at least, not then, and I didn't have
the price of a car ride.

" The chances were that he wouldn't
be there, anyhow. So I dragged myself
over in the lee of a foundry or some-

thing close by, made me a bed on some
scrap-iron and went to sleep.

"Did I sleep? Huh! It was sun-
up when I woke up. I had quite a nap,
and I was so stiff and sore that I
squeaked and whined in the joints like a
load of wood in Arkansas.

" Aunt Annie ! Railroad detecting is
wearing on the human frame. I was
flat broke and hungry as wolves and she-
bears, but I crippled over to Byers's
boarding-house and they said he was
there, but had gone to bed.

" I said I had important news from
the front and demanded entrance. I
suppose they thought I was a Black-
Hand envoy from the looks of me, but
they finally permitted me to go up to
his room. Byers, himself, didn't know
me at first, as I had disguised myself in
the face considerably when I fell off the
train, but he got a shove on himself
when he heard me tell my little story.

" I related the whole thing, including
the stealing of the dog, w'ich he hadn't
heard about before, and it made a hit
with him throughout.

" ' That's the checker ! ' he said, roll-
ing out and getting into his clothes.
1 We'll go right over and pinch the whole
works. You're there in a thousand dif-
ferent places. Bully ! '

" ' Here now,' I said, somewhat rau-
cous, ' what do you think I am ? A tin
soldier? How much breakfast do you
think I've had? And how much money
do you think I've got?' I turned my
pockets inside out to' demonstrate my
embarrassed condition, financially, and he
rallied like a man coming out of a stage
faint.

" ' Etta,' he bellowed down the stair-
way, ' get this man a square meal on the
table about as quick as you ever did any-
thing in your life, and send the kid to
the saloon after a can.' That was
sounding something more like it, thai he
said to me :

" ' By George, I never thought but
what you'd had your breakfast. You'll
have to excuse me this time.'

" I couldn't do otherwise, and I'll let
you guess what I did to that breakfast
and that bucket of beer. Afterward I
felt different.

" We took a car for police headquar-
ters and got a couple of plain-clothes

164

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

cops to help round-
up the pirates. I
piloted the party
to the place, and
we descended from
all directions at
once on the said
stronghold of law-
lessness.

" What do you
think we captured?
Huh ! Nothing but
an old woman,
blind in one eye,

a candidate for the
insectorium, and if
it hadn't been for
the bulldog it
'iF^fy / wouldn't have
f-^'iW"3 taken much argu-
|k ment to con-

F;!uO vince me I'd
reamed the
hole plot my-
self. There wasn't a
thing the least bit
suspicious, even.

"Anywa.y, we
took the dog and
went over to the
Union Station.
Had they lost a
white bull pup ?
You bet they had.
"He belonged to
Miss Gladiola Go-
diva, of the Blue-
b e 1 1 Burlesquers,
and, according to reports already received,
there had been a row when he showed up
missing. He was a registered dog, with
a pedigree as long as a dry Sunday;
worth mints of money, they said, and
were awful much obliged for him being
returned.

" But the cops said no ; he might be

needed for evidence against the thieves.

so they'd better take him to the station

and consult the chief first. In the mean-

who took on most pitiful; said she was, time the. railroad company could wire the

a poor widow and had only one son, who young lady and let her* know about it if

worked for the street-railway company, they so desired ; there wasn't any harm in

IT WAS GREAT
SLEUTHING FOR
AN AMATEUR."

laying track.

" We ransacked the house from cellar
to shingles, and the only thing we found
was the white bulldog tied in the coal-
shed. He was black and blue from kicks
and cuffs, and the old woman said he
had come there several days before as a
stray.

" Her son wanted to keep him for a
watch-dog, she said, as they'd been los-
ing their coal out of the shed. The
whole neighborhood gathered around, as to get on the oozy side of man or beast
is usual, and testified to the old woman's get 'em something to eat.

that.

" On the way to the police-station, I
made friends with the dog. It was a
case of affinities with him and me ; love
at first sight.

" 'While the cops were out looking for
the son that worked on the street rail-
way, Byers and I loafed around the sta-
tion and I doctored the bulldog up with
some liniment for his bruises, and rustled
him some bones to gnaw. That's the way

tale and said slighting things about the
mullet-headed minions of the law in gen-
eral for descending on a poor widow
woman in any such fashion.

" The plain-clothes men began to look

" When they finally brought in the
fellow we were waiting for, the white
dog and I were side partners. You
ought to have seen him growl and show
his teeth at the guy. It was plain that

sideways at me like they thought I was he didn't like him.

A BO AND A BULLDOG.

165

" As for me, I'd never seen the fellow
before. He wasn't one of the three in
the grocery wagon, I could swear to
that; neither was he the rooster that
swiped the dog from the baggage-room.
I told them so as soon as they brought
him in.

" Under the circumstances they
couldn't do anything else but turn the
fellow loose after asking him (a few
questions. His version of how he got
the dog tallied with his mother's story
straight enough, so-they let him go.

" Byers hadn't been mixed up in it
at all while they had the man under fire.
He'd kept himself out of sight ; so when
the fellow walked out of the station,
Byers sauntered after him, giving the
rest of the push the wink.

" As for me, I didn't know just ex-
actly what to do next myself. It was
considerably past eat-time ; I was broke,
and nobody seemed to be fall-
ing over themselves to invite me
out to lunch.

" I was getting more dis-
gusted every minute. Finally
I got up to take a saunter out
into the residence district on a
small matter of business, when
I heard the desk-cop talking to
somebody over the phone.

" ' Says he don't want the
dog, eh ? Oh, her husband !
I see. D'you fellows want him
down there ? No ; we've got
no use for him. I don't know
about that. No. Yes. Well,
all right.' Then he turned
around to me and, seeing I was
interested, said :

" ' They got a wire from
that showgirl's husband, and
he says he's glad the dog's
lost ; hopes he'll stay lost.
Says his wife hasn't got the
slightest use for a dog any-
how, and he's more bother
than he's worth.

'" He asks us to ditch him
on the quiet, and he'll consider
it a favor. The baggage out-
fit don't want him, nor any-
body around here, so I guess
it's the soap grease for his.'

" ' Give him to me,' I said.
• I'll take him.'

" ' Sure thing,' he said gladly. ' Take
him along and welcome.' And that's
how I happened to have another mouth
to feed in my family.

" Bench was the name engraved on
his collar, and he wagged his piece of
a tail when I called him by it, and went
with me like he'd already made up his
mind about the matter. We drifted out
around town a while, acquiring thirty-
five cents in real money during the same
by means of the usual confidences con-
fided to the right parties. Some gave up
easy, an' some didn't.

" Then we entered the odoriferous
confines of a chile-bazaar, and once niore
stayed the maddening pangs. Some-
where along about six o'clock we ran
across Byers.

" I've been looking all over town
for you, man,' he said. ' Where've you
been ? How'd you vamose with the dog? '

HE DID IT SIMPLY TO GET SQUARE "FOR A FEW KICKS
HE'D RECEIVED PREVIOUSLY."

166

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" I told him how it was, and .asked
for news. Nothing doing.

" ' I followed that man all afternoon,'
he said ; ' and, by George, if he's crooked,
he's a slick one. First he went home
and had his dinner. He was still there
when the one-o'clock whistles blew, so
I supposed he wasn't going to work in
the afternoon.

" ' I had it sized up that he'd slip
some word to the gang, if he's mixed up
in it in any way, so I hung around in the
neighborhood. He came out finally and
slouched over to Sixth Street to a saloon,
where he loafed 'the rest of the time,
playing cards with the bunch of rounders
that hang out there ; nothing suspicious
about that. It looks like he's what he
claims to be.'

" ' You go ahead with your regular
work around the yards,' I said to Byers,
' and I'll camp on the trail of these peo-
ple. I've got nothing else to do. I
know that's where the wagon stopped
that night, at least.'

" ' And, by the way,' I mentioned
casually, ' you couldn't loan a poor devil
a dollar, could you, till pay-day? This
detecting business is the most appetizing
line I've been in lately.'

" ' I'll make it a five,' he said, grin-
ning ; ' and good-by, if I never see you
again.'

" I suppose he thought that, with
that much money in my possession, I
wouldn't lose any time catching a
steamer for Europe or some other sea-
port for the idle rich.

" ' Good-by,' I said. ' Leave your
address, so I can write you the particu-
lars when I jug the pirates.'

" Bench is the boy that really did the
work, though, and he did it simply to
get square for" a few kicks he'd received
previously. That same night, about mid-
night, we two of the secret service were
nosing around in the alley back of the
place under suspicion, when Bench be-
gan to growl.

" He didn't bark, I should say not ;
he's got too good blood in him for that.
He just bristled up his bristles and
rumbled in his chest and prowled off up
the alley.

" I chased along behind him, and
three back yards away he slid under
the fence and pounced onto a man wTho

was drawing some water out of a well.
There was a succession of noises, growls,
curses, and grunts, and I hurried
through the gate to pull the 'dog off.

" I thought he was overdoing the
sleuthing business a little. Just then
another guy came out of the kitchen
door of the shanty, and in the light
from a lamp inside, w'ich streamed out,
I recognized him as one of the pirates
in the wagon I'd followed up-town the
night before.

"What do you think? Before I even
stopped to consider the consequences, I
bustled up and swung at the fellow's
head; and I'll never tell the truth again
as long as I live if I didn't catch him
just right, and down he went like a
log. I'd knocked him out.

" Aunt Annie ! Wouldn't that give
you. a start? I didn't stop at that,
though ; I sailed right into the other
one, and Bench and I between us had
him down and begging for' mercy in
short order.

" He was a good deal too noisy about
it, so I choked him till his tongue 'stuck
out. I took it for granted that there
Avasn't any more of 'em in the house,
or they'd have come out by that time ;
so between Bench and me we dragged
and worried the guy into the kitchen,
where the first thing I saw was a piece
of rope clothes-line, with which I tied
his hands and feet. Not until he was
tied good and solid did that p°rsevering
dog let up chewing on him either, and
him bawling murder. "

" Then I left Bench licking his chops
and standing guard, while I went out
and brought in the other victim. Hun
I roped up also, and the trick was done.
Slick work, wasn't it? Hawkshaw Soud-
ers to the good ! Modest blushes.

" The place was a two-room shack
with not much furniture in it ; a wooden
bedstead, a table made out of a goods-
box, a coal-oil lamp, and some rickety
chairs. There was a thirty-two caliber
revolver on the table, and what was left
of a can of beer.

" I attended to both ; then I searched
the pirates. They didn't have much on
them ; some small change, pocket-knives.
and makings for cigarettes.

" I was up against it, now after I'd
caught the rascals. I was afraid to

A BO AND A BULLDOG.

167

leave them to go after a cop, and afraid
•to start with them to the station for fear
they'd get away.

" I knew I couldn't hit the side of a
warehouse with a pistol, and they looked
mighty good to me, tied hand and foot,
after I'd cooled down a bit. Mighty
good !

" We didn't hold any conversation.
The only thing said was after the one
I'd slugged woke up and began to enjoy
himself once more by looking around —
the one Bench had it in for — and re-
marked :

ten more, and they'll eat the said Hawk-
shaiv and his dog Bench alive.'

" I sneaked to the window and looked
out. It was as dark as black cats, and
I couldn't see but one mam He was
just coming in.

" I shoved Bench back with my foot,

I LEFT BENCH LICKING HIS CHOPS
AND STANDING GUARD."

'"I wish I'd a killed that dog last
night instead of listenin' to you an' Sam.'

"Aha! So Sam wasn't so innocent
after all. Sam was the old woman's
son. That was all that was said. They
just looked the rest of the time. Bench
laid himself down contentedly and went
to sleep.

" About three o'clock somebody drove
up out in front with a wagon, kind of
quietly. The pirates heard it and ex-
changed looks.

" ' It's all off now,' I thought to my-
self. ' Here comes probably eight or

and laid low behind the door with the
gun. When the guy lifted the latch,
both of the pirates in the kitchen sung
out to him to look out, but it was too
late. Too late for the newcomer, for
I'd. already whanged him across the coco
with the barrel of the pistol, and down
he went like a steer under the hammer.
" I must have been pretty scared and
hit him a little too vicious, for it took
the city physician the biggest part of
the next day to bring him out of it.
I didn't take any risks then, though ;
I tore up a sheet and tied him up, too.

168

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" In mussing up the bed thereby, I
found some of the loot, silks and laces
and things, stowed under the covers.
There were also several cases that looked
like canned goods on the floor under-
neath. I had the right parties all right,
you bet.

" Along about then I had an idea,
and before it got cold I put it into ex-
ecution. I'd load up the works and take
'em in the wagon to the police-station.

" Before I had time 'to think it over
and back out, I had muzzled the trkee
with rags tied around their faces to keep
them from yelling and disturbing the
neighborhood, and had two of 'em load-
ed on. Then I put Bench on the wagon-
seat to stand guard, while I got the last
victim and what odds and ends of the
plunder I could load up in a hurry.

" Were they surprised to see us when
we drove in to headquarters? Aunt An-
nie ! You ought to have seen 'em.

" It ain't often that somebody drives
up with a wagon-load of pirates, all tied
and muzzled, that he has caught with
the assistance of a lone bulldog. I was
considered the prize-winning flool for
luck; either that, or a thief-catcher.

" When the news reached Byers, he
wouldn't believe it ; but when they went
over to the shanty and found a cellar
full of robbers' loot, he thought it was

about the hottest catch of the season.
The guy who had brought the wagon
turned out to be a fellow that operated
a small store, and had always been con-
sidered respectable. He disposed of the
most of the stuff at regular prices, and
they had been enjoying quite a nice busi-
ness.

" They're all three in the .hoe business
now, down at Jeff City. The old woman
and her son Sam couldn't be proven
guilty of any part in it ; and if there
were any more of the pirates, they got
away.

" We got three of them and scared
off the rest. Byers put it pretty strong
to the company, I guess, for they came
back as substantial as I could have ex-
pected, and then some.

" They also offered me a steady job.
sleuthing, and I took 'em up. That's
what I'm doing now, together with
Bench here.

" Bench can smell a crook across a
country. Shake hands with Bench Soud-
ers, late of the Bluebell Burlesquers."

I made overtures to pat the white bull-
dog on the head, at which his bristles
rose noticeably and he mumbled some-
thing in his throat.

" Excuse me ! " I said with some
trepidation ; "I think I hear my train
coming. I reckon I'd better be hiking."

AN OVERWORKED ENGINE.

ENGINE capacity is a wonderful thing,
and is, by some cynical railroad offi-
cials, believed, at times, to have a more or
less direct proportion to an engineer's capac-
ity. At least, this was so in the old days.
Doubtless the belief is worn out by now.
Illustrating the one-time justice of its ex-
istence, an official of the Rock Island tells
a story.

The incident happened several years ago
on a line of road near Port Arthur, Texas.
There was a very heavy grade in this stretch
of track, and the company had rated the
engines at six hundred tons over this grade.
The engineers said this rating was all right,
but that the engines positively would not
handle more than the rated load.

One night a freight conductor on a north-
bound was ordered to take along sixteen flat
cars from the division station to a stone
quarry twenty-five miles up the line. This
would increase the tonnage over the rated

capacity of the engine., and would compel the
crew to double the grade. Before the train
got under way, however, an order came

canceling the previous one, and the flats
were uncoupled.

The engineer did not know of this last
order, and he dragged the train along, and
finally stalled, claiming that his tea-kettle
could not pull the extra empties. The con-
ductor went forward and told him in Eng-
lish, French, German, and Apache that he
was not pulling any extra load, and if he
didn't get her under way quicker than a
hop. skip, and a jump there'd be things doing
when they pulled in.

The engineer gave her a jerk from a dead
standstill on the grade that pretty near car-
ried her in one jump over the mountain.
Then he .let her rip. He had loafed around
and wasted half an hour, but he made
the division station ten minutes ahead of
schedule.

Pathways of the Wheel

BY GEORGE HEBARD PAINE.

WHEELS came long before steam to drive them, and with wheels came
roads. Even the crudest cart, rumbling along on cross-sections of
tree-trunks, required a better track than the path for foot-travelers
or the trail that the horsemen followed.

Rome, the great pioneer in many things, first saw the need of roads,
and her highways are still unequalecl. Many of them still exist after nearly
twenty centuries of use. We in this country are in our infancy as road-
builders, but we are learning. Meanwhile, it is profitable even for railroad
men to know something of what the world has done to make smooth the
pathway of the whirling wheel.

The Romans Built the First and Greatest Roads, Macadam Led the

Way in England, and We in This Country Are

Learning from Our Mistakes.

^HE Carthaginians made 'high-
ways through Spain and
across the Pyrenees, and the
ancient Egyptians hauled
the material fcr their huge
monuments over stone cause-
ways ; hut the first great road-makers of
the world were the engineers of the imA
perial city on the Tiber. Indeed, Rome's
wonderful system of communications was<
essential to her power. Her roads were
the arteries of an empire which could
not have existed without them.

The full extent of the Roman high-
ways can never be known. We have a
fairly complete record of the military

and post roads, whose total length was
many tens of thousands of miles ; but we
can only guess at the number of the
branch routes for commercial use, con-
structed under local auspices.

When it is remembered that the hand
of Rome's authority was felt throughout
Spain, Portugal, France, Belgium, a
large part of the Netherlands, and Ger-
many ■ in Switzerland, Austria, Hungary,
the Balkan states and Turkey — even into
Persia, Arabia, Syria, and the whole
northern part of Africa — and that in all
of these places she had direct routes of
well - built highways, something of the
truth may be realized.

169

170

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Further, consider that in most of
these lands she found an almost track-
less wilderness, inhabited by skin-clothed
savages of the Stone Age; that when her
empire fell, she left them well advanced
toward civilization ; and that she did all
this largely because she built roads.
What a lesson it teaches !

Roads Built for All Time.

The Roman road was not an acci-
dental track, a quagmire in the spring
and autumn and a stretch of choking dust
in summer, such as prevails to-day over
the greater part of this enlightened land.
It was a carefully surveyed route, with
the easiest grade that the country would
allow, and was constructed of perma-
nent materials in a permanent manner.
The engineers of the Caesars were not
graduates of technical schools, but they
knew ' the constructive value of broken
stone, gravel, clay, and cement, and how
to use each material to advantage.

Like her laws, her literature, and her
architecture, Rome's highways were not
made for a day, but for all time. Their
prime purpose was a military one — to
keep her legions in uninterrupted com-
munication, for mutual support and for
the gathering of supplies. Subsequently,
when the pax Romano, was secure, they
served other uses — those of the postal
service and of commerce.

Permanent stations at conventional
distances were established through their
length. These were originally military
posts, but were gradually converted into
halting-places for travelers and centers
of trade and population. A fixed num-
ber of horses and carts, for the public
service and for hire, was maintained by
the state at each post. That this whole
magnificent organization should have
disappeared from the face of the earth
for a period of twelve hundred years
shows to what a depth of degeneracy the
people of Europe descended during the
Dark Ages.

In road-building, the Roman engineers
began at the beginning — ■ the founda-
tion. Upon a suitable bed, at times
excavated to a depth of three feet, they
laid large stones, closely packed together
and hammered tightly into place. This
was the universal method; but above the

foundation the construction varied with
the location, with the amount of traffic
which the road must carry, and with the
materials available.

A common plan was to cover the first
course of large stones with a layer of
clay and gravel, then a layer of nearly
pure clay; and then, as a wearing sur-
face, coarse gravel approximating to
cobblestones in size."' When such ma-
terials were at hand the foundations were
often set in something resembling hy-
draulic cement, and the wearing surface
was sometimes treated in the same way.
But always the structure was made im-
permeable to moisture ; it was rounded
on the top, and/the rainfall was taken
away in a large ditch. Blocks for
mounting horses were often provided on
the berm (the shoulder of the ditch),
formed by heaping earth or stones into
a pile.

Pavements as Good as the Best.

In cities, where the traffic was heaviest
and most concentrated, Roman pave-
ments are found covered with sized
stones as a wearing surface, which are
models of good workmanship ; not so
smooth, perhaps, as the average city
pavement of to-day, but far better con-
structed, and infinitely superior to the
cobblestones which were so common in
American cities a few years ago. The
blocks of which these pavements were
formed were from twelve to fifteen
inches square, and were often laid diag-
onally to the direction of the traffic, to
reduce the wear on the edges of the
stones and to minimize the shocks to
passing wheels.

The first great revival of road-build-
ing in Europe came with Napoleon, one
of the greatest organizers of history.
To be sure, there were sporadic instances
thirty or forty years earlier in England
and Scotland, where the most highly
enlightened people seem to have begun
to find the conditions of travel intoler-
able. Novels and letters of the latter
half of the eighteenth century bristle
with accounts of the badness of the
highways in Great Britain and all over
the Continent.

Switzerland, too, had paid a little at-
tention to the subject at about the same

PATHWAYS OF THE WHEEL.

171

period ; but the first large work of the
kind was Napoleon's reconstruction of
the Simplon military route into Italy.
Here was truly a strange piece of re-
tributive justice ; a man of Italian blood
builds roads to carry the tricolor into the
territory of his ancestors, just as those
ancestors built roads to carry the Roman
eagles into France two thousand years
before !

In the year 1800 the stage-coach was
still the slow and lumbering affair of the
previous century, not the flier of twenty
years later drawn by thoroughbreds at
twelve or fifteen miles an hour. Ladies
in London or Paris were still carried to
balls and routs in sedan chairs, and the
modern rule that a gentleman who walks
with a lady shall always place himself
next to the curb was then absolutely
necessary to protect the silks and furbe-
lows of the gentler sex from the filth
splashed across the sidewalk by horses
and vehicles.

The revival of interest in roads at the
beginning of the nineteenth century
seems to have been pretty general
throughout the civilized world — except
in the United States. John Macadam,
the Scottish engineer whose name has
become the symbol of good highways,
was studying the question from a physi-
cal and economical standpoint, and a
few years later was to announce the
theory and demonstrate the method
which have since remained the standard
of good practise.

Macadam Maker of Modern Roads.

As with most worthy inventions — for
the macadamized road must really rank
as a great invention — there was, at first,
a storm of violent opposition. Many
communities in the north of England
and in Scotland — and in other places,
too. where they ought to have known
better — utterly refused to countenance
any improvements. They didn't wish
good roads ! They wouldn't have good
roads !

And the reasons given in support of
the opposition were quite as ridiculous
as the opposition itself. But the facts
conquered, as they inevitably will. All
that Macadam needed to demonstrate his
ideas was a poor road — the poorer the

better for his purpose. Given some
stones, and some old men or women or
boys, he did the rest with his little ham-
mer.

For it was not the least of his discov-
eries that more stones of the proper size
could be broken if the operator was seat-
ed and used a hammer weighing not
more than two pounds, than with a ten-
pound sledge. This made it possible to
employ a class of labor which was prac-
tically useless for any other purpose —
in other words, the poor of the parishes
who had been thrown upon public char-
ity through their inability to earn a liv-
ing.

Profit Beyond Money Measurement.

With the economies introduced by
Macadam, he was able to reach the most
astonishing results. It is recorded that
he rebuilt a road eleven miles long, near
Bristol — which was so utterly bad that its
abandonment had been practically de-
cided upon — at an expenditure of only
two hundred and seventy-five dollars a
mile. Under favorable conditions, good
roads — perfect roads — were derived
from nearly impassable highways at a
cost of four or five hundred dollars a
mile. In the maintenance charges, too,
he effected a revolution, reducing the
annual cost of repairs from as much as
two thousand dollars a mile to three
hundred and fifty dollars, and even less.

These figures are striking enough, but
the most important results of Macadam's
work are not susceptible of being ex-
pressed in terms of currency. Paths
which could only be used by horses load-
ed with panniers — or, at best, for un-
wieldy carts carrying a few hundred
pounds — were, for the small sums just
mentioned, converted into roads over
which a single horse could, without
straining, draw a cart-load of more than
a ton, exclusive of the weight of the
vehicle.

Although Macadam had been at work
for many years, it was not until about
1820 that he publicly explained his ideas,
which were generally accepted by engi-
neers ; and except for one detail they pre-
vail to-day.

First and foremost, he insisted upon
the use of nothing but small stones, his

172

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

standard weight being six ounces. Next,
he forbade the use of binding materials,
such as clay or earth of a sticky quality.
For the rest, he depended upon hammer-
ing and rolling the stones together until
they became so interlocked that they
formed a solid mass.

His plan of construction varied only
in making roads thicker or thinner, ac-
cording as the traffic they had to bear
was heavy or light. In this particular
he allowed himself the greatest leeway,
running from three inches to eighteen
inches in depth of " metal."

Only at one point, as has been said,
have road - builders made a departure
from Macadam's methods, and whether
the departure is an improvement is by
no means certain. It consists in laying
a first course of large stones — an idea
which originated with Thomas Telford,
a contemporary of Macadam, and a
British engineer of great accomplish-
ments.

Slow Beginning in the Land of the Free.

Telford made his first course of stones
with pieces from six to eight inches deep
and not more than four inches wide,
laid close together on their widest edges,
and filled in with smaller, wedge-shaped
stones. While Macadam curved the top
of the ground before laying any stone,
Telford leveled the surface and then
formed the curve by placing the deepest
rocks in the middle, and gradually re-
duced the depth of the foundation to-
ward the ditches by using smaller stones.

In all other essentials the two methods
agree, and a perfect road may be built
in either way; but there is a certain su-
periority in the Macadam plan because
of its greater convenience and the pos-
sibility of building thinner roads for
light traffic. Sometimes, too, it is diffi-
cult to secure large stones of the right
size for the Telford foundation without
greatly increasing the cost ; whereas, with
the Macadam plan, any available stones
may be broken to the required dimen-
sions.

For fifty years the highways of west-
ern Europe have been, in general, as per-
fect as human ingenuity and experience
could make them ; but we in the United
States are still in our infancy as road-

makers. Instead of being well ad-
vanced toward the European standard,
we are struggling with the elementary
problems of the subject.

Shall the Federal government take
active steps or not? Is it a proper func-
tion for the individual States? Ought a
county to interfere Math the roads in the
various townships that compose it? And
if a few farmers in a township prefer
bad roads to good ones, are their neigh-
bors powerless to effect any improve-
ment ?

These are a few of the questions
which oppose the wheels of progress in
the United States. In certain parts of
the East we have fairly good roads in
the neighborhood of the larger cities;
in a few of the Eastern States there are
good, working road laws; but in the
" imperial " State of New York the old,
useless plan of working out the road tax
still exists in many communities, and has
only been abolished in certain sections
after a prolonged, heart - breaking
struggle.

Most States hold to the f>ractise of
electing " pathmasters " — they are called
by different names in different States,
but this title best expresses their duties—
who assess the amount of the road tax
and call upon the inhabitants to work *
it out, or to pay a certain amount of
money toward that end. A description
of the working out of a road tax is of
interest because it is the method which
obtains over nearly the whole of the
United States, though it could not pos-
sibly be more certain of resulting badly
if it had been intelligently designed for
that end.

How They Do It in the Country.

The pathmaster is supposed to keep a
careful eye upon the highways under his
jurisdiction ; to see that the roadways
are traversable, and that the bridges shall
not break down. He is granted (by the
county or township authorities) a nomi-
nal sum of money for repairs and im-
provements, which sum is assessed pro-
portionally upon the taxpayers in his
district, and for the collection of which
the pathmaster is responsible in a certain
measure. He is only partially responsi-
ble, however, because the statutes allow

PATHWAYS OF THE WHEEL.

173

the citizens to comply with the tax in
any one of three ways :

First, they may themselves work on
the roads for the number of days equiva-
lent to their taxes at the (usual) rate of
one dollar a day.

Second, they may hire substitutes to
work for them.

Third, they may pay cash to the path-
master, and have done with it.

As a result of this, nearly every one
either elects to work out the tax or hires
some one to do it for him. If the second,
some very amusing bargains may be made.
A, the taxpayer, says to B, the hireling :
" If you'll work out my tax, I'll let you
cut a certain number of cords off my
wood lot; " or B says to A, " I'll work
your tax if you'll let me have a certain
quantity of skim milk for my hogs."

If A has nothing that any B will
trade for, then A must pay cash for his
labor, which, it may be taken for granted,
is always below the market rate ; and B
will very probably be one of the town
drunkards.

There is always a small minority, how-
ever, who pay their tax directly to the
pathmaster, and this is the chief jewel in
his crown. He is almost always a penny
politician with a longing for office, and
here is his chance to make friends. This
tax must be spent upon the roads, and
although five or six hours' desultory
scratching by Tom, Dick, and Harry
does not amount to any sort of a day's
work, nevertheless, a vote is a vote, they
are constituents, and they know their
value, at the polls ; they also know that
the pathmaster has his eye on the place
of poor warden, and there is an easy
living to be made off the poorhouse.

_ Its Good Points.

The pathmaster — who seldom knows
anything about road building — cannot
live by his pathmastership alone ; he has
some other business. Of course the dull
seasons of the year are selected for work-
ing on the roads, when, at the same time,
it is agreeable to be out of doors. A
certain day is appointed for working out
the tax.

It even has points of superiority, be-
cause the women folks aren't around to
bother and interfere. The " work " is

conducted in a delightfully companion-
able manner. No bossing ; come late
and leave early ; all the good old stories
polished up and put into new clothes,
and perhaps a' bottle slyly tucked away
in the " bag " of your shirt, particularly
if the town is " temperance."

Such a system is nothing less than a
blot upon our American civilization. Its
results are manifest, and are known of
all men who have ever been forced to
drive or ride over an ordinary country
road in almost any of the United States
in any but the most favorable weather.

And He Missed His Train.

The writer has a vivid recollection of
missing a connection in the northern cen-
tral part of the State of New York, in
the heart of a splendid farming country,
during the early part of the month of
May. It was possible to correct the
trouble by driving twenty miles across
country to another railway, and there
were five hours in which to do it ; so a
good pair of horses was hired, with a
driver whose ambition was fired by the
promise of a substantial honorarium if
he caught the train.

But he did not get it. There was not
a foot of the way over which it was
proper to trot a horse, and for at least
three-fourths of the drive it was physi-
cally impossible to goad the animals be-
yond a walk. When the end of the jour-
ney - was reached, something more than
six hours after the start, they were just
able to stagger into the stable where they
were to spend the night.

There was no excuse for this condi-
tion of affairs. There were probably
enough stones immediately on and under-
neath the surface of the road to have
made a driveway fit for a park, if only
some one could have been found to pick
them up, break them, and hammer them
together.

It is certainly not fair to lay all the
sins of bad roads upon the pathmaster's
head. He is not so much to blame as
the system under which he works, which
is maintained through the ignorance or
the indifference of the people who make
the laws. It is unfair to criticize subor-
dinate officials when a commission ap-
pointed by the Governor of one of the

174

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

leading States in the Union is able to
report, in almost so many words, that it
would be better to build electric rail-
roads on the highways than for the State
to take any steps toward making them
traversable for horse vehicles. It may
sound incredible, but that such a report
was made to the Governor of Ohio, Will-
iam McKinley, in the year 1892, is as
certain as that it was printed for general
distribution !

But there is a rift in the clouds. Ken-
tucky has benefited by an excellent sys-
tem of roads for more than a generation ; '
to be sure, they were delivered into the
hands of a conscienceless " ring " for
many years, and it required a mortal
struggle to get them back ; yet the people
had the use of them for the whole period.

New Jersey, so often the subject of
contemptuous flings, and so seldom de-
serving of them, was the first State to
recognize the slough in which she was
sunk. In 1868 she passed an act which
permitted any county to bond itself for
the purpose of building good roads. It
was not accomplished without a hard
fight against the inertia and ignorance
of a large portion of the people, but the

Governor and a majority of the Legisla-
ture happened to be intelligent and far-
sighted men, so that New Jersey has for
the last thirty years been working under
an efficient road law.

Although the bicycle had a distinct
and memorable effect during the furor
which followed the introduction of the
" safety," this, like its cause, was tem-
porary, and the efforts of the L. A. W.
seemed destined to an " innocuous des-
uetude " until the appearance of the au-
tomobile. Good roads were desirable
with the wheel, but they are absolutely
essential to automobiling, and the class
of society most particularly devoted to its
attractions has more time and money to
spend for the improvement of highways
than had the bicyclists of ten years ago.
The ease with which a rich man can,
with an automobile, reach his office from
a suburb twenty miles away has multi-
plied the number of people who are will-
ing to escape the crowding of a city life
even under some inconvenience, and the
movement has only begun. The demand
for better roads is promoted by this ten-
dency, which is certain to increase in
proportion as the roads are improved.

STEEL TRUST'S RAILROADS.

One of Them Has the Lowest Operating Cost in the World, in Pro-
portion to Net Earnings.

THE United States Steel Corporation as
a railroad owner is not a familiar fig-
ure before the public. The usual impres-
sion is that this vast corporation is the great
feeder and wealth-producer for the trunk
lines that carry its materials and products.
As a matter of fact, if all the railroads of
the Steel Corporation, including branch
lines, second tracks, sidings, and systems
operated by subsidiary companies of the
corporation were placed together, a line
2,942 miles would be the result. The cor-
poration owns 960 locomotives and 45,682
cars of all kinds.

The Delaware, Lackawanna and Western,
whose stock is the highest - priced in the
world, falls below this by 300 miles mileage,
736 locomotives, and 29,414 cars of all kinds.

According to the Brooklyn Eagle, the Bes-
semer and Lake Erie, a road owned by the
Steel corporation, holds the world's record
for low cost of operation and net earnings.

" It has 205 miles of main line. The road
was built for the carriage of iron ore landed
from ships from the lake ranges and for
the transportation of fuel bound up the
Great Lakes. Freight density has attained
the record of 5,748,147 tons one mile per
mile of road.

" The average revenue train-load last year
was 937 tons. The average train-load bound
to the Pittsburgh district in the busiest pe-
riod of last year was 1,406 tons.

" Almost 10,000,000 tons per annum have
been carried by this ore and fuel road,
which also does a general freight and pas-
senger business. In the past 3^ear the Besse-
mer and Lake Erie Railroad carried as much
tonnage as was cleared from this port in
the last fiscal year for all foreign ports.

" In a normal year this railroad has earned
$25,924 for each mile" of road. The highest
'net earnings in one year came to almost
$3,000,000."

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

BY EDWARD BEDINGER MITCHELL,
Author of " An American Knight Errant," " The Yellow Rose," Etc.

Some Interesting Personages Enter, and
a Private Conference Is Intruded Upon.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

STEPHEN PAGET, a retired newspaper man, and his friend Marshfield are at-
tracted by the sight of a beautiful girl in a poor building opposite Paget's apartment.
A few minutes later a middle-aged woman in the street below is heard to scream
hysterically, and on Paget rushing down to find out the reason/ she says she has seen
the evil one, indicating as the place the room in which the two men have just seen the girl.
Paget escorts the woman to her store in the basement of the cheap house, where he learns
that her name is Rosa, and that she and the girl, Maria Bigontina, live in the room above.
Some days later, Page% finds the girl in a park, homeless. Rosa has disappeared and
Maria's brother is also lost. Paget arranges for her to stay at the Walton until her
people can be found. He goes to interview the landlord, who has turned her out, and
in her room has an adventure with several Italian cutthroats. Dining with Maria, he
is warned by a Hungarian orchestra leader not to take the first cab or walk when going
home.

The cab they do take .breaks down, and in the confusion they are actually led into
taking the first cab. The driver tries to abduct them, but Paget thrashes him, and after
seeing Maria to the Walton he changes coats with the driver and goes to the place the
latter was instructed to drive them to. Pie sees his enemy, but fails to learn anything.
Next morning, with Maria, he dodges the spies and carries the girl to the seclusion of
his cousin's home. —

CHAPTER IX.

The Man in the Carriage.

ALKING slowly
along the street, I

However, I could spy as well as be

spied upon. Several clues were in my

hand, but the one I elected to follow

first was the Hotel Auvergne. At the

entrance to the restaurant, however, I

turned back. My friend the musician

felt that I had done would not be there until the evening.

a good day's work. To ask for him would simply serve to

In Mrs. Noyes, Ma- draw down suspicion.

ria had found a I had no idea how many of the em-

much-needed friend, and in her house ployees had been concerned m the last

she would be safe — safe for a time, that night's outrage, and by asking questions

is — for I did not imagine that a com- of them I might be merely playing into

monplace device like the changing of
a cab or two would throw her p-ursuers
permanently from the scent. One easy
way to recover it was to watch me. As
the thought occurred to me, I involun-
tarily glanced behind. No one was in
sight, and I walked on, half ashamed of
my sigh of relief. But it is not com-
fortable to feel that one is watched and
spied on.

Began In the August Railroad Mao

their hands. I would dine there that
night and find some way to interview
the violinist.

My intention was not fulfilled. Half
a block from the hotel I was halted by
a familiar voice, and David Marshfield
confronted me.

" I have just come from your place,"
he began. " I want you to dine at our
house to-night."

Magazine. Single copies, 10 cents.

175

176

THE. RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" Can't do it," said I, thinking of my
prospective detective work. " I have
something else on."

" Oh, I know it's short notice, but it's
all for your good. I'm always thinking
for you, and I never even get thanked."

"What have you thought now?" I
laughed.

" I thought you might like to go to
Abyssinia."

"Abyssinia! Are you crazy, Dave?
Who ever goes to Abyssinia?"

" Nobody that I ever knew," re-
turned Marshfield. " That's the reason
I thought you might like to. Every-
body goes to Europe nowadays. There's
no glory in that."

" I'm not looking for glory," I an-
swered. " I'm looking for pleasure.
Is there any pleasure in Abyssinia? " .

"How do I know?" asked David.
" I never went there. But it sounds like
a perfectly good place to me. You'd
better go."

I took Marshfield by the arm and led
him in the direction of my rooms.
"Have you been drinking?" I demand-
ed. " Or do you simply want to get rid
of me?"

"Neither. I don't drink — certainly
not in the morning — and I am so far
from wishing to be rid of you that if you
go, I'll go, too."

"And, why Abyssinia?" I demanded
again.

"And why not Abyssinia? But, as a
matter of fact, there is a very good rea-
son for Abyssinia — namely, my father.
You know, he has so much money that
he's never happy unless he's making
more. Just now he thinks that he can
make it there. w

" Great Scott, he's not going ! "

I stopped short on the pavement, over-
whelmed by the vision of the senior
Marshfield, the great banker, who for
years had never been beyond reach of
the blackest and most expensive cigars
the market afforded, dragging his portly
figure up and down the wild mountains
of Abyssinia. If he was going, I for
one was not. I knew that great man's
temper when his food did not please him.

Marshfield walked on with a snort of
disgust.

" Of course he's not. Do you think
he's lost his mind? He's heard of a

gold-mine there, and he thinks it may
be a good thing — railroads, American
hustle, awakening of the slumbering
Orient, light on the Dark Continent —
all that sort of thing — and he, wants me
to investigate. Therefore, I ask you to
dinner."

" Because I won't get any dinners in
Abyssinia, I suppose."

" You won't, if you don't go," said
David imperturbably. " I ask you be-
cause you will meet the man who has the
claim to the mine and the concession for
the railroad, a big gun from Italy just
come over here with all sorts of schemes
in his head and a great thirst for Amer-
ican capital and American brains to
carry them out. The Marshfield family,
he considers, can supply both.

" Anyhow, if the business falls
through — and there's a hitch somewhere
from last accounts — it won't do you any
harm to meet this fellow. He's a big
man, they say — commissioner of emigra-
tion or something — and if you go to
Italy he may make it pleasant for you —
a friend of the Marshfields, you know,
and that kind of rot."

The last words came with difficulty
from David's lips. He was the son of
a wealthy and powerful man ; he knew
it, and for that reason rarely alluded to
it. To have David Marshfield consent
to use his undoubted personal influence
in one's behalf was a great compliment.

In this case his influence meant much.
The idea of a trip into unknown Abys-
sinia in his company fascinated me ;
even if that wild scheme came to noth-
ing, Italy would be much pleasanter if
one had friends at court. For an in-
stant I listened to the voice of the
tempter ; then the vision of the girl I
had left in the house of my cousin rose
before me.

" I can't come, Dave," I said. " I'm
an amateur detective now."

" You're a what? " Marshfield stopped
at the entrance of my apartment and
stared at me. "You're a what?" he
repeated as I laughed at his obvious
consternation.

" Come up-stairs, and I'll tell you
about it." I led the way into my sitting-
room and sketched for his benefit all
that had happened since he last sat there
with me.

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

177

" Whe - e - ew ! " Marshfield's long
whistle marked the end of my story.
" So that's what you do when you quit
a job, is it?" He walked over to the
window to look once more .at the house
which was the birthplace of my adven-
tures.

" I'll tell you what it is." He turned
suddenly upon me. " You come to din-
ner, and we'll go down to the Auvergne
afterward. I've got to be home to din-
ner, and it won't do any harm for you
to have somebody with you,^ if you must
move in low society."

"Done!" We shook hands upon the
bargain, and Marshfield departed. It
was with a distinct feeling of unexpected
support that I watched his broad figure
swing across the square.

A cynical, humorous calm was his
chosen attitude ;but no thought of fear
ever disturbed it, and the possibility of
seeking comfort or 'safety at the expense
of a friend had never entered his head.
His company at the Auvergne would be
purchased cheaply at the cost of two or
three hours of heavy feeding and heavier
conversation.

Personally, I had little interest in the
kind of talk I knew I would hear that
night at the Marshfield table. My own
small supply of capital was safely in-
vested in stocks that neither rose nor fell
appreciably, and when men spoke of
millions as I did of hundreds I was
dazed rather than impressed. Neverthe-
less, as I walked up to the quiet, brown-
stone house which sheltered the famous
banker, I was curious. It must be a
singular man, I thought, who could in-
terest that hard-headed financier in any-
thing so imaginative as a gold-mine in
Abyssinia.

A carriage drew up in front of the
Marshfield door and tire figure of a man
crossed the pavement, the light from the
carriage-lamps falling for a second on
the silk of his tall hat. The door the
footman opened for him swung shut "
again as he passed within ; and at the
same instant . my stick dropped from my
hand as I wheeled about and stared into
the night at the retreating shadow of the
carriage.

As it had driven past me, my eye had
fallen upon another man who still re-
mained within it. He, too, was in eve-
12 RR

ning-clothes ; and, as he leaned forward
to light a cigarette, the flame from the
match in his fingers revealed his face.
It was the scoundrel with whom I had
rolled down-stairs, the man I had left
in the gloomy courtyard of Barent
Street. And now I saw him driving
away from the house where I was to
dine.

While I stared, the carriage whirled
around a corner and was gone. Then,
suddenly, I awoke to action. He had
come with a companion, and his com-
panion had stayed. I would learn who
he was.

Past the astonished lackey at the door
I burst, running with unseemly haste up
the stairs to the drawing-room above to
meet the Marshfield guests. Twelve men
were there, twelve men in black coats
and white waistcoats — twelve respect-
able, prosperous, well-fed individuals.
Six of them were strangers, and one of
the six had come there with my enemy.

CHAPTER X.

Mr. Marshfield's Dinner Guests.

"DREATHING heavily, I stood by
■*-^ the portieres, my eye traveling
over the luxurious room and the decor-
ous group gathered within it. Two of
Marshfield's junior partners were there,
'comparatively young men whom he had
selected for the heavy work of adding
to his great fortune ; standing by the
fireplace was a civil engineer, whose
opinion was taken as gospel in his pro-
fession ; a railroad president, who had
once granted me an interview, was talk-
ing to two strangers. It was all as I
had anticipated half an hour ago that it
would be — a business dinner into which
I intruded by grace of David's friend-
ship.

To me, however, it was no longer an
ordinary dinner. With these men I was
about to sit down "to meat, and one of
them was on friendly terms with the vil-
lain I had fought once and hoped to
fight again. No friend of that man's
could be a friend of mine, and I eyed
the assembled guests with panting, ob-
vious suspicion.

" For Heaven's sake, Steve, what's

up r

Immaculate in evening - dress,

178

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

David Marshfield crossed the room.
" You look as if you were in a hurry."

" I was afraid I was late," I mum-
bled, conscious that his greeting had
drawn all eyes to me.

With the vague idea of lending
strength to my words, I pulled out my
watch, consulted it with quite unneces-
sary interest, and replaced it in my
pocket. " It is late," I asserted posi-
tively.

David glanced at me with a quick,
puzzled frown. " What — " he began,
then stopped and took me by the arm.
" You're not the last," he said formally.
" Let me introduce you to the men you
don't know, Mr. Hayes. Do you re-
member my friend, Mr. Paget?"

The famous engineer looked me over
critically as he held out his hand :
" Can't say I do, but I am glad to meet
Mr. Paget again."

I shook hands with him, internally
. blessing Dave's tact. He knew that it
was not, because it was two minutes
after the appointed dinner-hour tha^ I
had burst into the drawing-room like one
socially demented. That any one would
have known, but not every one would
have closed his lips upon his knowledge.
Instead of pestering me with questions,
he was trotting me about the room, re-
peating introductions until, as I shook
hands with one celebrity after another,
my excited entrance was forgotten.

" Mr. Paget — Mr. Ghedina ; Mr. Mar-
shall— Mr. Paget; and Mr. Rocca — Mr.
Paget. You know my father, of course.,"

Old Marshfield laughed as he grasped
my hand.

" You'll introduce him to yourself
next, Dave. Yes, I know Stephen Pa-
get, but I never knew him to look quite
so flustered before. What's the matter
with you, Steve? Afraid you'll miss the
train to Abyssinia? Don't worry about
that, my boy. It's not going to start
before dinner, eh, Mr. Rocca?"

He turned with another laugh to the
square-set, black-mustached man by his
side. Apparently he considered that he.
had said something witty, but the point
of the joke — whatever it may have -been
— was lost upon Rocca. His guest's lips,
it is true, smiled, politely ; but his face
was quite impassive otherwise as he an-
swered :

" Let us hope not. I like my dinner.
Does Mr. — er — Paget, I think — does
Mr. Paget expect to go to Abyssinia?"

" Well, if I go, Steve goes, and the
rest of it you and the governor will have
to settle between yourselves."

I looked with more interest at Mr.
Rocca. David had spoken carelessly —
he was never renowned as a respecter of
persons — but it was clear from his
words that this was the big Italian in-
dividual who could make it pleasant for
me abroad, if he did not send me treas-
ure-hunting into the African wilderness.

There was nothing romantic in his ap-
pearance — no traces of gold - mines —
nothing which, had I been the slumber-
ing Orient, would have disturbed my
age-long rest. He was the Italian coun-
terpart of the American Marshfield, with
the same square, determined jaw, the
same bulging, intelligent forehead. -The
lips were heavier and coarser, however ;
and the figure, unusually powerful for
a Latin, showed visibly the years of good
living it had enjoyed.

" That is interesting. You and Mr.
Paget are great friends, then?"

-The words were addressed to David,
but his eyes were on me as he spoke —
dark Italian eyes, deep-set under heavy
brows and shaded by long lashes.

" We have been friends for a number
of years," I remarked, a little weary of
holding the center of the stage.

" And you would like to go to Abys-
sinia? "

" I hadn't thought of it until this
morning," I answered. " But if all the
world Is going, I might as well join the
procession."

" All the world is not going." Rocca
jerked the words out with vicious em-
phasis. " Very far from it, Mr. Paget. '
But, of course " — he turned with Euro-
pean grace to David — *■ " a friend of
yours, Mr. Marshfield, would be most
welcome. And Mr. Paget looks like a
hardy and courageous young man, is it
not so? "

To my vast annoyance, I felt myself
blushing — less at the compliment than
at the keen scrutiny of the impassive
eyes. David saw my color rise, and
laughed :

" Oh, he'll do, Mr. Rocca. One does
not have to be very courageous around

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

179

New York, though. The police attend
to that for lis/'

" Yes, and we are a long way from
Abyssinia yet," the senior Marshfield put
in abruptly. " I can furnish all the
hardy and courageous young men we
need, Mr. Rocca. What I want to see
is the money in it."

" It is there," returned Rocca, unruf-
fled. " In due time you will see it."

" There's no time like the present,"
retorted Marshfield with a touch of sar-
casm. " Here's Simpson at last, and we
might as well go into dinner."

At the door of the dining - room I
stepped aside respectfully to allow the
elder men to precede me. One by one
I watched them file past, for the most
part grave with the weight of years and
wealth, all distinguished in some way,
none to be connected in the wildest
flights of the imagination, with disrepu-
table cabmen and shabby attic-rooms.

Last of all sauntered David, his hands
in his pockets, his face eloquent of bore-
dom. I kicked his foot as he came op-
posite me.

" One of themes here," I whispered as
he sprang into alert attention.

"One of whom?" David's hands
were out of his pockets now, and his
face was keen and sharp.

" One of the gang. I recognized that
little brute driving away. I tell you
one — "

" David ! Steve ! Come in here, con-
found you, and sit down. This is no
time for secret conferences."

The elder Marshfield's good - natured,
commanding tones drowned my whisper,
and we walked obediently into the
dining-room. He was quite right. It
was no time for consultation — it was a
time for open eyes and keen wits.

My eyes were open, and I lashed my
wits to the utmost limit of their keen-
ness, yet I saw nothing. Two or three
places below David, and separated from
him, moreover, by the width of the
table, there was no possibility of con-
tinuing my interrupted confidence. Once
I caught his gaze fastened on me in
amazed speculation ; but I motioned
slightly with my head, and he looked
away. After that I never met his eye.

It was the longest dinner it was ever
my misfortune to attend. My neigh-

bors were Marshfield's junior partners;
in their chief's presence they had no
leisure for anything so insignificant as
the conversation of an ex-newspaper
man. From the oysters to the cheese
their ears - were straining to hear what
Marshfield said to Rocca, and what
Rocca said to Marshfield. And stupid
enough it , was, I thought.

Rocca discoursed on the wonders' of
New _ York's sky-line; his host joked
ponderously ; out of the tail of my eye
I saw David smother a yawn ; and the
miscellaneous guests conversed on mis-
cellaneous topics.

I was clinging desperately to the last
shred of my patience when the tray of
cigars' reached me. At the same time
David pushed back his chair and walked
around the table to me. One of my din-
ner companions, leaping at the chance
to thrust himself closer to the magnates,
deserted us in haste for the place he had
left , vacant ; and David fell into the
empty chair by my side.

" Give me a light, Steve," he remarked.
Then, bending forward to touch his
cigar to the match I held out to him:
" What the deuce did you mean? "

I glanced along the length of the
table. Chairs were rasping on the floor
as the guests settled back to the full en-
joyment of tobacco, coffee, andjiqueurs.
No one was paying any attention to the
two young men at the foot of the table.

" I mean," I said, " that one of these
men came here with the fellow I rolled
down the stairs. You can explain that,
perhaps — I can't."

David lolled back in his chair and
looked at the ceiling. "Who is it?" he
asked aloud in a tone of utter indiffer-
ence. From his attitude one would have
thought we were discussing a new com-
missioner of street cleaning. Usually
apparent frankness is the best disguise,
and 1 answered with equal boldness : i

" I don't know. That's the funny
part. I want you to learn for me."

The words rang through the room as
though they had roared through a meg-
aphone. One of the sudden, cliscon^
certing silences which are apt to seize
large gatherings had fallen on the" com-
pany. Every one heard me, no one had
more important things to occupy him,
and all turned toward us.

180

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

"What's that?" cried Marshfield
from the head of the table. " What do
you want to learn, Paget? No use ask-
ing Dave if it's anything to do with
business; I can tell you that."

Forced to say something, I seized on
the first word in my mind.

"It isn't business — it's Abyssinia. I
want to know what we are all going
there for."

"Ha, ha, ha!" Old Marshfield's big
frame shook with laughter. "'Wiser
heads than yours want to know that, my
boy — eh, Rocca? "

He turned to his guest as he had done
before dinner, and once more that dis-
tinguished gentleman failed to appre-
ciate his humor.'

" Some wiser heads know already," he
retorted stiffly. " Not that Mr. Paget is
not wise," he added quickly, with a for-
eign bow to me.

" Oh, confound your jokes, Marsh-
field ! " It was Hayes, the engineer,
who spoke. " You said you had the
biggest thing I had ever done waiting
for me. Where is it? That's what I
want to know ; and I want you, not your
son, to tell me."

Few men spoke to Mr. Marshfield
that way, but Hayes was a privileged
genius. The banker's smile was broader
than ever as he answered :

" That's what we all want to know,
Hayes, and Mr. Rocca's going to tell
us."

Rocca took the cigar from his mouth,
and his teeth flashed in a self-possessed
smile. " All in good time, Mr. Marsh-
field. In Italy we do not do business in
such a — what you call it — hustle."

" There hasn't been much hustle about
this," snorted Marshfield. " You were
going to tell us all about it to-night;
you remember, and that's a month later
than you first wrote. Now we are wait-
ing."

" I have changed my mind." Rocca
put the cigar back in his mouth and
puffed at it complacently, quite oblivious
to the frown Marshfield's clerks had
learned to tremble at.

" And we can change ours," cried the
banker.

" Then you will lose, not I," returned
the Italian calmly. " There is more
money in the world, Mr. Marshfield,

than opportunities like this to invest it.
But you Americans must always talk
business.

"Why spoil a delightful evening? In
a day or two I bring you a definite
proposition. Until then — " He spread
out his hands' in an eloquent gesture, and
relapsed into silent contemplation of his
cigar.

" Until then," Hayes put in sharply,
" you might tell us what started you on
Abyssinia. It's the last place on earth,
I always thought."

" Ah, you Americans ! " Rocca
shrugged his shoulders. "You think the
world begins with New York and ends
with San Francisco. You forget that we
Italians have been in Abyssinia for many
years. It it not the last place to us."

" It's the last place you got jolly well
thrashed in," muttered a man near us.

But he was neither a genius nor suf-
ficiently wealthy to speak his thoughts
too loud, and no one else cared to throw
in the face of the great Rocca the com-
plete defeat of the Italian army of occu-
pation.

" Whatls it like?" persisted _ Hayes.
" How long's this road of yours? What's
the country she's going through? If it's
bad country, you can't build a road for
nothing, you know. I can do it as cheap
as anybody, but it will have to be a good
mine if that's what's to pay for it."

" If it were what you call a good coun-
try," returned Rocca, " there would be
no need to come to America for an en-
gineer, Mr. Hayes." -

Hayes's weather-beaten face relaxed
in a broad grin.

"Very nice, Mr. Rocca; but kind
words build no railroads."

" Oh, drop it, Hayes," Marshfield
broke in peremptorily. " This isn't the
first class in geography. Survey parties
can teach us all that. Mr. Rocca is to
give us -something more."

" Ah, but it is very interesting."

Rather to my surprise, Rocca dropped
the cold reticence with which he had
hitherto met every reference to Abys-
sinia. For more than half an hour he
regaled the company with an impromptu
lecture ©n the country, the people, their
customs, religion, and history.

After the first few moments, my
thoughts wandered from the man dro-

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

181

ning on at the head of the table to the
girl I had found shelterless in Washing-
ton Square. The wild ravines and
dreary uplands of mountain Africa
faded from my mind, and I saw, instead,
an old-fashioned, stiff drawing-room,
Mrs. Noyes standing there, one arm
around a slender, black-garbed figure, a
sensitive face pale beneath a mass of
dark hair, long lashes which lifted for
a second to let one flash of gratitude
and trust reach me.

Probably, at that moment, Maria and
Cousin Lucy were sitting in that room
and I was here, wasting my time on an
unillustrated lecture on foreign travel.
David's voice in my ear* shattered the
vision.

" He talks like an encyclopedia, just
as long and about as exciting. Thank
the Lord, it's over at last."

Old Marshfield had risen, and his
guests were trooping out of the dining-
room. In half an hour at the most, we
would be free to pursue our investiga-
tions at the Auvergne. But what then?
In this house there was a clue ready to
my hand, and I had not been able to
grasp it. What better chance would I
have in the tumult of a restaurant?

" What a beastly bore ! " David came
up to me as I stood in a secluded cor^
ner, watching the assemblage. " I won-
der what the governor's thinking about
to bring all these people here to listen
to such truck. The man didn't say a
thing that you couldn't have read in half
the -time."

" I wasn't listening," I answered.
" How soon will you be able to get
away? "

" Oh, in a minute or two, I fancy.
Hallo, what does Rocca want with us? "

The great man was crossing the room
toward us with the evident intention - of
entering into conversation. Mindful of
his place as assistant host, David ad-
vanced a step to meet him.

" Very interesting, Mr. Rocca," he
said with a solemn face. " You have ■
convinced me that I must go to Abys-
sinia."

The Italian's keen eyes shot a quick,
penetrating glance at the young man.
He was hardly the type of person I
would have undertaken to beguile with
social sugar-plums.

" You are polite, at least," he re-
marked suavely ; " but what I said was
nothing. If you and your friend are
really interested, I should be delighted
to talk more to you, and to show you
various things I have in my rooms. Why
should you not come with me now?
After dinner, in a crowd, is no place for
serious conversation.

An acceptance trembled on 'my lips,
but David took the words Out of my
mouth. " It is unfortunate, but Mr.
Paget and I have an engagement to-
night. Perhaps you will give us another
opportunity."

" Ah, you young men, so full of pleas-
ure that you have no time for business !
Well, time cures that. To-morrow at
lunch, perhaps? My agents have taken
an apartment for me in Thirtieth Street
— shall we say at one o'clock? "

" With pleasure," I hastened to say
before Marshfield could decline the sec-
ond invitation.

With a smile that laid bare his white
teeth, Rocca bade us a courteous good
night, shook hands with the rest of the
party, and took himself off. As his fig-
ure vanished through the door, I turned
to Marshfield.

"Why the dickens didn't you go?
You needn't have been in such a rush
to decline."

"Why?" echoed David. "Why, in-
deed? Didn't you say you wanted to
play old sleuth at the Auvergne?"

"And why not play it in Rocca's
rooms? " I retorted.
. My friend regarded me with silent,
obvious contempt.

"Why not?" I repeated warmly.

" Stephen, you are in danger of be-
coming a conceited ass. The whole
world does not revolve around your
flights down-stairs, or your flights of
fancy either. Rocca is a big man, with
his head full of big schemes. You're 'not
a scheme, and you're not big.

" A fine pair of sleuths we'd be, sit-
ting up in his rooms and yawning over
another volume of that Abyssinia rot.
You've got me in for it to-morrow, as
it is. For the Lord's sake, give me a
rest now."

David concluded his long speech by
leaving me in order to announce to his
father bis intention of going out. Ten

182

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

minutes later we were walking rapidly
down Fifth Avenue, and I was wonder-
ing whether, after all, I had not dreamed
my vision of the man lighting his ciga-
rette in the carriage.

CHAPTER XI.

A Friend in Need.

r rHE dinner crowd had gone, and the
■*■ restaurant of the Auvergne was
beginning to fill again with its usual
nightly throng of supper patrons when
we reached it. No popular restaurant is
long deserted in New York. Breakfast
and luncheon, dinner and supper, they
tread so closely on each other's heels that
to the stranger" it must seem as if the
city's life was one vast meal.

But I was in no humor for specula-
tion on New York's appetite.. Instead,
I studied the head waiter as he ushered
us to a corner table — studied him, and
learned nothing. If he possessed any
knowledge of last night's trap, his
stolid, smooth-shaven face did not re-
veal it.

"Bonsoir, M. Paget," he murmured;
recommended sweetbreads with mush-
rooms sous cloche, took our order for
the food we did not wTant, and departed.
I decided he knew nothing.

The orchestra started the old " Santa
Lucia," and once more I heard the Hun-
garian's voice filling the room. I
pointed him out to Marshfield, a pic-
turesque figure in his blue sailor blouse
and gaudy Venetian sash. David turned
in his chair to look at the friend who
was as mysterious as my enemies.

Instinctively the man must have felt
the intent gaze upon him, for his eyes
fell at once upon our table. The high
notes of " Santa Lucia " faltered a lit-
tle, and I knew that he had recognized
me. In a second he was singing as be-
. fore, but there was inquiry in the eyes
still turned upon our table.

I raised my glass reassuringly toward
him, at the same time pulling out my
watch. It was a cryptic message that
I wished to see him later, but he un-
derstood. With an almost imperceptible
nod of his head, he looked away, and
the strains of "Santa Lucia" rang out
more joyously than ever.

" Fine-looking fellow," was David's
comment as he settled back in his chair
after his inspection. " How are we go-
ing to get a chance to talk to him? "

" He'll find a way. Keep your ears
open. Maybe he will sing us a «mes-
sage."

" Yes, and my eyes too," returned
Marshfield. " Here's another friend to
make the evening pleasant. Donrt
look! " he added sharply, asl was about
to turn my head in the direction of his
gaze. " He hasn't seen us, and there's
no use in telling him we are here."

"Who is it?" I demanded.

" Ghedina. You remember him — the
chap who sat opposite me at dinner, a
young fellow not more than thirty-five
at the most."

" Do you suppose he could be the
man we're after?" I asked rather doubt-
fully. " He didn't have a word to say
for himself, and I didn't think twice
about him. But what the dickens could
bring him here if he has nothing to do
with it?"

" What brings all these people here? "
Marshfield waved his slim hand about
the room, now comfortably crowded.
" Lights, food, drink, music, the search
for some kind of excitement. Look
here, Steve." He leaned across the table,
and his voice was graver than he often
allowed it to become.

" I told you once before you were in
danger of making an ass of yourself over
this business, and I mean it. If you are
going to play detective, you've got to
keep your head.

" Suppose you really did see that fel-
low driving away from our house. It
doesn't prove that the man he took there
knew what he had been up to with you.
I know lots of - tough characters, but,
so far, I've kept clear of the police: It's
<t£n to one that Ghedina never saw your
friend, and that he came here 'to wash
the taste of the x\byssinian lecture out
of his mouth. I'm going to watch him.
of course ; but there's no use in getting
excited about it."

I eyed David in displeasure for a mo-
ment. It is not agreeable to be accused
of a case of the rattles at critical mo-
ments.

" It seems to me," I remarked, " that
Rocca is not the only lecturer to-night.

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

And if you knew Miss Bigontina, and
had rolled up and down stairs and in
and out of cabs for the past day or two,
you might wake up a bit yourself.''

David broke, out in a hearty laugh.
" I'll take it all back. You are a model
of calm courage. To prove my repent-
ance, I will make a suggestion. You
can see the fiddler there, and I can see
the back of Ghedina's head. You watch
your man and I'll watch mine, and the
devil take the hindmost."

I laughed, and for a few minutes we
sat playing with the food the waiter
brought, and watching.

"Anything doing?" asked David at
last. " Bookkeeping is more exciting
than this kind of detective business."

." Wait," I cautioned. " Here comes
my man. There's just the chance that
he will sing to us."

As I spoke the orchestra broke into
the weird Hungarian melody " Maria,"
that I had heard the night before. The
violinist's voice filled the room with a
subtle melancholy, and we sat, fasci-
nated. Oblivious of his charge, David
turned to face the man, the fork with
which he had been pretending to eat,
waving slowly in the air as he kept time
involuntarily to the slow chant.

Then he came — croning over his vio-
lin as before — the whole soul of an
ancient race pouring itself out in a lan-
guage but half intelligible to the pleas-
ure-seeking throng he sang to. He
passed us without a word or sign, sing-
ing his way through the crowded room.
There was no joy in the song, only a
numb despair through which ran a cur-
rent of sheer defiance like the cheer of
dying men. I had never heard him like
that before. He knew that the throng
was there for merriment, not for sad-
ness, and that he must please the throng.
But to-night — to-night, I fancy, he was
pleasing himself.

Down the room he marched, halted by
the window where he had stood to warn
Maria and myself, wheeled about, and,
still singing, started toward us. From
his throat he poured a torrent of wrath
and revolt that mounted higher and
higher — mounted, faltered, and died,
snuffed out in one hideous, abrupt gasp.
At that sudden shattering of a tre-
mendous vision, every soul in the room

started, but only David and I held the
key to the secret of the collapse. The
violinist was opposite Ghedina's table.
The violin had dropped from his shoul-
der, and hung mute in his hand, while
he stared as into a serpent's eye at the
face of our late dinner companion. We
saw Ghedina's look fastened on the un-
happy wretch in front of him ; saw his
heavy jaw protrude viciously; saw his
lips move under his carefully curled,
slight mustache as he spoke to the man.
Then, while we gazed at the dimly un-
derstood tragedy, the Hungarian tore /
himself from the fascination of that bale-
ful face and rushed up the room toward
the orchestra's platform.

It was a different man that passed us.
The fire had died in the eyes ; under the
high cheek-bones the face was ashen
gray ; and the bow of the violin shook
in the silenced singer's hand. Behind
him, as I sat awed and clumfounded in
my chair, I caught a glimpse of Ghe-
dina's cynical smile. It was from that
that my friend, was fleeing.

Purple with rage, the gross figure of
the head waiter pursued the musician.
The orchestra had stopped in consterna-
tion at their leader's downfall, a chorus
of exclamations and jeers rose from the
guests of the restaurant, and through it
all I felt rather than saw the secret core
of the sudden tumult, the smile of the
man with whom I had been dining an
hour ago.

"My Lord!" muttered David.
"It's Ghedina ! " I cried, under my
breath. " Ghedina is our man ! "

"And if he is?" breathed Marshfield.
"And if he is — what then?"

What then, indeed? Already the res-
taurant's patrons, weary of the second's
sensation, were settling down to their
neglected suppers; even as he spoke,
Ghedina's eye fell upon the excited form
of my friend, half-risen from his chair.
He nodded pleasantly as though he
found the evening most delightful,
turned to his table, and raised a glass
of wine toward his host's son in which
to drink his health.

It was a charming" exhibition of Old-
World courtesy, and Marshfield forced
himself to respond. Lifting his own
glass, he touched his lips to the rim-,
then set it down abruptly.

184

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" It chokes me," he growled hoarsely.
"The cursed brute! What does it
mean? "

Across the serving-table by our side
a grimy hand shot out to thrust a piece
of paper in front of me. I glanced up
in time to see an "-omnibus," an igno-
rant waiter's helper, turn hastily away.
In front of me was a hurried, illiterate
scrawl, which I could with difficulty de-
cipher :

Come to the cafe. I need help.

One swift glance told me that Ghe-
dina's attention was no longer bestowed
upon us. I tossed the paper over to
David and rose from the table. Marsh-
field's eyebrows lifted slightly, but he
made no other sign, and I strode down
the room. At Ghedina's table I paused
for a moment, took a cigarette from my
pocket, tapped it on the box once or
twice, and lighted it.

" Good evening, Mr. Ghedina. Didn't
they give you enough to eat at the
Marshfields'?"

" Oh, Mr. Paget ! Good evening. We
meet again, I see." The fellow rose
from the table with a cordiality that was
almost effusive. " But I do not come to
eat — I come to see New York. But you
- — you are native here, is it not so? Are
you hungry so soon again?"

I forced a laugh from dry lips. " Oh,
no. It is near where I live, and I came
for a glass of wine with my friend. Do
you find New York interesting, Mr.
Ghedina?" .

" Very." The man's lips curled in the
same smile with which he had followed
the fleeing musician. " It is always new.
One sees so much of the — er — unexpect-
ed— yes, of the unexpected," he added, as
though he had found precisely the word
he sought.

" Well, that is always interesting. As
for me, I find it much the same."

We bowed politely at each other, and
I passed on, secure in the belief that
Ghedina would not connect my exit with
his own strange interruption of the
Hungarian's song. And I had learned
something too.

" The unexpected," Ghedina had said.
Then he could not have anticipated meet-
ing the violinist there-; but if that was

so, why had he come at all — to see New
York?

" Nonsense," I said to myself, an-
swering my own question -as I made my
way to the cafe. " He's no raw boy,
attracted . by electric lights, like some
poor moth to a lamp. What does he
care for New York?"

That question was still unanswered
when I turned into the cafe. The vio-
linist was there ahead of me, seated at
one of the small, marble-topped tables.
He had had sufficient command over
himself to sit down, but that was .all.
In the minute or two that he had been
waiting for me he had strewn the table
with bits of broken matches and tooth-
picks; as I came upon, him, he was pick-
ing up and dropping the tiny fragments
like one beside himself. I had always
seen him strong, self-reliant, high-spir-
ited, and the man's terror- appalled me.

At sight of me he sprang up, cast one
hunted look around the* room, and
breathed into- my ear : "I tried to help
you; you must help me." The whisper
ended in a choking sob.

"Of course I will help you. What
do you want? "

" Money."

" Money? " Involuntarily I drew a
little away from him in natural suspi-
cion. Was it all part -of an elaborate
trick?

Was this fellow, despite his music,
nothing but one of the great army of
minor rascals who live on petty forms
of mild extortion and blackmail? I had
done nothing for which to be black-
mailed, it is true ; but that is not al-
ways essential. Suddenly I saw my ad-
ventures in a new and sordid light.

" Money ! I must have money ! "
The man's face was close to mine again,
and it was gray and old. There was no
trick about this. " They have found me.
If I stay here three hours, I am a dead
man. It is my life I ask for. Give me
money to go."

Luck favored him. I had drawn a
hundred dollars from the bank that
afternoon, and the bulk of it was still
in my pocketbook. He snatched greedily
at the wallet I handed him % and thrust
it into his pocket with a gasp of joy.

"Where are you going?" I de-
manded.

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

185

It occurred to me that I was paying
a hundred dollars for the privilege of
losing the one clue on which I relied.
As old Marshfield would have said, it
was not good business.

The violinist flung out his hands in a
wild gesture. " Anywhere ! Chicago,
New Orleans ! Where the first train
goes. Anywhere away from him ! "

" From Ghedina? "

The violinist nodded, too much occu-
pied with his own fears to 'wonder what
I knew of Ghedina.

"Why?"

" He knows me. Ah, I thought he
was in Europe, and that here I was safe.
He alone knows me. It was the devil
who brought him here. But there is
time — I may escape yet."

I caught him by the arm as he started
for the door, forcing him to listen. '

"What are you afraid of? No one
can hurt you here. Who is Ghedina that
you should run from him? "

" Let me go. It is death to stay."

With the strength of the panic-stricken
he tore himself from my grasp, then
turned for a second to face me, his words
coming in breathless haste, though his
voice never rose above a whisper.

" They meet to-night — down-stairs in
the annex. I know who they are. I
recognize them by the walking-sticks. I
balked them once — I and my brother.
My brother is dead. Ghedina knows me.

(To be co

He will tell them to-night. Then they
will hunt me out as they hunted my
brother.

" But I have time still and money — ■
thanks to you, sir; money! " For a sec-
ond the real man showed through his
-degrading terror and he bowed with a
certain inborn dignity. " Good-by, sir,
and thank you."

I was staring at an empty doorway.
The violinist had gone, taking with him
•the mystery of his own fear and my
warning. For a second I gazed awe-
struck at the beginning of the long path
over which the fleeing man had started.
Then I raised my head.

Four or five of the near-by patrons
were looking at me curiously; behind the
cigar-stand the fat, sleepy cashier had
roused herself to unwonted interest, her
round eyes protruding in amazement at
the colloquy she had witnessed. There
was nothing to be gained by making a
spectacle of myself and I started back to
Marshfield.

At his table Ghedina was still seated,
smoking a cigarette and sipping a glass
of wine. He looked up at me with a
pleasant smile as I passed, but though
my lips moved there was no answering
smile in my eyes. They had pierced be-
yond the suave, well-groomed face to the
wall where his coat and hat hung. There
was a slight walking-stick there, with a
round top of hammered silver.

Dtinued . ) .

GREATEST LITTLE RAILROAD.

A CORRESPONDENT sends us a clip-
ping referring to what he considers
to be the greatest little railroad in the world,
and there is no doubt that in proportion to
' its length the Erie and Michigan Railway is
one of the best-equipped roads in America.
In regard to the length of the road, our
correspondent's clipping errs slightly on the
side of exaggeration.

The newspaper gives the length of the
road as eleven miles, but it is in fact a lit-
tle less than nine and a halfv Contracts have
recently been placed for a new freight mo-
gul and two hundred freight-cars.

When these orders are filled the railroad

will have six locomotives and three hun-
dred freight-cars, as well as a train of pas-
senger-cars. Besides all this land equip-
ment, the road owns three lake steamers.

The line runs from Alabaster, on the shore
of Tawas Bay, Michigan, to East Tawas.
Last year it paid a dividend of twelve per
cent. Its chief freight items are plaster and
gypsum, the Jatter being found in almost
inexhaustible quantities around Alabaster.
The company runs four passenger-trains a
day. There are seven stations on the line.

The road is absolutely independent, and
the only system it connects with is the De-
troit and Mackinaw, at East Tawas.

vvrav ls#>x

BEES TIE UP A RAILROAD.

BY AUGUST WOLF

Every Conceivable Effort, Even the Wisdom of a Bee Expert, Is Used

to Dislodge Them from a Tank- Pipe — Then Two

Small Boys Solve the Problem.

BEES are credited with doing all sorts of
unusual things, but probably this is
the first time that a queen and her retinue
and subjects completely tied up a railroad.

It happened recently on the Harriman sys-
tem at Twin Falls, Idaho, when a lusty
swarm accomplished what the James J. Hill
Congress and other well-organized agencies
have repeatedly failed to do.

E. R. Ferguson, a traveling salesman of
Chicago, was an eye-witness. He said, in
describing the incident :

" Tin dish-pans, tom-toms, whistles and
other recognized lures failed to dislodge the
swarm, which had settled in the spout of the
standpipe at the water-tank, where a long
train of freight-cars stood on the main line
without sufficient water in the boiler of the
big mogul to pull out.

" The driver and fireman did excellent
team work in trying to reach the pipe, but
the bees gave them short shift and the men
refused to make the second attempt.

" H. A. Swab, an expert on the honey-
gathering hymenopterous insects, bore down
on the scene to capture the swarm. He
was armed with a nail keg and two long
sticks. He sent his helper to coax the bees
into the keg, but in less than six seconds
the assistant had a score of active bees up
his sleeves, and he made a dash toward the
railway station.

" The firemen and section crew were next
routed. The engineer appealed to Agent
Sullivan, who declared that it was a matter
for the maintenance of way department.
The conductor suggested sending for the

sheriff. The brakeman on the rear end in-
sisted upon calling out the fire brigade, but
the brakeman on the front end offered no
solution, as he was nursing a dozen or more
knobs on his face and hands about the size
of mature hickory nuts.

" Finally a bystander prescribed the water
cure, adding, ' If that doesn't drive 'em awav
nothing will.'

"A well-directed stream from a garden
hose seemed to have a quieting effect. The
pipe was lowered to the intake on the ten-
der and the tank filled with bees and water.

" While replacing the pipe the fireman was
attacked by several stragglers, and, to pro-
tect himself from further onslaught, he tied
a red bandanna handkerchief around his
head. After raising the spout he tucked the
handkerchief into his pocket and accepted
the congratulations of the onlookers upon
his escape, but while mopping his face a
vagrant bee winged its way out of the folds
of the bandanna, got busy and stung him on
the lip.

" After the excitement with the bees two
small boys climbed to the roof of the water-
tank and, with bare hands, captured the
queen. They placed her in the bottom of the
keg, into which the bees quickly swarmed.
Mr. Swab bought the swarm, paying for
the youngsters one dollar and ^venty-five
cents."

As it is not likely that the real cause of
delaying the train will be incorporated in the
official report to headquarters, the foregoing-
record is made to show how the tie-up oc-
curred.
86

ON THE EDITORIAL CARPET.

Gome, Boys, Gather Around Us Back Here
in the Hut, and Listen to the Stove-piping.

NOVEMBER ORDERS.

NOVEMBER will see us well out on a
new division. We have spent the last
four weeks in adjusting our valves, tighten-
ing up, and oiling around; and the gait we
are going to cut out over the next month's
stretch will fairly scorch the ties.

We like to be duly modest about our mo-
tive power, but it's hard. A crew that has
spent as much time as we have to get a
smooth motion, with a string of fine rolling
stock behind, is apt to feel that the road is
lucky to have such an outfit running over it.

To get down to facts, and they are hard
to get away from, we shall pass a new serial
through the injector next month, which. is
as keen as a headlight on a clear night, and
as exciting as a first run over a new track.

Another fiction feature to which we point
with pride will be Old Burkett's Disciple,
a short story, by J. R. Stafford. This is
not a railroad story, but it's a railroad man's
story; just as it is any kind of a man's
story. It is one of those stories in which a
maiT is shown in his primitive strength and
his primitive weakness, and it is told in the
way of the man who knows.

Then we have Emmet F. Harte in a new
and more serious guise, but writing equally
well about The Leap of 637 as he has done
about Honk and Horace, or any other of his
picaresque characters. Edgar Welton Cooley
and Charles Wesley Sanders will also be
with us.

Doubtless some of our earlier readers will
remember a story we published nearly three
years ago called The Reckoning, and those
who do remember will be glad to hear that
a story by the same author, James Norman
Shreve, entitled The Trail of the Missed
Extra is slated for the November number.

In the matter of special articles we shall
have an interesting historical account of
how railroad men prevented the assassina-
tion of Lincoln, written by Bertram Adler ;
the Romantic Secret of the Automatic
Coupler is told by E. L. Bacon, and Motive
Power is dealt with in the Help for Men
Who Help Themselves department by C. F.
Carter.

Railroad men of fifteen or twenty years'
standing will have an old memory revived
for them in the Story of 999, as retold by
Remsen Crawford ; while a story on Making
up Time, by T. S. Dayton, is as fast as its
title indicates. There are others, including
the inimitable Observations of a Country
Station-Agent and the ninth instalment of
Riding the Rail from Coast to Coast;
but, lest we tell all we know, we will save
a few of these little plums for you to dis-
cover when you get the magazine.

J*
THE EDITOR'S SAFETY-VALVE.

TF there is one part on a locomotive that
•*• can be called more important than an-
other, we should say it might be the safety-
valve. We are quite mixed up with safety-
valves this month ; partly because we wanted
to be, and partly because we didn't.

This paragraph is going to be the editor's
safety-valve; but, contrary to that 'useful bit
of mechanism, it is by no means the most
important feature of the magazine. Still,
we are making steam enough to have use
for a safety-valve, and we hope you will
patiently listen to its popping.

That little word is one we are mighty
particular about, because it is really the
cause of our getting mixed up with safety-
valves again. We thought, when we had got
off our little piece last month which con-
cluded with the statement that the safety-
valve was popping merrily, that we should
be through with safety-valves for a long-
time, because we were contemplating another
record dash in which we should use all our
steam to the best advantage.

What was our dismay, when we found
that the printer had made us inform a wait-
ing world that our safety-valve was pump-
ing. Honest, we never had that kind of a
safety-valve. We'd as soon think of having
a celluloid crown-sheet or an emergency-
brake emerging from the steam-chest. We
wouldn't do it !

We knew that every eagle eye and every
steam-producer north of Patagonia would
open the magazine straight to that page and

187

188

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

glue his scornful optic on that safety-valve
as it pumped merrily away.

We had two consolations : One was that
our readers, who are as charitable as they
are critical, would not hasten to judge us
until we had a chance to explain ; and the
other was that, as this will be in print be-
fore our shame is made public, we can
remedy it before we are overcome with re-
proaches.

We had another use for this safety-valve ;
but as this paragraph has taken the shape
of a confession, we will let off the remainder
of the steam under another head.

WE ISSUE TRAIN ORDERS.

THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN de-
partment is one of the most popular
departments ever run by any magazine, and
the more letters we receive the better we
like it. There is just one matter, however, to
which we should like to call the attention
of our readers who use this department, and
that is the importance of inquirers signing
all letters with their full name and giving
the postal address.

Many of the queries we receive are of a
nature to admit prompt replies through the
mail, and to these queries we like to give
individual attention. Others, because of the
specific- quality of the answer, would be in
the nature of advertisements; and while we,
are always glad to give the best advice or
information we have, by mail, such replies
cannot be published in the magazine.

Therefore, readers will favor us greatly
by using their full names and addresses
when sending questions to this office, and
they will in many cases hurry the replies
by doing so. Of course, only the initials
and the city will be used in the magazine,
as usual.

BOUND VOLUMES.

LA.ST month we promised that we should
' have more to say abotit the bound
volumes of The Railroad Man's Magazine.
Already the reader probably knows all we
were going to say on this subject, for doubt-
less by this time he has read the article by
the editor with which this number opens.

In this brief review the leading features
of the past three years' work are covered.
If, when we come to the end of a similar
period, the review is as pleasant and as en-
tertaining, we feel that both ourselves and
our readers will have every cause for satis-
faction, and we are sure that it will be so.
If any of you want to stand in the ob-

servation-car with us a little longer, and
look back-track with more minuteness than
is possible in a short article, we shall be
glad to give you whatever specific informa-
tion you desire about the dates .or character
of whatever stories may be of interest to
you, or to give you a general idea of what-
ever volume you may have missed, if you
will drop us a line, taking care to give us
a name and address that Uncle Sam can
deliver a letter to.

&
SHY ON LANTERNS.

WE want to thank George H. Wallace,
of Racine, Wisconsin, for his letter
calling our attention to an illustration in a
recent number in which a railroad man was
pictured with a farmer's lantern. We apolo-
gize for this awful breech of railroad eti-
quette; and while we may be a little shy
on the shape of lanterns, we feel that other-
wise we may be all to the Pullman. Mr.
Wallace asks in the same letter if we can
resurrect a poem entitled " Kelly and Burke
and Shea." As we are always glad to do
our readers a good turn, we publish it here
complete :

THE FIGHTING RACE.

" Read out the names ! " and Burke sat back,

And Kelly dropped his head.
While Shea — they call him Scholar Jack —

Went down the list of dead.
Officers, seamen, gunners, marines,

The crews of the gig and yawl.
The bearded man and the lad in his teens,

Carpenters, coal-passers — all.
Then, knocking the ashes from out his pipe,

Said Burke in an offhand way :
" We're all in that dead man's list, by Cripe !

Kelly and Burke and Shea."
" Well, here's to the Maine, and I'm sorry
for Spain,"

Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.

" Wherever there's Kellys there's trouble,"
said Burke.
" A\ 'herever fighting's the game,
Or a spice of danger in grown man's work."

Said Kelly,, " you'll find my name."
"And do we fall short." said Burke, getting
mad,
" When it's touch and go for life? "
Said Shea, " It's thirty-odd years, bedad,

Since I charged, to drum and fife,
Up Marye's Heights, and my old canteen

Stopped a rebel ball on its way.
There were blossoms of blood on our sprigs
of green-
Kelly and Burke and Shea —
And the dead didn't brag." " "Well, here's to
the flag ! "
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.

ON THE EDITORIAL CARPET.

189

" I wish 'twas in Ireland, for there's the
place,"

Said Burke, " that we'd die by right,
In the cradle of our soldier race,

After one good stand-up fight.
My grandfather fell on Vinegar Hill,

And fighting was not his trade ;
But his rusty pike's in the cabin still,

With Hessian blood on the blade."
" Aye, aye,"said Kelly, " the pikes were great

When the word was 'clear the way! '
We were thick on the roll in Ninety-eight — ■

Kelly and Burke and Shea."
" Well, here's to the .pike and the sword and
the like ! "

Said Kelly and Burke and Shea. ■

And' Shea, the scholar, with rising joy,

Said, " We were at Ramillies,
We left our bones at Fontenoy

And up in the Pyrenees.
Before Dunkirk, on Landen's plain,

Cremona, Lille, and Ghent,
We're alb over Austria, France, and Spain,

Wherever they pitched a tent.
We've died for England, from Waterloo

To Egypt and Dargai ;
And still there's enough for a corps or a
crew,

Kelly and Burke and Shea."
" Well, here's to good honest fighting-
blood ! "

Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.

" Oh, the fighting races don't die out,

If they seldom die in bed,
For love is first in their hearts, no doubt,"

Said Burke ; then Kelly said,
" When Michael, the Irish Archangel, stands,

The angel with the sword,
And the battle-dead from a hundred lands

Are ranged in one big horde,
Our line, that for Gabriel's trumpet waits.

Will stretch three deep that day,
From Jehosaphat to the Golden Gates — ■

Kelly and Burke and Shea."
" Well, here's thank God for the race and
the sod ! "

Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.

Joseph I. C. Clarke.

BRAKEMEN OF THE OLD DAYS.

WE had this October number on the
main line, all ready to make the time,
when the following letter from W. D. Skin-
ner, Lafayette, Louisiana, flagged us. We
pulled her down to take it aboard, and we
don't regret it :

Editor The Railroad Man's Magazine. —
Your article in the August number in re-
gard to the brakemen of the good old days
certainly struck a tender chord in my heart.
It was all so true. There are no more
brakemen. They are, as you say, " train-
men."

How well I remember, back in 1881, when
I was braking on the Louisiana Western

Railroad, between Lafayette, Louisiana, and
Orange, Texas. One hundred and twelve
miles was the run, and it was the days of
good old " hay burners," as we used to call
them.

There were no yard crews in those days
to make upy our trains, and no call-boy to
rout us out? We were supposed to line up
at the wood-car and " wood up," or fill the
tender with heavy pine wood, the first thing
in the morning, and then get up the train
from any part of the yard, wherever the
cars might be found.

There were no air-brakes, nor Janney
couplers, only the old link and pin, and often
we did not have enough pins to make up our
couplings. In that case we used to hike out
for the scrap-pile behind the blacksmith
shop and pick up any old bolt that would
hold out long enough to start.

After getting everything ready we would
pull out, and on reaching the first station we
•would unload all freight for that place and
take on what was going out. Every twenty-
four miles we came to a wood-pile, and we
would wood up the old hay burner again,
and that would be the method from Lafayette
to Orange, which point we would reach
about 10.30 p.m., having left Lafayette at

7 A.M.

We had no cooking outfit in the caboose,
and we used to carry our lunch with us, and
in very hot weather it usually turned sour,
as we had no ice to keep things cool. In
fact, ice was a luxury. We were content to
drink at the water-tank on reaching Orange.

At night we had to do whatever switching-
was required — such as putting in cars at the
freight depot, and taking -some out, assem-
bling lumber-cars, placing empty stock-cars—
and when we finished and put the engine
away in the roundhouse, you can believe that
we needed no further inducement to promote
sleep.

In those days Orange, Texas, was a good
bit rough. There were some jokers in that
burg who thought it fun to take a shot at a
brakeman's lamp while he was riding on top
of his train or switching.

The engines were eight-wheel Baldwins,
and they all bore a name and number. Only
four trains were operated daily, two passen-
ger and two freights. A special train was a
rarity, and meeting points were compara-
tively easy to make. Only eight engines
were owned by the road at that time. They
were No. r,, Sabine ; No. 2, Calcasieu ; No.
3, Lafayette; No. 4, St. Landry; No. 5,
Grand Marais ; No. 6, Lake Charles ; No. 7,
Vermillion ; No. 8, Vinton.

All in all, those were happy days, until
the consolidation came on and the road was
merged into one big system. The Southern
Pacific Atlantic System it then became. The
wood-burner passed out, the air-brake came
in, yard crews, up-to-date improvements, the
book of standard rules, the eye-test, the
examinations, and all the other things rele-
gated the old brakeman to the ranks of the
" has beens."

There is one thing that I wish to remark

190

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

in conclusion : The hobo, or Weary Willie,
in those days never had to ask for a ride.
The order was reversed. We used to in-
vite them. They came in very handy at a
wood-pile, and we would insist on them
wooding up while we took a rest.

TWENTY-FOUR HOUR WATCHES.

A READER in Fort William, Canada,
sends us this bit of information re-
garding a query from J. M. Happy, Texas,
which we recently published :

The twenty-four hour watches are used in
Western Canada, from Fort William, On-
tario, to the Pacific coast, where the twenty-
four hour system of running trains is in use.
The watch is the same as the Eastern time-
piece, except that just under the numbers
from iK to 12K is 13 to 24 in large numbers.

For instance, just below iK is 13, and be-
low 6 is 18, and below 12 is 24. So, you see,-
one-half of the day is indicated by the out-
side numbers, and the other half is indicated
by the inside numbers. Of course, every five
minutes is marked on the outside of both,
as on any other watch.

ANOTHER SONG WANTED.

WE have been asked to publish the words
of the song, " My Jolly Railroad
Boy." Can any of our readers help us out?
The first lines of the chorus run something
like this :

For his face is like a rose,

And he always wears good clothes.

SAVES TIME AND TEMPER.

A SIMPLIFIED time-table is the handi-
work of George L. Geiger, formerly
railroad editor on the Salt Lake City dailies,
and now an advertising and circulation spe-
cialist.

Mr. Geiger's invention — for dozens of
old-time railroaders say they have never
seen anything like it — is really a combina-
tion of time-tables.

The average traveler, making a long jour-
ney finds the numerous indexes he is forced
to wade through, in order to follow his
movements over different connecting lines,
more puzzling than a jig-saw teaser.

The " Geiger Time and Temper Saving
Device " is simply a time-table with every-
thing not covering the traveler's movements
blocked out. Portions of the time-table of
each route the traveler must take are pasted
together to show the departure of the train
taken and the arrival of this train at the
meeting-point with the connecting route.

The idea is repeated just as many times as
there are transfers to be made.

Mr. Geiger sends us a simplified time-
table covering a trip from . Leavenworth,
Kansas, to San Francisco, half-way across
the continent. The table is simplicity itself,
and would be so were it covering a trip
around the world.

Women, especially, have found the Geiger
time-table of great assistance to them. Por-
ters find it does away with the constant
stream of questions usually directed at them
by lone and worrying women making long
journeys.

Mr. Geiger extends all travelers full per-
mission to adopt his simplified time-table.

J$
GEORGE HOEY'S CLASSIC.

IN response to a multitude of inquirers,
we wish to state that the author of that
classic of railroad poetry, "Asleep at the
Switch," was George Hoey, a son of John
Hoey, at one time president of the Adams
Express Company. The poem was written
by George Hoey when he was about nineteen
years old, at his home, Hollywood, Long
Branch, New Jersey. He was an actor, au-
thor, and dramatist.

This information is furnished us by the
author's son, Johnnie Hoe}', who is well
known as an actor.

SELLS FOR 75 CENTS A COPY.

THINK of paying seventy-five cents a
copy for The Railroad Max's Maga-
zine ! That's what it will cost you in Daw-
son City and other parts of our gold-pro-
ducing Northwest ! Mr. J. R. Morin writes
us a long, interesting letter from that city.
He says :

I want to give 3'ou my best felicitations
for giving such good reading to the people
as appears in The Railroad Man's Masa-~
zine. It has interested not only railroad
men, but every one else that reads it. It
is filled with good stories, and is always in-
teresting.

We have to pay seventy-five cents a copy
for it out here, but that does not matter.
Even if I had to pay two dollars a copy T
would not mind.

WHAT WE LIKE TO HEAR.

WE are not always looking for praise.
We like to find bricks among our
bouquets — for we are not absolutely perfect.
Many times, when we think that we look
like an Atlantic pulling a limited express.

ON THE EDITORIAL1 CARPET.

191

we are, to many, only a 2-6-0 switcher
lumbering* along with a string of empties.
However, boys, we leave that to you. Here
are some of the opinions we found in our
mail this month :

J. G. Slim, St. Paul, Minnesota.— " All I
can say is that it is a first-class magazine,
and good enough for any one. I wish you
the best of luck and success."

J. W. Dooley, Grand Junction, Colorado. —
" I wish it were a weekly instead of a
monthly."

Harry A. Moore, Philadelphia. — " Good
luck to you and our magazine."

Paul S. Meacham, Petersburg, Virginia. —
" I never tire reading it. It is the best on
the pike. Let's have it twice a month or
every week."

George E. Evers, Chicago. — " My wife
took it away from me at breakfast the other
morning."

SIXTY-FIVE YEARS' SERVICE.

WHEN we wrote in our August issue
about Gideon Swain, the Canadian
veteran, and suggested that he might be the
oldest railroad man alive, we had not heard
of Benjamin W. Smith, of Princeton, Indi-
ana. Mr. Smith is eighty-eight years old. We
know that every old-timer and every man
now active in service will be interested in
him, so we are publishing his letter just as
he sent it to us :

In the August number is an article headed
" Oldest Railroad Man." I will have to^go
at least one better than that. I was born hi
Harrison County, Indiana, March 26, 1821,
and was raised in Madison, Indiana, from
which started the first railroad built in the
State.

I worked on the grading of the first mile
of that road in 1835. The grade on the hill
out of Madison is about one mile and a
quarter long, with a raise of about four
hundred feet. I worked a while on the
opening of the first deep cut on that hill,
and left it to go as an apprentice to a ma-
chinist.

On June 22, 1843, I went into service as a
brakeman on the hill. I was transferred
to machine-shop work, and to act as extra
fireman on the locomotives.

In 1846 I was promoted to locomotive
engineer, and in 1854 I was master-mechanic
of the Indianapolis and Perue road, which
I held until it was consolidated with the
Wabash, when I returned to the M. and I.
In 1856 I was promoted to master-mechanic,
which I held until I was again consolidated
out by the union of the road with the Jeffer-
sonville Railroad, in 1865. it

I again went as engineer on the road.
I served about twenty-seven years of my
life on that road. I went for a while as

engineer on what is now the 'branch of the
C. M. and D., between Indianapolis and
Hamilton. From there I went to Spencer
to start a machine shop, but the panic of
1873 was too much for me, and in 1875 I
moved, with my tools, to Rockport, Indiana,
and took charge of the machinery of what
was called the Cincinnati, Rockport and
Southwestern, now a part of the Louisville
and St. Louis division of the Southern Rail-
way, and was again consolidated out by the
uniting of the road with the Southern Rail-
way.

I then sold my tools and went with the
Mariette and North Georgia Railway, which
was then under construction. After over a
year's . service there, I consolidated myself
out and returned to the service of the South-
ern at this place, and have been in active
service on this division about thirty-three1
years.

Counting from 1843 to 1908, I have been
in service sixty-five years. I am now a pen-
sioner on the Southern Railway. I know
that I am the oldest railroader in Indiana,
as well as its oldesf locomotive engineer and
master mechanic, unless there is one, Thomas
Wallace, in California.

When I went into service, there were but
twenty-six miles of railroad in Indiana, and
I knew every man on the operating force.
I believe they are all gone, and I alone am
left.

THE QUESTION OF PRECEDENCE.

THERE may be truth in the dictum that
all men are born equal, but if they stay
so it certainly is not their own fault. The
argument of precedence is the grand, never-
failing, never-ending argument of the world.

After all, it is the motor-pinion that turns
the mainshaft of life ; and though there are
no ball-bearings about it, and it often runs
hot and makes an awful noise, yet the mo-
ment it stops the driving-wheels are still, and
useful activity gives place to " innocuous
desuetude."

We have again heard from one of our
friends as to who occupies the place of
glory, honor, renown, and danger on a rail-
road-train. In answer to our Buffalo cor-
respondent, who belittled the danger of the
mail-clerk's position, our friend, the mail-
clerk, comes along again with the following:

I am the clerk quoted in the May number,
and if you can spare time and space in the
best magazine published, I will try to in-
terest, and probably surprise, your Buffalo
correspondent.

He says five men on the front and are
killed to one mail-clerk, but he is mistaken ;
and if he will get the figures to prove his
side of the case, I will do the same. The
real' explanation is that the public usually
hears or reads of live killed on the front end

192

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

to one mail-clerk. Ask some clerk to tell
you why.

It is not a common occurrence for a mail-
clerk to find himself with his legs under the
warm side of a boiler, and he does not need
a broken steam-pipe to cook the flesh on the
rest of his body. Fire, usually caused by
lamps in his car when the smash-up comes,
will cook him overdone before he is able to
" find " himself.

I have never tried to throw twelve tons of
coal into a fire-box ten feet long and seven
feet wide, but I have often succeeded in
throwing the same amount of mail into three
hundred and fifty boxes and forty or fifty
sacks and pouches — and a great many times
without making an error.

I remember very well a wreck I was in on
a night-run in which my car caught fire from
the lire-box of the engine itself, and I was
rescued by the porter and three other men,
and undoubtedly saved from being roasted
alive.

As to the building of steel cars, we may
live in hopes " but die in despair." I am
sure I have at least one more trip to make
before I get a chance to work in a steel car,
and that trip may be my last — who knows ?

Referring again to the May number, I
would like to say that I had not read the
article in the December, 1906, number, when
I wrote that letter; but since reading the
"May number, I sent for a copy and was
highly pleased with " Magicians of the Mail."

Next to signing the pay-roll, give me The
Railroad Man's Magazine. I am contin-
ually speaking a good word for it.

Now, let us tell you something in confi-
dence. We have held, with becoming grav-
ity, this editorial throttle for many moons.
We have heard arguments about the bra-
very of the engineer and the danger of
his position, the bravery of the fireman
and the' danger of his position, the bravery
of the conductor and brakeman and the
danger of their positions, and the bravery

of the call-boy and the danger of his earthly
calling.

If an}rbody ought to know we guess we
ought. Well — we don't ! The only decision
we can come to is that of the old farmer, as
he gazed on the rhinoceros at the
" There ain't no sich animal ! "

Human beings are pretty much alike, and
the difference is very often the merest
chance. For instance, a wreck seems im-~
minent. The engineer gives her sand and
air ; the fireman is just about to climb down
to break the coupling; the con. is getting
ready to save his passengers ; the postal
clerk looks sadly at the love-letters he has
just sorted — all are primed and ready when
the engine bumps gently into the rear end
of the obstructing freight, and nobody is in-
jured but a pup in the baggage-car, who gets
it in the neck with a hundred-and-fifty-
pound trunk.

Perhaps a train piles up gently over the
body of a sleeping cow, and nobody is killed
except the cow and a passenger in the rear
car, who falls through a window and is
drowned in a ditch.

Thus, fate comes along and kicks the legs
from under theory and proves that the most
dangerous place on a train is where it isn't,
and that the most dangerous occupation is
that of the crossing-tender, who doesn't need
, to go within ten feet of anything on wheels.

There are too many exceptions to have a
rule ; but of this we are convinced : rail-
roading is an occupation which calls for real
men in all its branches. It is an occupation
in which hardship and danger call for
strength, and wit, and courage, and we are
also convinced that every railroad man is
strong, calm, and defiant of circumstances
in whatever position accident or chance may
place him. Where all are excellent there is
no best.

WHERE IS JOSEPH H. LINDSEY ?

Information is wanted of the whereabouts of Joseph H. Lindsey, who was last heard of in
1906, when he was employed in the shops of the Southern Pacific Company, at Sacramento,
California. If you should hear of him or know where he is, write to his brother, Robert L.
Lindsay, 777 Minna Street, San Francisco, California.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

A LIVING FROM POULTRY

$1,500.00 FROM 60 HENS IN TEN MONTHS
ON A CITY LOT 40 FEET SQUARE.

TO the average poultry-
man that would seem
impossible and when we
tell you that we have
actually done a $1,500
poultry business with 60
hens on a corner in the
city garden 40 feet wide
by 40 feet long we are
simply stating facts. It
would not be possible to
get such returns by any
one of the systems of
poultry keeping recom-
mended and practiced by
the American people,
still it is an easy matter
when the new

PHILO
SYSTEM

is adopted.

THE PHILOSYSTEM IS UNLIKE ALL OTHER
WAYS OF KEEPINC POULTRY,

and in many respects just the reverse, accomplishing things in poul-
try work that have always been considered impossible, and getting
unheard-of results that are hard to believe without seeing.

THE NEW SYSTEM COVERS ALL BRANCHES
OF THE WORK NECESSARY FOR SUCCESS

from selecting the breeders to marketing the product. It tells how
to get eggs that will hatch, how to hatch nearly every egg and how
to raise nearly all the chicks hatched. It gives complete plans in
detail how to make everything necessary to run the business and at
less tlian half the cost required to handle the poultry business in any
other manner.

TWO POUND BROILERS IN EIGHT WEEKS

are raised in a space of less than a square foot to the broiler without
any loss, and the broilers are of the very best quality, bringing here
three cents per pound above the highest market price.

OUR SIX-MONTHS-OLD PULLETS ARE LAYING
AT THE RATE OF 24 ECCS EACH PER MONTH

in a space of two square feet for each bird. No green cut bone of
any description is led, and the food used is inexpensive as compared
with food others are using.

Our new book, the Philo System of Poultry Keeping, gives
full particulars regarding these wonderful discoveries, with simple,
easy-to-understand directions that are right to the point, and 15 pages
of illustrations showing all branches of the work from start to finish.

DON'T LET THE CHICKS DIE IN THE SHELL.

One of our secrets of success is to save all the chickens that are
fully developed at hatching time, whether they can crack the shell
or riot. It is a simple trick and believed to be the secret of the
ancient Egyptians and Chinese which enabled them to sell the
chicks at 10 cents a dozen.

CHICKEN FEED AT 15 CENTS A BUSHEL.

Our book tells how to make the best green food with but little
trouble and have a good supply, any day in the year, winter or sum-
mer. It is just as impossible to get a large egg yield without green
food as it is to keep a cow without hay or fodder.

OUR NEW BROODER SAVES 2 CENTS ON
EACH CHICKEN.

No lamp required. No danger of chilling, overheating or burn-
ing up the chickens as with brooders using lamps or any kind of
fire. They also keep all the lice off the chickens automatically or
kill any that may be on them when placed in the brooder. Our
book gives full plans and the right to make and use them. One
can easily be made in an hour at a cost of 25 to 50 cents.

TESTIMONIALS.

Bellefontaine, Ohio, June 7, 1909.
Mr. E. R. Philo, Elmira, N. Y.

Dear Sir: — I just want to tell you of the success I have had
with the Philo system. In January, 1909, I purchased one of your
Philo System books and I commenced to hatch chickens. On the
third day of February, 1909, I succeeded in hatching ten chicks. I
put them in one of your tireless brooders and we had zero weather.
We succeeded in bringing through nine ; one got killed by accident.
On June 1, one of the pullets laid her first egg, and the most re-
markable thing is she has laid every day since up to the present
time. Yours truly, R. S. LaRue.

205 S. Clinton St., Baltimore, Md., May 28, 1909.
E. R. Philo, Publisher, Elmira, N. Y.

Dear Sir: — 1 have embarked in the poultry business on a small
scale (Philo System) and am having the best of success so far, sixty-
eight per cent of eggs hatched by hens, all chicks alive and healthy
at this writing ; they are now three weeks old. Mr. Philo is a public
benefactor, and I don't believe his System can be improved upon,
and so I am'now looking for more yard room, having but 15x30
where I am now. Yours truly, C. H. Leach.

South Britain, Conn., April 14, 1909.
Mr. E. R. Philo, Elmira, N. Y.

Dear Sir: — I have followed your system
as close as I could; the result is a complete
success. If there can be any improvement
on nature, your brooder is it. The first ex-
perience I had with your System was last
December. I hatched 17 chicks under
two hens, put them as soon as hatched in
one of your brooders out of doors and at
the age of three months I sold them at 35c
a pound. They then averaged 2 1-2 lbs.
each, and the man I sold them to said they
were the finest he ever saw, and he wants
all I can spare this season.

Yours truly A. E. Nelson.

Osakis, Minn., June 7, 1909.
Mr. E. R. Philo, Elmira, N. Y.

Dear Sir: — You certainly have the great-
est system the world has ever known. I
have had experience with poultry, but I
know you have the system that brings the
real profits. Yours

Je;,se Underwood.
Brockport, N. Y., Sept. 12, 1908.
Mr. E. W. Philo, Elmira, N. Y.

Dear Sir: — I have had perfect success
brooding chickens your way. I think your
method will raise stronger, healthier
chicks than the old way of using lamps and
besides it saves so much work and risk.
Yours respectfully,

M. S. Gooding.

Send $1.00 direct to the publisher and a copy of the latest
revised edition of the book will be sent you by return mail.

THREE POUND ROASTERS TEN WEEKS old E. R. PHILO, PUBLISHER, 160 THIRD ST., ELMIRA, N.Y.

In answering this advertisement it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

If one thing more than another proves the ability of the
International Correspondence Schools of Scranton to raise the
salaries of poorly-paid but ambitious men and women — to raise
YOUR salary — it is the monthly average of 300 letters
VOLUNTARILY written by students telling of SALARIES RAISED
and POSITIONS BETTERED through J. C S, help.

YOU don't live so far away that the I. C. S/cannot reach you. Provided you can
read and write, your schooling has not been so restricted that the I. C. S. cannot help you.
Your occupation isn't such that the I. C. S. cannot improve it. Your spare time isn't so
limited that it cannot be used in acquiring an I. C. S. training. Your means are not so
slender that you cannot afford it. The occupation of your choice is not so high that the
I. C. S. cannot train you to fill it. Your salary is not so great the I. C. S. cannot raise it.

Some of the

"J enrolled six months ago for your Dynamo Running
Course, completed it in four months, received a Diploma
and secured a position at once in the Dynamo Room of
the Minnetto Meriden Shade Cloth Plant, at Minnetto,
N. Y., at a salary of $65 per month, more than double the
wages I was receiving at the time of my enrollment.

I cannot too highly recommend the I. C. S. to all who
desire a higher position and better salary."

Joel E. Baker, R. F. D. No. i,

Fulton, N. Y.

"When I enrolled with the Schools, I was employed by
a creamery to run a branch station, at $30 per month.

As I advanced in my studies, I was able to command
better positions, and am now getting 250%more pay than
when I enrolled, and am superintendent of a city electric
light and water works plant, a position that I would not
be able to hold if it was not for the information received
from the Schools." C F. Rasmussen

Clay Center, Kansas.

"When I enrolled in the I. C. S. I was getting $12.50 per
week. I did not know a thing about Sheet Metal Pattern
Drafting.

I am now Pattern Cutter and have charge of from 18 to
30 men in one of the largest Cornice Shops in Kansas.
My wages now are $20 per week and increase every year,
thanks to the International Correspondence Schools."

Peter Couture,
qo2 Jefferson St., Topeka, Kansas.

"I am more than pleased with the training that I
received through the I. C. S. Where I was receiving a
salary of $1.50 per day at hard labor, I am now receiving
a salary of $100 per month as Superintendent of the City
Electric Light Plant at Huntington, Indiana, and I can
attribute this advancement to nothing but the Course of
Instruction in your Schools."

J. W. Hier,
Supt. City Elec. Lt. Plant, Huntington, Ind.

"I must give you a little note in regard to my progress
and the way you teach, so that it may help someone else
to rise as I have done through sending in a one-cent
postcard that was given to me some two-and-one-half
years ago. When I enrolled with you I was working as a
carpenter, and after studying for eighteen months I got
a position as draftsman with an architect in this city
(Mr. Galloway, Architect) an old student of yours. Later
I took a few contracts on my own account and recently
I took my drawings (including the last one with 100%)
and made an application for a position as Building In-
spector for the Board of Education, City Hall, Toronto,
and they engaged me right there on the spot.

If I had not taken a Course with you I would not have
been able to fill my present position. Your method of
teaching is all that can be desired."

J. J. Helling,
113 Ann Street, Toronto, Ont., Can.

In answeriny this advertisement it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

Salaries Raised

An I. C. S. training can be acquired in your spare time and without the purchase of a
single book. To learn how easily it can be done, mark the attached coupon.

Add to the three hundred students heard from every month, the other successful
students not heard from, and you have some idea of the tremendous salary-raising
power of the I. C. S. During the months of April, May, and June the number of students
heard from was 946. Mark the coupon.

Read the following testimonials picked at random from thousands of others equally
interesting. Remember that these men were no better off than you when they enrolled.
Also, remember that YOU can just as surely win similar success. Mark the coupon.

Marking the coupon costs you nothing and does not bind you in any way. Besides
bringing you the information that will show you the road to success, it also entitles you
to the I. C. S. illustrated monthly "Ambition" FREE for six months.

Salaries Raised

"When I enrolled for the Complete Architectural Course
in the I. C. S., I was working in a factory as a cabinet-
maker, and through the knowledge I received I began con-
tracting one year after I took up the course. I draw my
own plans, and have no trouble in working from them.
I am able to compete with Architects and Contractors that
have followed the business for years.

I can make from three to four times as much as when I
enrolled." J. W. Davis,

Marquis, Sask., Can.

"At the time of my enrollment I was a fireman and could
not seem to advance at all, having remained in that posi-
tion for about nine years; during that time I had a chance
to get a good practical knowledge of Steam Engineering,
but that did not help me much, as I had no technical
knowledge nor training ; but since I enrolled for my Course
one year and nine months ago, I have progressed rapidly
and I now hold the position of Chief Engineer of the Henry
Heywood Memorial Hospital of Gardner, Mass., with a
salary of $1800 a year. At the time of my enrollment my
salary was $50 a month and board."

Walter E- Wells,
Care of The Henry Heywood Memorial Hospital,

Gardner, Mass.

fl/J this proves there is an I. C. S. way for YOU.
learn what that way is by~MARKING THE COUPON

SALAMAISIW COUPON

INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOLS,

Box 1003D, SCRAJVTON, PA.

Please explain, without further obligation on my part, how

I can qualify for the position before which I have marked X,

and also send rne, absolutely free, " Ambition " Magazine for

six months.

General Foreman
K. K. Shop Foreman
K. R Traveling Eng.
R. R. Travg Fireman

Locomotive Engineer
Air-Brake Instructor
Air-Brake Inspector
Air-Brake Repairman
Mechanical Engineer
Mechanical Draftsman
RRConstructlon Eng.
Surveyor
Civil Engineer

Banking

Electrical Engineer
Machine Designer
Electrician
Mining Engineer
Mine Foreman
Foreman Machinist
Chemist
Assay er
Architect
Bookkeeper
Stenographer
Ad Writer

Employed by_

Employed as

Street and No. .
City.

In answering this advertisement it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

HE NAVY is a great big training school run by the Government.
It turns out seamen, electricians, machinists, carpenters, gunners,
etc. The man who serves an enlistment creditably and receives
an Honorable Discharge, is able not onlv to do his work properly in the Navy or in civil life, but he is SELF-
RELIANT AND RESOURCEFUL. 'That is where the Navy training counts.

There is room for him to advance in the Navy. Should he wish to leave the service after one enlistment,
he is equipped to get a better job at better pay than he was before he enlisted.

The Navy offers advantages to men who have a trade, even if cnly partially learned. Why not make
yourself a master at your trade and get paid while doing it?

You can save money there, too. In the Navy everything you really need is given you free. Most men
can save more in the Navy than they can in civil life; and there is every facility for depositing savings, without
expense or trouble, at 4% interest.

If you are an American citizen, between 17 and 25, you are requested to consider this matter seriously.
(If you have a trade, you can enlist over 25 if under 35.) Ask the advice of any bluejacket who has "made
good." or send for the booklet, "THE MAKING OF A MAN-O'WARSMAN," which will give you full
information about life in the Navy. Address,

BUREAU OF NAVIGATION, Box 77 Navy Dept., Washington, D. C.

On Gas.Jei

Giant Heater

Will Make A Stove of

your round wick lamp, gas-
jet or mantel burner. Re-
quires no more gas or oil than
for light ; does not lessen the
volume of light ; utilizes the
waste heat. Heat and light
at one cost.

Will Heat Ordinary Room

Comfortably in Zero Weather

A river will run mills by concentrating
Its power— your lamp or gas-jet will heat
a room by concentrating, intensifying and
radiating the waste heat with a GIANT

HGITEK. This heater causes a circu-
lation of the air, giving uniform heat. No
odor, dust, ashes or trouble. You can
heat any room, office or den, warm baby's
food, or your shaving water, make tea or
coffee ; and you can do these things
quickly, for the heat is intense.

You know how hard it is to heat a room
from a stove or radiator in a connecting room.
The cold air drives the warm air back. The
Giant Heater will not only heat the cold room,
but will mix and circulate the air in the two
rooms, securing uniform heat in both. De-
scriptive booklet free.

DDIPF Polished I'.rass, Complete, $1.50
rMV,L, jvii-kel Plated on Brass, $'2.00

Send to-day for a heater — we will send it by
first mail or express, all charges prepaid. Use
it In your room ; if not satisfied, return it in
10 days and get money back.

Koumi Wick Lamp Send for Free Book Anyway

Giant Heater Co.

54 Temple
Sprint; field.

Street
.Mass.

NO MONEY D0WN--$1 A WEEK

Buy Men's Stylish Fall and Win-
ter Suits and Overcoats direct
from our factory by mail, for

$15 and $18

<I We require no security,
and trust any honest person

, anywhere in the United
States. We send garments
on approval--you don't pay
a penny till you get the
clothes and find them satis-
factory— then pay $1.00 a
week. We are thelargest

\ CreditClothiersintheworld.

tLF r

1 IvLi JU iine of stylish Fall
and 'Winter samples, self-measure-
ment blank, tape, and full particu-
lars of our convenient payment plan,
allfree. Commer. rating. 51,000.000

RENTER & o0M
fcOSENB^CO.

620 Cox Building, ROCHESTER. N.

In answering any advertisement on this page it wr desiraole that you mention The Railboad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

AYEAR'.PAY

Just consider what a wonderful convenience it would be to you to be able to take
lO to 30 months in which to settle for your purchases. Consider the advantage
of being able to furnish your home completely and to enjoy the full use of the
goods while paying for them. That's exactly what we offer you today — and
it is by far the most generous credit service that was ever given by any home
furnishing institution on the face of the globe. Remember, it matters not
where you live or what your position or income may be, you are perfectly
welcome to this most helpful credit service. Use it freely ! Send only a
small amount with your order, and then pay the balance a little each
month as you earn the money. We charge absolutely nothing for this
credit accommodation — NO INTEREST — no extras of any kind.

OUR 22 BIG RETAIL STORES

do a volume of business greater than that of any other store or combina-
tion of stores on earth — none excepted. We have furnished nearly
2,000,000 homes — have been in business 54 years and stand today pre-emi-
nent in our line — the oldest, largest and best known home furnish-
ing concern on the American Continent. Capital and surplus larger
than that of any other similar institution in the world.

PRICES POSITIVELY UNMATGHABLE

We can save you from 20% to 40% on any article you may
need in your home. We can cut under the prices of any other
firm in the business. You can't afford to place an order with any
other concern on earth until you have received our Big Catalogues —
simply can't afford to.

THIS SOLID OAK ROCKER

Is strongly constructed and beautifully finished, solid oak
frame, hand carved, also massive carved heads, full spring
seat and tufted back, upholstered in Nantucket leather which
has the wearing quality of genuine leather.

TERMS— 75c cash and 50c monthly

Our new fall Furniture Catalogue

is the largest and handsomest book of
the kind ever published. It is an im-
mense volume just filled with un-
matchahle bargains in everything
to furnish and beautify the home, in-
cluding furniture, carpets, rugs, draperies, crockery, sewing machines, clocks, silverware, and
pianos, a portion of the goods being beautifully illustrated in colors. Our special Stove
Catalogue is also an immense volume of world-beater bargains — positively the biggest values
ever offered. Write for these two big catalogues at once — write for them today.

Satisfaction or Your Money Back. ^d^rai?1.1i^t?J?ilr^i^oS

We refund money and freight charges on all purchases not entirely satisfactory. We also guarantee
safe delivery of all goods. Our policies are broad, liberal and generous.

'Cllt OUt til

coupon SI II (I
lll.'lil it to us
today.

Hartman Furniture and Carpet Co.

223-225-227 and 229 Wabash Ave.

Chicago, U.S.A.

Cj" State whether you wish Catalogue
of Furniture, Catalogue of Stoves, or
Catalogue of Furniture and Stoves.

Please mail ?ue Biff Free Catalogue of-

P. O. Address 225

Hartman Furniture and Carpet Co., Chicago, U. S. A.

In answering this advertisement it is desirable that you mention The Ratlboad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

$3000! $10,OOO^ar

THIS PROPERTY

FOR

SALE

APPLY TO

JOHK BMWH

TRY IT
15 DAYS

IN THE REAL ESTATE BUSINESS

We will teach you by mail the Real Estate, General Brokerage and
Insurance Business, and appoint you

SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE

of the oldest and largest co-operative real estate and brokerage company
in America. Representatives are making 53,000 to $10,000 a year without
any investment of capital. Excellent opportunities open to YOU. By our
system you can make money in a lew weeks without interfering with
your present occupation. Our co-operative department will give you
more choice, salable property to handle than any other institution in
the world. Get your name on your own Real Estate Signs — big money in it.
A Thorough Commercial Law Course FREE to Each
Representative. Write for 6--page book, Free.

THE CROSS COMPANY, 3137 Reaper Block, Chicago

You'll LIKE the

Never-Fail

Sold on

Everlasting

Guarantee

You May Win $500 in Cash

or one of ioo other large cash prizes by acting as our
agent ; sample outfit free ; no experience or capital
necessary; Mrs. I,illian Harned of Trenton, N. J.,
made over $1000 in her spare time ; write us todaj'.
McLEAN, BLACK & CO., Inc.,

36 Beverly St., Boston

YOU ONLY RISK A STAMP

.to get the" NEVER-FAIL Sharpener. Greatest
Razor sharpening device ever invented. Makes
old razors new. Puts perfect edge on dullest
blade. Keeps your Razor sharp.

No. / for Safety Razors — weighs 6 ounces. No. 2
for Old Style Razors weighs 8 ounces.

Why Do We Send It On Trial ?

Because you put your Razor in a NEVER-FAIL
Sharpener* and it is sharp. There is never any
time lost in shaving with a sharp Razor. No more
dull, disagreeable Razors. No more honing. Fine
for home use— indispensable for traveling.

How to Get It.

Send us your full name and address and order
Sharpener by number, and vre will send it to you
on a 15 day free trial. At the expiration of this
time, you send us $3.00 or return the Sharpener.

One price buys full outfit complete. No extras.

D orr,Qrr,k/»- Any kind or style of Razor can be

lYememoer sharpened with the Never-Fail.

NEVER-FAIL CO., 1046 Nicholas Bldg., Toledo, 0.

CHIEF DRAFTSMAN

will Instruct personally a limited number selected, ambitions men in

Practical Drafting, Detailing, Designing.

I know exactly the quality and quantity of practical training, knowledge
aud actual up-to-date experience you require to hold a position and ad-
vance to highest salary, and I give working instruction at home until
competent and placed freejn position. Address Chief Drafts-
man, Div. 1 8, Engineer's Equipment Co., (Inc) Chicago.

The newest romance

by Maurice Hewlett begins in
the Qctober "Cavalier." It is
called "Brazenhead in Milan "
and is one of the really notable
serial stories of the year.

In answering any advertiseme)it on this page it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

Do You Hear Well?

The Stolz Electrophone — A New, Electrical, Scientific, and

Practical Invention for those who are Deaf or Partially

Deaf— MAY NOW BE TESTED IN YOUR OWN HOME.

Deaf or partially deaf people may now make a month's trial
of the Stolz Electrophone at home. This personal practical
test serves to prove that the device satisfies, with ease, every
requirement of a perfect hearing device. Write for particulars
at once, before the offer is withdrawn, for by this personal
test plan the final selection of the one completely satisfactory
hearing aid is made easy and inexpensive for every one.

This nev
phone, re
unsightl)

clei's unnecessa
and frequently

the Stolz Kle
eh clu

Mrs.C.Lidecka, 238 12th Ave., Ma
wood, 111., wears an Elect milium
l,es$ conspicuous than eye-glasse

nts. W. R. UTLEY.

v harmful devices
ibes, ear drums,
; fans, etc. It is a tiny electric telephone
that tits on the ear and which, the instant
it is applied, magnifies the sound waves in
such manner as to cause aiv astonishing
increase in the clearness of all sounds. It
overcomes the buzzing and roaring ear
noises and, also, so constantly and elec-
trically exercises the vital parts of the
ear that, usually, the natural unaided
hearing itself is gradually restored.

What Three Business Men Say

The Electrophone is very satisfactory. Being
smalt in size and great in hearing qualities makes it
preferable to any I have tried, and I believe 1 have
iried all of them. M. W. HOI T. Wholesale Grocer,
Michigan Ave. and River St , Chicago.

I got so deaf I could not hear with my Breaking
tube and was advised to try the Electrophone.
I After fifteen years of deafneBS, diBcomfort and
' hear perfectly at church and

, S. A. Mas«ell & Co., Chicago.

I have nov used your F'ectrophone over a year and know that i; is a first-class,
scientific hearing device. Without it people have to shout directly in my ear to make
me hear. With it. I can hear distinctly when spoken to in an ordinary tone. Best of all,
itius stopped my head muses, which were a terrible aggravation. LEWIS W. MAY,
CaBhier, 100 Washington St., Chicago.
Write to, or call (call if you can at our Chicago offices for particulars of our
personal test offer and list of other prominent endorsers who will answer
inquiries. Physicians cordially invited to investigate aurists' opinions.

Stolz Electrophone Co., Dept. B, No. 15 E. Ohio St., Chicago

: will send for your
approval a genuine *4 Karat, com-
mercial white, perfect diamond,
in any style 14 karat solid gold
mounting, express prepaid, for
$30— $5 down and $3 per month;
or a 3,s karat diamond of like qual-
ity for $60; $10 down and $5 per
I month.

If you are interested in a reliable
watch, we. offer a gentleman's O. F.
1 12, 16, or 18 size, or lady's 6 size,
lJ plain or engraved, 20-year guar-
anteed gold filled case, fitted with
genuine Elgin or Waltham move-
ment at $12.50; $3 down, $1.50
With hunting ease $16.75.

Write today for free ealalog No. ,187. Remit first payment with order
or have goods sent by prepaid express V: 0. D. for your inspection.

Herbert L. JosephfcCoi

Diamond Importers— Watch Johhers

217-219 (J87) State Street. Chicago

■&2%ZS>

Real Head*/^
Department

^^Ml^ooMiiiMfflmmjniuiiniramom^ti"'''-

The Cyclopedia of

Applied Electricity

is a storage battery of electrical knowledge. It is charged
right up to the minute with reliable information — it is the
real head of the department because it contains the
work and knowledge of over thirty practical electrical
engineers, experts and teachers. This work contains a
complete record of their experiments, discoveries and ob-
servations. Just the information that the head of any elec-
trical department should have at his finger tips for ready
reference

YOU CAN ADO THIS KNOWLEDGE TO YOURS AT
HALF PRICE IF YOU ORDER PROMPTLY.

To introduce this great work, we will fill orders for the next thirty
days at $18.60 per set, payable $2.00 after examination and $2.00
per month. The regular price is $36.00. Order promptly. The
half price edition is limited.

EXAMINATION FREE! tZZl^L^t

fill in the coupon. The books will be sent to you absolutely FREE
of charge. You can return them at our expense if not satisfactory.

These six big volumes contain 2,896 pages, covering 4,000 dif-
ferent topics. Hundreds of special photographs, diagrams, sections,
condensed tables and formulas. Page size 7x10 inches. . Printed
in large, clear type on special paper; substantially bound in half red
morocco.

Important Subjects Covered.

Electric Telegraph— Theory. Calculation. Pe-
sii:ii ami t •iu«t rucl inn of (.cncral ors and Motors
—Types of Dynamos and Motors — Elevators—
Dynamo-Electric Machinery— Alternating Cur-
rent Machinery — Wireless Telegraphy — Stor-
age Batteries — Wireless and Automatic Tele-
phony—Ko we r Stations and Transmission -Telau-
tograph—Electric Lighting and Wiring— Electric
Kailways— Telegraphone— Direct Current Motors
—Direct-Driven Machine Shop Tools -Alternat-
ing Current Motors, etc.— Single-Phase Electric
Railway— Electric Welding Mercury Vapor Con-
verter—Management of Dynamos and Motors —
Central Station Engineering-Central Station

FREE ! If You Order Promptly

With this special offer we will al o include as a monthly supplement a
year's subscription (.. the

TECHNICAL WORLD MAGAZINE

This is a regular $t.sn monthly covering present day scientific facta
anil inventions. An ideal masazine for the home because it is just enough
different from the others to make it interesting;. Pill in the coupon to
day— don't wait for to-morrow.

~fre"e* offer coupon

American School of Correspondence, Chicago, V. S. A.:
Please send Cyclopedia of Applied Electricity for FKKI

Technical World for 1 vear. I will send$2.00 within fr
month until I have paid S1S.60 : otherwise I will ni
the books subject t<> your order. Title not to pas

NAME

xamination.alao
days and $2.00 a
mtify you and hold
til fully paid.

ADDliE-s

OCCUPATION.
EMPLOYEE. ..

■R. R. Man's, 10-'09.

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

Absolutely Nothing here to get out of order. The

HOPKINS »T«. • 1 A j.* SAFETY

& ALLEN iriple ACtlOn POLICE

Is Safe because its Safety is In-built

32 and 38 calibre, 4 inch barrel,
nickeled finish, $9.50; blued finish,
$10.00. For sale at all good hard-
ware and sporting goods stores, but
if your dealer does not have it, we
will send one to you post-paid on
receipt of price. Send for our 1909
Gun Guide and Catalog, which il-
lustrates, describes and prices the
most extensive line of firearms made

When you own a Triple Action Safety Police you
have a positively accident-proof revolver. You can
see the perfect safety, you can feel it the minute you
get this weapon in your hands. You can't help but
know it's safe because the evidence is right before
your eyes. The triple action is the safety action,
and it's built right into the mechanism of the gun.
That's why the Triple Actior Safety Police is safe,
not once or first, but last and always. It can't go off
until you deliberately pull the trigger. The Triple
Action just means Triple Safety. The instant you

pull the trigger of this weapon the hammer cocks,
then lets drive at the firing-pin straight and hard ; the
second it hits the firing-pin, the instant the shot is
fired, the third movement then lifts the hammer up
and above the firing-pin, away above it, out of all
possible contact with the firing-pin. There it lodges
— securely, safely — firm, fixed and immovable against
a wall of solid steel. The weapon will not, cannot
fire again unless you actually pull the trigger all the
way back.

The HOPKINS & ALLEN ARMS CO. 58 Chestnut St., NORWICH, CONN.

If You Like

to Hunt,
Fish or Camp

you will enjoy the
National Sportsman

Every month the National
Sportsman contains 160 pages
or more, crammed from cover
to cover with photos from life,
stories of hunting, fishing,
camping and tramping, which
will thrill and interest you.

This monthly visitor will
lure you pleasantly away
from the monotonous grind
of your everyday work to the
healthful atmosphere of the
woods and fields. The price
is 15c. a copy or $1.00 a year.

Special Trial
Offer

Send us 25 cents,
stamps or coin, and
we will send you a
copy of the National
Sportsman, and one
of our heavy bur-
nished Ormolu Gold
Watch Fobs (regular
price 50c. ) as here
shown, with russet
leather strap and
gold-plated buckle.

Can you beat this ?

Watch Fob, regular price, -50c

National Sportsman, - - -15c

Send to-day. 65c

NATIONAL SPORTSMAN, Inc.,

YOURS 25C
) FOR fc**-H"

39 Federal Street, Boston

Pay Us Just
As Best Suits You

Take your pick of 300 beautiful styles
of all-wool Suits and Overcoats offered in our
big catalogue— "Pay us just as best suits you."

We are the world's largest and oldest outfit-
ters and positively sell all goods at spot cash
prices, allowing our customers long and liberal
credit. Our garments are all men tailored and
are distinctive style creations, designed by the
world's foremost clothes craftsmen. Every
article sold is guaranteed or money back.

Use Your Credit

Every honorable person has credit— they
should use it. We extend the invitation to any
honest person to open an account with us and
pay as best suits their own convenience. We
positively make no investigation of your em-
ployers or friends. Your honest word is

-:.:— —r.— ' ■-».-■■■ sufficient. You

Get

ill

Book

need have nohes

itancy hi buyin6

anything- you This 3-piece, all wool,

want of us and worsted suit in a variety

paying- for it as of beautiful patterns—

"—are able. You ^n-tailored and truar-

-tailored and guar
" ",V anteed a perfect 1
ought to be well TOlue ,2J. 0ur p
dressed and you
can be if you buy
everything of us.

$13.95

FREE!

Woolf 's great Encyclope-
dia of Bargains for Fall
_ and Winter is ready.
This great book contains 300 magnifi-
cent half tone illustrations, picturing as
many styles of men's and women's man-
' tailored garments. Every household
- ought to have this book and use it as a

purchase guide for clo*hes. We save you about half and sell on
liberal payments — small enough for any one to meet

Sit down now — take your pen in hand—write a postal foi
this book. We send it absolutely free to everyone.

Dept. 47, 2225-27 W. 12th Street,

WOOI P'** Hnr ^ Dept- 47> 2225-27 W. 12th Street
YV KJ^JL^r O line.; CHICAGO, U. S. Ai

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that yon mention The Railboad Man's Magazinh.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

lil Stud, 310. 00

See Them Before Paying

These gems are Chemical White Sap-
phires and can't be told from diamonds
except by an expert. So hard they can't
be filed, so will wear forever and retain
brilliancy. We want 3-011 to see these
gems — we will pay all expenses for you
to see them.

Our Proposition—^." rU^ IZ

illustrated — by express C. O. D. all charges
prepaid — with privilege of examination. If 3'ou
like it, pay the express man — if 3-011 don't, re-
turn it to him and it won't cost you a cent. Fair
proposition, isn't it? All mounted in solid gold,
diamond mountings. ^S^-Send for Booklet.

WHITE

P. O. BOX 41 1 1

VALLEY GEM CO.

INDIANAPOLIS, IND.

I am King, the Tailor

I tailor clothes to order, dealing di-
rectly with the consumer. You pay
no middleman's profit. My custom-
tailored suits cost you less then ordi-
nary ready made clothes. I'll make a
snappy, stylish, perfect-fitting suit or
overcoat to your measure — a better
looking, better wearing garment than
you can possibly get from your local
dealer or tailor— and save you mon-
ey besides.

This Suit to $1 C

Your Measure l**

a suit that your tailor would ask $30
for. I make Suits and Overcoats to
measure for $12.50 to$25.00and prepay
the express. My system of home
measurement is so easy there is abso-
lutely no chance for mistakes. I take
all the risks. I actually make it easy
for you to order stylish, tailor-made
garments by mail at less than ready-
made prices.

Style Book & Samples FREE

My Style Eook contains samples of
the newest weaves and designs for Fall
and Winter, and also fashion plates
showing the latest New York modes.
It is FREE— send for it today.
For ten years, in the same location, I have made clothes
for thousands of satisfied customers; I'll satisfy you, or
refund your money. The Wisconsin National Bank of
Milwaukee, with resources of over $20,000,000, and with whom
I have been doing business for over ten years, will tell you
I am responsible.
Let me be your tailor. Write for style book; it is Free.

King Tailoring Company

195 West Water Street. :-: Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

NOW

Is the Time

to get this Great Burlington Special at the same
price which the wholesale jeweler must pay.
Positively the finest, grandest and most beautiful
of watches, and the most remarkable ever made.
Sign and mail the coupon now for free watch book.

ANTI-TRUST OFFER

While this offer lasts thousands of people are getting
the Great Burlington Special at this Anti- Trust
price — actually the same price which the wholesale
jeweler must pay. And in order to make the propo-
sition doubly easy for the public, we even allow the
same rock-bottom price, if desired, on terms of
$2.50 a month. The Anti-Trust Watch Book ex-
plains. Sign and mail the coupon now — today.

AFTER GETTING THE WATCH examine It carefully before
you pay a cent. If not entirely satisfactory, return 1 1 and we
pay shipping charges both ways. Don't miss this great ofler.^

PACT VAIIDCFIFI Be sure t0 Bet posted on.
rUol lUUKOLLI ■ watches* watch values

trust-method prices and non-trust prices before
you buy a watch. Learn to judge watch values^

Get the Burlington Watch Co.'s FREE WATCH
BOOK. Bead our startling exposures of f "--
amazing conditions which exist in thi^^
watch trade today Read about the anti ^^^vfijl^ Burlington
trust fight. Read about our great!" "

Challenge. Learn how you can

judge watch values. Send your^

name and address for this

able free book now — today.

Sign and mail coupon. JK vSr pl'

Burlington Watch Co, -^ Vf-e book

Dept. 1 107,

MILLARD

STATIO

CHICAGO

Dept. 1107,
Hard Station—
Chieago, Illinois

send me, without

and prepaid, your

watches and copy

$1,000.00 challenge, with

full explanations of your caBh or
$2.50 a month offer on tho superb NO-
TRUST Burlington Watch.

No letter necessary ; coupon will do.

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

Brass -Craft

OUTFIT FREE

Brass-Craft is the most popular and valuable Art
of the time, and with our
stamped articles and simple
instructions, materials cost-
ing only a trifle can quickly
be worked up into articles
worth many dollars.

Let us send you this Complete outfit consisting of 1 Stip-
pling and Veining Tool, 1 package Polishing Powder, 1 pack-
age Coloring Powder, 1 Fine Sandpaper, 1 piece Polishing
Plush, and complete material for Handsome Brass-Craft
Calendar (see illustration) as follows: 1 Brass Panel, 1
Wood Panel, 50 Round-Head Brass Tacks, 1 Brass Hanger,
1 Calendar Pad. Furnished with stamped design and full
directions for making Calendar worth $1.00 — all in neat box,
FREE and prepaid, to anyone sending' us 25 cents to pay
cost of packing, shipping, etc.

Ask for FREE CATALOG R.R.64

Illustrates hundreds of articles in Brass-Craft for use, orna-
ment or profit, The above outfit offer is made for a limited
time only to quickly introduce our splendid line of Brass-
Craft goods and distribute our New Catalog. Write today.

THAYER & CHANDLER

737-739 Jackson Blvd.

CHICAGO, ILL.

$?%$&&

Flash Like Genuine

Day or night. You can own a diamond equal
in brilliancy to any genuine Stone at one-
thirtieth the cost.

BARODA DIAMONDS

l.\ SOLID tiOLD RINGS

stand acid test and expert examination. We
guarantee them. See them first, then pay.
Catalogue Free. Patent Ring Measure included
for FIVE two-cent stamps.

TIIK BARODA CO.
Dept. Z, 230 North State Street, Chicago, 111.

Send For TUJ7 /r>UrJ7CT' 1 f\ Tu Stamps
My Book in.iL CfZiSO i iUC or Coin

ITS ACTIONS AND ITS MUSCLES-REGULAR PRICE, 25c.

Contains COMPLETE and ORIGINAL

instructions how to develop the CHEST
MUSCLES— for CHEST EXPANSION and
DEEP BREATHING.

The exercises are described in detail and
with full page half-tone illustrations, ena-
bling men, women and children to follow
them with ease, in their own room without
the use of apparatus.

By following instructions in this book you
will quickly BUILD UP the MUSCLES that
draw the air in and out of the LUNGS
and this will cause you to BREATHE
DEEPER, DEVELOP the CHEST and
BROADEN SHOULDERS, thereby STRENGTHENING the
LUNGS against all kinds of diseases and greatly improve your
general APPEARANCE.

Prof. AXTHOXY BARKER

1:M0 Barker BIdg., 110 West 42nd St., Sew York. S. Y.

Individual instruction for health and strength at my select

gymnasium or by mail. Particulars on, request.

Salesmen Wanted

Hundreds of good positions open. Traveling
Salesmen earn more money than any class of
men in the world. Over 600,000 employ-
ed in the United States and Canada,
and the demand for good salesmen al-
ways exceeds the sup ply. Marshal Field,
the most successful merchant in the
world, commenced his business career
as a salesman. It" you earn less than
$50.00 a week, send for our free book,
"-A Knight of the Grip." It will show
you how to increase your earning capac-
ity from two to ten times above what
you now earn, regardless of what your
business may be. Through our Free
Employment Bureau we have assist-
ed thousands of men to secure good po-
sitions and better salaries. Hundreds of them who formerly
earned from $40 to $75 per month now earn from $100 to $500 a
month and all expenses. Write for full particulars today. It
costs nothine to investigate. Address nearest office.

DEPT, 112, KiTIONii SALESMEN'S TRAINING ASSOCIATION,
New York. Chicago, Kansas City, Minneapolis, San Francisco.

FREE

WRITE AT ONCE

FOR GENUINE NATIVE

ARIZONA 111" BY

RUBY

Remarkable Offer V
Don't Miss It !

We will send it to you absolutely FREE prepaid, to introduce our genuine
Mexican Diamonds. These Diamonds exactly resemble finest genuine blue-
white Diamonds, stand acid tests, are cut by experts, brilliancy guaranteed
permanent, and yet we sell at 1-10 the cost. Best people wear them.
SPECIAL OFFER— For 50c deposit, as guarantee of good
faith, we send on approval, registered, either ^ orl carat
Mexicau Diamond at special price. Money back if desired.
Illustrated Catalog1 FRFK, Write today and get Ruby FREE.

MEXICAN DIAMOND IMP. CO. Dept., ER-10, Las Cruces, New Mex.

A FLOOD OF LIGHT

i FROM KEROSENE (Coal Oil)

Burning common kerosene the ALADDIN MANTLE LAMP
generates gas that gives a light more brilliant than city gas,
gasoline or electricity. Simple, odorless, clean, safe and

j durable ; is revolutionizing lightiug everywhere.

Biggest Money Maker for Agents

| Needed in every home. Every lamp guaranteed. Sells itself.

J Ask our nearest office how you can set a lamp free or apply

| for agency proposition.

THE MANTLE LAMP CO. OF AMERICA. Desk 10.

I Chicago, Portland. Ore., Waterbury, Conn., Winnipeg, Can.

Pj rr

fifefe.

2132

'§***.«£

. $60

DIAMONDS ON CREDIT $g

20% DOWN— 10% PER MONTH Qt;

Why wait for your Diamond until you have saved the price?

Pay for it by the Lyon Method. Lyon's Diamonds are guar- 2113

anteed perfect blue- white. A written guarantee accompanies * 50- ;:«£

each Diamond. All goods sent prepaid for inspection. 10% ^^jr™^

discount for cash. Send now for. catalogue No. 9 7 &^

J. M. LYON & CO., ^tablished 1843 ?1_73 Na„au St New York v

I "... ,s"':._.tf»,s.

\.2l62

m,fc)*5o-

W23SO
w $25.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

In the manufacture of

«g^^» COCOA

Cocoa Beans of the highest grades only,

scientifically blended, are used.

Cleanliness and Workmanship in our Plant

are as carefully scrutinized as is the

quality of material used.

Under such conditions it is not surprising

if COCOA

that

is the acknowledged Best in the World.

|The standard by which others are judged.

Quality higher than price.

Price within the reach of all.

PATENTS

nrrinp Rnnif anH i

SECURED OR
FEE RETURNED.

GUIDE BOOK and WHAT TO INVENT.

With valuable List of Inventions Wanted sent free.
ONE MILLION DOLLARS offered for one invention;
$16,000 for others. Patents secured by us advertised
free in World's Progress ; sample free.

EVANS, WILKENS & CO., Washington, D. C.

AGENTS: $103.50 PerMonthMade

ENING

The money made
selling our scissors
and other useful
patented articles
astonishes agents.
V.C.Giebner.ColB.,
0., sold 22 pairs of Positive

Tension Shears in 3 hours, made $13.50. We have
more patented goods for sale through agentB, that
not found in stores, than any other house in the U- S
to workers. INVESTIGATE NOW. A Postal will do.

S.Thomas Mfg. Co., 1459 Wayne St., Dayton, Ohio

Samples free

Automobile Jackets, Blizzard Proof

Outside texture so closely woven it resists
wind and wear alike. Lined with wool
fleece that defies the cold. Snap fasteners,
riveted pockets.

PARKER'S

ARCTIC JACKET

Registered in U. S. Patent Office,

Better than an overcoat for facing cold
and work together. Warm, durable,
comfortable. Ask your dealer or sent
postpaid on receipt of $2.35.

JOHN H. PARKER CO.,
27 James Street, Maiden, Mass.

Wonderful

EDISON

Phonograph Oiler

This is the regular Edison
Outfit — a fine instru-
ment— but we equip it
besides at a very small
increase in price with
our special PARLOR
GRAND hand decorat-
ed horn and other
PARLOR GRAND
equipment. The new
outfit with the new

AMBEROL RECORDS

circulars sent
FREE

Mr. Edison says :

" I WANT to see a
Phonograph in every
American Home."

^ TRADE MARK '

FREE TRIAL

Free Trial Means Free Trial

No Money Down — No C. 0. D.

Try this great latest style phonograph In
your home; play the beautiful Edison gold
moulded records, and if then you do not
care to keep the outfit, return it at our ex-
pense. We do not charge you one cent for
the trial.

$2«00 2i MOntll ^■?npto«?™2ih*

■—■————— easiest possible pay-
ments at rock-bottom prices— and no interest on payments.
Our beautiful catalog quotes absolutely rock-bottom prices
— the magnificent latest style Outfit No. 6 — at about one
fourth the cost of inferior imitations.

Write for Our Catalog ,

Do not bother zvitk sending a letter;
merely sign and mail coupon, writing / .$?

name and address plainly. Write nozo * .

Remember free trial - no money down. ^. ^VS^

You cannot imagine how old and * & & ■$>*,
young enjoy the Edison— the end- + <v*^ <?&
less variety of stirring music, ^ J$ «5r -■•?»*

shows

the comical minstrel

and songs.

Sign tlie CoiiponW + ^

FREDERICK BABSON, • «*
Edison Block. * *£ J* ** 4°V

«ft8>*

Suite 1107

,V>

,,0' *<"£>

»" w

Chicago, Illinois. ^ v, ^-©V!^
Canadian Address * <& J? <>l?\<&
—age Ave., £,* >V^°>

Canada

'if-

'JP

^.°>

'«"

4®*

f -T ^

In answering any advertisement on this page it i» desirable that you, mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

The new "I-T"
is a watch of the highest
type, manufactured by the mon-
ey-saving systems used in making the
Ingersoll watches.
Though of totally different construction and
made in another factory the "I-T" is the
same value in proportion to price as the Dollar
Watch.

The best 7 ~J ewe l Watch

It has bridge model movement, found
only in the most expensive watches hereto-
fore; 7 ruby, sapphire and gamet jewels;
compensating balance, automatically ad-
justing itself to heat and cold; microme-
ter regulator and every scientific feature
of accuracy known to watch making.
Closest time-keeper ; handsome; will
wear 20 years. See our large adver-
tisements in magazines.

0 Pin solid 0"T in 10-yr. Ortin 20-vr.

* hnickel * / gold-filled "Jf gold-filled

case case case

Sold by responsible jewelers
everywhere or prepaid by us.
Insist on seeing it before buy-
ing. Write for Booklet "D."

Robt. H. Ingersoll & Bro.

«••! Frankel Building,
New York

■'"T.,

Buy Newest City Styles on

Easiest Credit Terms

Our convenient credit plan of small reg-
ular payments weekly or monthly, puts in
your easy reach the swellest of wearing ap-
parel— the latest city styles — at the same
low spot-cash prices as the patrons of our
two Chicago stores pay. Instead of one
spot-cash payment — send us a small sum
weekly or monthly. In this way you can
easily afford the very best of clothes. You
can buy when you need them, and

Pay As Able

illustrates over 500 latest city models: Men's
Suits, Overcoats, Cravenettes, Hats, Shoes,
Sweaters, Trousers, Fancy Vests, Bath-
robes, etc. Also all kinds of women's
wearing apparel. With our catalog we
send samples of fabrics, measurement
blanks, etc. Our splendid self-meas-
urement system insures a perfect fit no
matter what your build is. Our clothes mnst not only
please on arrival, but must wear well and give lasting
satisfaction. Our GUARANTEE TAG attached to every gar-
ment insures this. Let os help you to be better dressed. Our credit
plan is the easiest way. Goods shipped ou approval. Write us today
for our large Tree Art Catalog. We trust you. Won't you trust us ?

.BERNHARD'S xSSSfSSSIR SSSS&.

\Complete Cyclopedia
of

Civil Engineering— $24

Bound in half moroeco, 8,9f)8 pages 7 i 10 inche* 3.000 full page
plates, folding maps, diagrams, etc. Fully indexed.

With irrigation development so active— with the
demand growing greater each day for TRAINED MEN
to direct these vast projects, this profession pays
richer rewards than ever before.

We Want You to Examine These Books
at Our Expense

Just fill in and mail the coupon. We will send you a
complete set of the Cyclopedia by prepaid express. No
deposit or guarantee of any kind required. You can keep
the books five days-examine them carefully— give them
the most severe test that you possibly can. You can be
judge and under no obligations to keep the books unless
they prove entirely satisfactory.

$2.00 Down— $2.00 Per Month

This is our liberal selling plan. If you deeid- to keep the boots, just
send u, «2.<)0. then ?2.00 every thirty dars until the special price of
$24.00 is paid. The regular price is $48.00. We are makin" ihis speeial
price simply to advertise the Courses of the American School of Cor-
respondence from which these books were compiled.

Information That Every Successful
Engineer Must Have

This Cyclopedia covers the entire field of .llimicipal, Hvdraulic. Struc-
tural and Railroad W ork, together with all the other allied lines. Contains
latest and most practical information on Reinforced Concrete, Hishway
Construction, Water Supply, Water Power Development and Reclama-
tion Engineering. It is the best of all works for the student. Also con-
tains just the things the old time Civil Engineer wants for refreshing Ms
knowledge and keeping abreast of the times.

IMPORTANT SUBJECTS COVERED

Plane Surveying— Mechanical Drawing— Plotting
and Topography— Railroad Engineering-Statics—
Strength of Materials— Roof Trusses and Mill Build-
ing Construction — Cost Analysis in Relation to
Engineering — Masonry — Practical Problems in
Construction — Hydraulics — House Drainage and
Sanitation— River and Harbor Improvements,

Special Offer— Mail Coupon Promptly

For a short time we will include, absolutely free of
charge, as a monthly supplement, one year's subscription
to the TECHNICAL WORLD MAGAZINE. This is a
regular $1.50 monthly, full of Twentieth Century Scientific
facts, written in popular form. Also contains the latest
discussions on timely topics in invention, discovery, in-
dustry, etc. The Magazine will be mailed immediately
upon receipt of the coupon.

FREE OFFER COUPOiN

AMERICAS SCHOOL OK COKISKSPONDEXCE, CHICAGO, C. S. A.:

Please send set Cyclopedia of Civil Engineering for 5 dave' free exam-
ination. Also Technical World Tor 1 year. 1 will send $2 "within 5 days
and $2 a month until I have paid $24.00; otherwise I will notify you and
hold the books suttject to your order. Title not to pass until Folly paid.

Name

Address

Occupation

Employer

»_BaBia^_ B. R. Man's, 10-'0r ^_^______^^

.n answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazi>"b.

•

SAFETY AUTOMATIC

REVOLVER

The

Business
End

of this firearm is
as quiet as a coun-
try church yard until you want
it to open up. It's always
ready when you are, but it can't
go off before, even if you

"Hammer the Hammer"

It may be knocked off your desk, fall off your
dresser, slip from your hand as you draw it —
but it can't shoot until you pull the trigger.

In proportion and design it's a work of art. Mechanically it is perfect.
And in the experience of thousands and thousands of purchasers, it is the
surest and most mechanically perfect revolver ever made.

Our Free Booklet "Shots"

tells more in detail why the Iver Johnson has outstripped competitors in public favor-
Our handsome catalogue goes with it, showing details of construction.

Iver Johnson Safety

Hammerless Revolver

Iver Johnson Safety

Hammer Revolver

Richly nickeled, 22 cal. rim fire or 32 cal. centre
fire, 3-in. bbl. or 38 cal. centre fire, 3^-in. bbl.
( Extra length bbl. or blued finish at slight extra cost)

$500

Richly nickeled, 32 cal. centre fire, 3-in. bbl. or
38 cat. centre fire, 3%! -in. bbl. (Extra length
bbl. or blued finish at slight extra cost) .

$700

Sold by Hardware and Sporting Goods dealers everywhere, or sent prepaid on receipt of price if dealer will not supply.
Look for the owl's head on the grip and our name on the barrel,

IVER JOHNSON'S ARMS AND CYCLE WORKS, 172 River St., Fitchburg, Mass.

New York: 99 Chambers Street Hamburg. Germany: Pickhuben 4

San I'r/lncisco: Phil. E. Bekeart Co., 717 Market St.
Makers of Iver Johnson Single Barrel Shotguns and Iver Johnson Truss Bridge Bicycles.

THE MUNSEY PRESS, NEW TOBK.

THE

$199

MAGAZINE

HARRI MAM

THE MASTER^

BUILDER

NOVEMBER

FRANK A MUNSEY COMPANY NEW YORK AND L01

INDON

"Good Morning, Have You Used

Pears' Soap" /

Especially after Exercise, it makes a bath of
delight— it is exhilarating, healthy, satisfying
and "matchless for the complexion."

It is the most exquisite of all soaps for
the skin, being not only the best known
cleansing agent, but a Soap which also
possesses the exact emollient properties
necessary for the maintaining of the skin
in the condition of perfect
health and functional activity.

OF ALL SCENTED SOAPS PEARS' OTTO OF ROSE IS THE BEST.

'All rights secured."

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

" The Whole Thing in an Egg Shell."

200 EGGS

A YEAR

PER HEN

HOW TO GET THEM

The seventh edition of the book, "200 Eggs a Year Per
Hen," is now ready. Revi ed, enlarged, and in part rewritten.
!»6 pages. Contains among other things the method of feeding
by which Mr. S. D. Fox, of Wolfboro, N. H., won the prize
of $ 100 in gold offered by the manufacturers of a well-known
condition powder for the best egg record during the winter
months. Simple as a, b, c— and yet we guarantee it to start
liens to laying earlier and to induce th m to lay more eggs
than any other method under the sun. The book also contains
recipe for egg food and tonic used by Mr. Fox, which brought
him in one winter day 68 eggs from 72 hens ; and for five
days in succession from the same flock 64 eggs a day. Mr. E.
F. Chamberlain, of Wolfboro, N. H., says: "By following
the methods outlined in your book I obtained 1,496 e?gs from
91 R. I. Reds in the month of January, 1902." From 14
pullets picked at random out of a farmer's flock the author got
2,999 eggs in one year — an average of over 214 eggs apiece.
It has been my ambition in writing " 200 Eggs a Year Per
Hen," to make it the standard book on egg production and
profits in poultry. Tells all there is to know, and tells it in a
plain, common sense way.

Price 50 cents ; or with a year's subscription to
the AMERICAN POULTRY ADVOCATE, both
for 75 cents ; two years' subscription and book
for $1.00 ; or given as a premium for two yearly
subscriptions at 50 cents each.

Our paper is handsomely illustrated, 44 to S4 pages, 50
cents per year. 3 months' trial, 10 cents. Sample Free.
CATALOGUE of poultry books free. Established 1892.

AMERICAN POULTRY ADVOCATE
607 Hogan Block Syracuse, N. Y.

Will You Accept This
Business Book if We

Send it Free?

Sigr

Send no money!

*n and mail the coupon below,
Take no risk!

One hundred and twelve of the world's master business
men have written ten books — 2,079 pages — 1,407 vital business
stcrets, ideas, methods. In them is the best of all that they
know about

— Salesmanship

— Purchasing
—Credits
— Collections
— Accounting
— Cost-keeping
— Organization
—Retailing
— Wholesaling

ufacturing

-A.h

— Position-Getting
— Position- Holding
—Man- Handling
— Man- Training
— Business Generalship
— Competition Fighting
and hundreds and hun-
dreds of other vital busi-
ness subjects.

— Correspondence
—Selling Plans
— Handling Customers
— Office Systems
— Short - cuts and
Methods for every
line and department
A 9.059-word booklet has been published describing-, explaining, picturing
me work. Pages 2 and 3 tell about managing businesses great and small; pages
4 and 5 deal with credits, collections and with rock-bottom purchasing; pages
t ' 1 1 ■ I 7 with handling and trainingmen ; pages 7 to 12 with salesmanship, with
advertising, with the marketing of goods through salesmen, dealers and by
mail; pages li to 15 with the great problem of securing the highest market
price for your services— no matter what your line ; and the last page tells how
you may get a complete set — bound in handsome half morocco, contents in
colors— for less than your daily smoke or shave, almost as little as your daily
newspaper. JViltyou read the book if vie send it /reef
Send no money. Simply sig>i the coupon.
— The System Co., 151-153 Wabash Ave., Chicago—
If there are, in your books, any new ways to increase my business or
them. So send on your 16-pag'e free
2-n-ii
Name

Address

Business .

Position

my salary, I should like ..
descriptive booklet. I'll read it.

Earning
*1002?perWeek?|

Thousands of Traveling Salesmen earn two to three
times that much, besides all their expenses. Over600,000
employed in the United States and Canada. Many fa-
mous and wealthy men, such as Marshall Field, the great
dry goods merchant, Ex-Gov. Frank S. Black of New
York, John W. Gates, multi-millionaire stock broker, Ex-
Postmaster General John Wanamaker, the great mer-
chant of New York and Philadelphia, and scores of others
got their start selling goods on the road.

Salesmanship is the most fascinating, independent
well paid profession in the world, and the demand for
good salesmen always exceeds the supply. There Is al-
ways a good position open for a man who can sell goods.

He is the most soueht after and highly paid man in the
commercial world, because he is the business-producing
and money-making part of the concern and his earning
capacity is unlimited. Many of them earn from $5,000 to
$20,000 a year and all expenses.

Why not be a producer yourself ! Get out of the non-
producing class. You can never talk an increase in
salary to your employer until you can show him where
you are making money for him.

In a few short weeks without interfering with your
present position or employment we can teach you by
mail to become a first-class Traveling Salesman, a pro=
ducer, and assist you to get a good position besides. We
maintain the largest

Free Employment Bureau

in the world for the exclusive use of our graduates.

We are constantly in touch with Employers of Sales-
men everywhere, and receive calls for Salesmen from
thousands of firms, and are placing our graduates in
good paying positions every day. There will be thous-
ands of good openings this Fall and Winter, and now is
the time to prepare for one of them. Don't let the fact
that you have had no former experience in Salesman-
ship prevent you from writing us. We have placed hun-
dreds of men who have never had a days' experience in
good positions where they earn from $100 to $500 a
month, and all expenses. We can help you in the same
way we have them. If you are already a salesman we can
help you to become a better one.

Your opportunity is here. Grasp it today by send-
ing for our free booklet, "A Knight of the Grip." Every
phase of the salesman's life is pictured therein and it
contains interesting stories of the success of hundreds
of our graduates who are now earning from two to ten
times what they formerly did. Write our nearest office
for it today.

Address Def>t.403National Salesmen's Training Association

New Yorlc

Minneapolis

Clueaqo Kansas City

San Francisco, U. S. A.

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

ILThis $1 Loose Leaf
Bookkeeping Outfit

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In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Railboad Mix's Magazine.

THE RMLROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE

CONTENTS FOR NOVEMBER

SERIALS.

The Daughter of the Idol. Part I . . . . . . . . John Mack Stone . . .

Treasure of the World. Part II. ... v ... . Stephen Chalmers .

The Dam-Builders. Part II Bannister Merwin .

The Spider of Palermo. Part IV Edward Bedinger Mitchell

SHORT STORIES.

General Burkett's Disciple. (Illustrated.) J. R. Stafford ....

The Vanished Freight E. Florence

McAllister's Grouch. (Illustrated.) Charles Wesley Sanders

Horrigan's Medal. (Illustrated.) Robert Fulkerson Hoffman

Who's Got the Turkey ? (Illustrated.) Percy Wilson . . .

The Leap of Old 637. (Illustrated ) Emmet F. Harte . . .

SPECIAL ARTICLES.

Harriman. (Illustrated.) Arthur B. Reeve . . .

Great American Train Robberies. No. 15. The Lone

Bandit of the " Pennsy." (Illustrated.) .... John P. Duxter . . .

Fighting the Ticket-Scalpers. No. 2. (Illustrated.) . H. A. Koach ....
Observations of a Country Station- Agent. No. 18.

(Illustrated.) J. E Smith

Finding the Secret of the Automatic Coupler E. L. Bacon ....
A Track- Walker's Devotion. True Story. No. 38.

(Illustrated ) Edmund G. Kinyon .

Help for Men Who Help Themselves. No. 27. Speed

and Power of the Locomotive C. F. Carter ....

Riding the Rail from Coast to Coast. No. 9. On the

Latest Desert Railroad. (Illustrated.) .... Gilson Willets ....
Being a Boomer Brakeman, No. 2. On the Smoky End.

(Illustrated ) Horace Herr ....

How Railroad Men Balked a Plot to Assassinate Lincoln.

(Illustrated.) Bertram Adler ....

$56,000,000 a Year for Ties Richard Maxwell Winans

What the Hoboes Cost Yearly. (Illustrated ) .... Charlton C. Andrews

VERSE AND DIVERSE.

A Tallow-Pot's Lament. (Poem.) ....... John C. Russell . . .

By the Light of the Lantern

Recent Railroad Patents Forrest G. Smith . . .

A Nine of Engineers (Poem.) Frederick Sanders . . .

The Railroad Man's Brain Teasers

MISCELLANEOUS.

Special Cars for Autos and Fish
Trails Forbidden to Run Backward
A New "Waste" for Oiling Wheels
Doubt About Hudson Bay Railroad
Why He Doesn't Like " Uppers " .
Full Speed Ahead .....
The Growing Record for Safety
Inventing as an Occupation

239
247
253
258
265
278
299
306

Roll-Call of Vet rans ....
Railroad in Your Back Garden .

Not Eno ugh Slack

When Does a Journey Begin ? .
Holland's " Controlled " Railways
Fresh Air for the Hudson Tubes
An Engine for Sharp Curves
On the Editorial Carpet

229
309
335
365

205
255
266
291
323
354

193

213
220

240
259

263

273

280

300

329

347
357

228
248
351
346
364

307

334
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THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE

Vol. X.

NOVEMBER, 1909.

No. 2.

H ARRIM AN.

BY ARTHUR B. REEVE

AS an empire-builder Julius Caesar was insignificant compared with Harri-
rl man,, and Alexander the Great, who wept for more worlds to conquer,
was a blubbering barbarian butcher in comparison with this frail
American railroad emperor. The wealth that Harriman controlled, developed,
or made possible of development, would have bought up most of the kings
of the earth at any time since their toy kingdoms began to flutter aimlessly
through history.

He was the first railroad speculator who made excellence of property
the bait of success, and he blazed a trail where all who come after must be
second to his unapproachable first. The name Harriman marks an epoch.

The Little Giant Who Coupled a Continent Onto

His Motive Power and Steamed Unfailingly

with His Load Up Every Grade of

Life Until He Reached the Top.

(jSlTp WOULD go on as long as I
The speaker

frail man,

with a large
^=S^i=£=>» head, and a

great pair of
spectacles over eyes
that seemed to pierce you
through and through.
He was sitting before
the Interstate Com-
merce Commission, keen
and fresh after hours
and days of grilling
that had taxed the
greatest legal experts
in the country. They

1KB

HE WAS ALWAYS A BUILDER.

193

194

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

had just led up to a crucial question,
where his policy of acquisition of rail-
roads would stop.

There was nothing in the face of the
little man to suggest the leonine great-
ness of James J. Hill, the almost ascetic
tenacity of John D. Rockefeller, nor the
cold, relentless, aristocratic power of
Rogers, nor the bold, buccaneering, bull
strength of J. P. Morgan. Rather, he
was the picture of a shrewd country
schoolmaster — a man who studied things
out. His answer showed wherein the ob-
server was wrong in thinking the man a
student merely ; he was essentially a man
of action. They had expected an evasive
answer. Quick as a flash came the quiet
reply :

" I Avould go on as long as I live."

And he did go on as long as he lived.
From office-boy in Wall Street to being
the greatest railroad magnate the world
ever produced ; from the son of a poor
country clergyman to a power in the na-
tion greater in some respects than the
President himself — that was the amazing
career of Edward Henry Harriman.

Up to within an hour of his death he
v*as still the railroad financier, " going
on as long as he lived," dictating letters
to his stenographer, literally bidding
Death itself wait till he set in order his
railroads — one-fourth the mileage of the
United States, with a capital equal to the
gross debt of the country.

Harriman never but once let slip in
public his real dream. In 1907, not long
after the lines under his control had been
subjected to a searching investigation by
the government, he took a trip over his
Western roads, and in the West was re-
ported as saying that he " would control
all the railroads in the United States if
he could get them."

The remark was characteristically im-
politic, and was officially denied, but it
was a typical expression of his ambition.
Nor is there any doubt that he went far-
ther in gratifying such an ambition than
any other man. Thomas W. Lawson ex-
claimed, when he heard the news of Har-
riman's death: " The king is dead! Long
live the king ! "

" I would not say that I am the man
who successfully could organize all the
railroads of the United States and com-
bine and operate them under one man-

agement. But that is what should be
done," said Harriman.

Had he lived another five years, it
might be predicted he would have added
another quarter, if not more, to his rail-
way dominion. Time only stood in the
way of the unfulfilled ambition of Har-
riman— the man who would be railroad
king.

Roughly speaking, Harriman's won-
derful career falls into four epochs :
Fifteen years spent as a youth; twenty
years spent in learning the Wall Street
game ; ten years spent learning railroad
operation and development ; and then
about fifteen years spent in adding one
railroad to another in the great Harri-
man system.

The greater part of his railroad king-
dom came to him after he had reached
the age of fifty, in the little over ten years
since 1898, in those years of a man's life
during which Dr. Osier says he should
be chloroformed ! His manner in busi-
ness was cold and snappy.

His Start in Life.

Edward H. Harriman was born on
February 28, 1848, in the rectory of St.
George's Episcopal Church at Hemp-
stead, Long Island. It was a poor
church then, but now it is a fashionable
parish, attended by many whom Mr.
Harriman has enriched.

Harriman Avas one of six children. At
the end of fifteen years he had to go to
work, although he longed to be a soldier.

His first employment was as an office-
boy with a brokerage - house in Wall
Street. There he ran errands, and did
the odd jobs which hundreds of small
boys are doing in offices to-day. The
office-boy took to the methods and intri-
cacies of the Street naturally, intuitively.

It was a fortunate chance that took
him to this environment. He was quick-
witted, and the years of privation he had
gone through gave him a rare judgment
far beyond his age. Working among
millions, he never forgot that a single
dollar had a purchasing and investing
power which in the mass made possible
success.

At eighteen he was a partner in the
firm ; at twenty-two he bought a seat on
the Exchange. Where he got the money

HARRIMAN.

EDWARD H. HARRIMAN.

BORN FEBRUARY 28, 1848. DIED SEPTEMBER 9, igog.

no one knows. Some say his wealthy
uncle furnished it. Probably he had al-
ready saved it from his speculations. At
any rate, old-timers on the Exchange will
tell you that he was one of the stingiest
traders on the floor; that he never let a
dollar get away from him that he could
possibly hold on to. They accuse him of

being a " two-dollar man," a piker, a
" shoe-string " speculator. Perhaps he
was. He knew what he was doing.

He organized the firm of Harriman &
Co., and went after business. He got
it, too. Moreover, he got some big
traders, and made large sums on commis-
sions. . But his main fortune came from

196

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

HIS EDUCATION BEGAN AT HIS MOTHER'S KNEE.

his own speculation. Time and again he
risked almost all he had. But it wasn't
really a risk, for as he once said, in a
confiding moment, he " made speculation
safe by the information at his com-
mand."

During this period he married Mary
Averill, daughter of a railroad man and
banker interested in the Rome, Water-
town and Ogdensburg Railway, in New
York. The marriage was a happy one,
and, furthermore, added to his wealth,
even more in the store of knowledge of
railroads that he drew from his father-in-
law than in money.

His Horses Beat Vanderbilt's.

Harriman was gaining influence when-
ever he had a chance. He had a way of
ingratiating himself with the old Knick-
erbocker families, and he soon had many
of them as customers. Even at that early
dav there was only one way in which you
could see Harriman at play. He loved
fast horses then as he did to the day of
his death.

Old Commodore Vanderbilt used
often to drive his teams along the old
Boston Road, and the youngster who was
one day to break into the old commo-
dore's New York Central took delight in
a brush with him, especially when he left

the Vanderbilt team behind. But his
life was soon all work and little play.
Harriman has had little time for play.
Perhaps he would have lived longer if
he had. Certainly he would not have
gone farther.

Twenty years of Harriman's life were
rounded' out in learning the stock mar-
ket. Though he got the railroad idea as
early as 1877, it was not until 1883 that
he settled down in earnest to learn rail-
roads. It was ten years later before he
really got a chance to work out his
knowledge of both finance and railroads.

Ten Years Learning Railroading.

Stuyvesant Fish gave him his start —
the Stuyvesant Fish with whom he later
waged one of his bitterest fights. Fish
had met Harriman on the Exchange, but
after a few years had left the floor and
gone back to railroading with the Illinois
Central. In 1883 he was vice-president,
and in that year put Harriman into the
directorate of the road. That was Har-
riman's first direct connection with a
railroad.

Harriman did not believe in being a
director who does not direct. He
plunged headlong into Illinois Central
affairs. He inspected every mile of the
system. He went over the whole meth-
od of management. He investigated
every contract. He even averaged sala-
ries with those of other roads. There
was nothing he didn't know. He even
knew what the Central paid for spikes..

Thus it came about that when Fish
became president, in 1887, Harriman be-
came vice-president. Gradually he be-
came the ruling mind of the road. Once,
when Fish wrent abroad, Harriman cut
loose and ran things to suit himself.
Some of the heads of departments re-
signed in a rage. But it is not related
that it was not a great thing for Illinois
Central. .The big men behind Illinois
Central saw what Harriman was accom-
plishing, and began to appreciate it.

Harriman studied everything about
railroads up to about 1893. Then he
was satisfied that his railroad education
was complete, and that it was time for
him to get out and do things.

In his first big fight his opponent was
no less a power than J. Pierpont Mor-

HARRIMAN.

197

gan, who even at that day was doctor
to every sick bank or railroad. The
fight was over Erie. Curiously, one of
his last fights was with Morgan over
Erie. Still more curious, one of his last
A'isitors, to whom it is said he entrusted
much of the future of his lines, was
Morgan.

The old New York, Lake Erie, and
Western, in 1393, was sick unto death,
and receivers had been appointed. Early
, in January of 1894, a reorganization
plan was announced by J. P. Morgan
& Co. Harriman, then little known,
with other owners of second - mortgage
bonds, opposed an assessment and
formed- a " protective committee." He
laid his case before Morgan.

" Whom do you represent, Mr. Har-
riman?" asked the financier.

With that laconic manner that always
characterized him, he replied directly :

"Myself."

Chance Came with Panic.

This was the key to Harriman's rail-
road career. He represented himself.
People have said he was a Standard Oil
man, that he was a Vanderbilt man, that
lie was some one else's man. He has
been Harriman. " Myself." That's
what he has always represented. Any.
one who got in his way found that the
Harriman express runs straight ahead,
switches spiked.

However, he lost his first fight. De-
spite protests, the reorganization was car-
ried out. Even after a suit, it was put
through. When, in 1908, the second
battle over Erie with Morgan came,
Harriman's position was the exact re-
verse. He won that fight.

At any rate, even thojagh he lost in
1894, he had started his railroad career.
He went slow at first ; for, remember, it
was for himself, not others, that he was
building and waiting his chance.

At last the chance came. It grew out
of the panic of 1893. Harriman has al-
ways grown with panics — but he has
thriven with prosperity. In 1894 a quar-
ter of all the railroads were in re-
ceivers' hands. The great Union Pa-
cific, from Omaha to Ogden, was one of
the worst — "two streaks of rust on a
bunch of ties," and, with all due respect

to hustling Omaha and Ogden, begin-
ning nowhere and ending nowhere.

But it had the possibilities of becom-
ing the spine of the country. While
Wall Street was resurrecting the dead
bodies of railroads, Union Pacific seemed
beyond hope of resurrection.

But Harriman, after studying it close-
ly, thought differently, and, what was
more to the point, succeeded in making
other capitalists think with him. It is
useless to enumerate who were in the
syndicate that bought it. No one con-
sidered Harriman as important.

It was generally credited to be a Van-
derbilt syndicate. They paid the gov-
ernment ' about $60,000,000 for the
eighteen hundred miles of rust and
worn-out . equipment, and an additional
sum to bondholders and for, subsidiary
lines. Then they brought out a com-
pany, reorganized, with $100,000,000
bonds, $75,000,000 preferred stock, and
$61,000,000 common.

The common stock, now worth double
its par value, was distributed all around.
The other securities were turned over to
the syndicate to reimburse it, or were
used to purchase minor lines.

Harriman took a trip over the road
to see just how and why' the spirit had

if? \ ^ "' ,m'

HIS FIRST EMPLOYMENT WAS AS AN OFFICE-EOY.

198

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

gone out of the men who ran it and the
people along its lines. It is told that
one of the old rattle-trap engines on his
train loafed even longer than usual ta-
king water, until Harriman lost patience.
" What's this delay? " he demanded of
the division superintendent.

" Get Larger Engines!

" Engine's taking water, sir."
" Why not make the feed - pipe
larger?" snapped Harriman.
" The engine wouldn't stand it."
" Then we'll get some larger engines."
It was one of Harriman's boasts that
he replaced eight-inch feed-pipes on the
U. P. with twelve-inch, thereby saving
one minute and thirty-nine seconds in
the movement of a train every time the
engine needed water. There was noth-
ing he didn't attempt for economy and
efficiency. Perhaps, if he had lived, he
would actually have introduced his wider
gage, which he had hinted at often.

Harriman did not stop with new
equipment or with automatic block-sig-
nals. Engineers will tell you that one
of his greatest feats was in securing the
completion of the famous Lucin cut-off
across the Great Salt Lake, by which ten
complete circles in the 147-mile old

/ \^ s°%

HE LONGED TO BE A SOLDIER.

route were eliminated, 3,919 degrees of
curvature, and 1,515 feet of vertical
climb.

Great tunnels were built, grades re-
duced at hundreds of points. Only
show it to be for ultimate economy, and
Harriman was ready to say, " Build it,"
and spend money tike water. For the
money came back.

Once a director complained of cost.
" We haven't bought a railroad here,"
was Harriman's reply. " We've bought
an empire."

Gathering in the Roads.

It was this reasoned faith in the fu-
ture which amazed Wall Street and the
country. Not only was Harriman ma-
king U. P. worth something, but he was
gradually gathering in other roads. The
first wTas the Oregon Short Line, and
then -the Oregon Railroad and Naviga-
tion Company. It was a question
whether the Oregon Short Line would
have to be bought, or whether it would
exchange its stock and come in peace-
ably.

Harriman adopted the peaceable
course. His road was just beginning to
boom, and, with a little coaxing, the
Short Line stockholders were made to
see that it would be a good exchange.

Harriman had had faith that great
good times were coming after McKin-
ley's first election. When Rockefeller
was scared to death over the political
outlook, Harriman reassured him ; and
Harriman, as the prophet, secured
Standard Oil money whenever he need-
ed it.

New ventures now came thick and
fast, so thick and fast as to bewilder
every one except Harriman, who planned
them in that superior sphere where, as
William Nelson Cromwell said, it was
not permitted for others to intrude. The
Alton deal came next. How he and his
associates " reorganized " that road is
still fresh in the public mind. Acquisi-
tion of the Kansas City Southern on
somewhat similar lines came next. Then
followed the coup in Southern Pacific.

Harriman was looking out for new
worlds to conquer. He saw to the south
Collis P. Huntington, to the north James

HARRIMAN.

199

J. Hill. Huntington's vast work had
been Central Pacific and Southern Pa-
cific. Late in 1900, Huntington died
suddenly. * His estate, and those of the
Crockers and Stanfords, controlled the
road, Speyer & Co. being the bankers.

Harriman went quietly to work to
gain control, buying right and left.
The next thing Wall Street heard was
on February 1, 1901, when the control
of Southern Pacific had been bought by
Union Pacific.

The announcement came as a thunder-
clap. If you want to know where Har-
riman was most cordially hated, go
down in the financial district to the
offices on whose doors is the name
" Speyer & Co." Harriman had his
much-desired outlet to the Pacific, and
the great southern line from the Cali-
fornia coast to the gulf, with its impor-
tant steamship connection with New
York.

It made Harriman the leading rail-
road factor in the West — allowed him to
tap the region from Chicago to New
Orleans down the Mississippi Valley on
the east, and from Portland to Los An-
geles down the Pacific coast on the west.

Here again the 'Harriman " Myself "
method came into play. Almost direct-
ly after the purchase, one of the officers
resigned ; then many.

"What was the matter?" a friend
asked of one.

" Well," he replied, " I didn't .think
fhe Southern Pacific should be com-
pelled to pay $25,000 a year for an
office-boy. When Harriman got through
working, there wasn't anything left for
me to do. I couldn't buy a ton of rails
or a switch-engine without his O. K."

Quick to Punish.

Some time later, Harriman had a hard
fight over Southern Pacific. James R.
Keene tried to force him to pay divi-
dends before, he was ready. Keene got
a terrible trouncing for that. Harriman
did it' by forcing T. J. Taylor & Co.,
Keene's son - in - law, to the wall, and
taking away $6,000,000 from the Keene
S. P. pool.

So Harriman was master of Union
Pacific and Southern Pacific. Before
Wall Street had recovered from its

HIS HORSE BEAT VANDERSILT'S.

surprise over the sudden change in
Southern Pacific, Harriman was after
Northern Pacific, and one of the most
interesting chapters in the country's
financial history had begun.

Hill and Morgan had just purchased
the Burlington as an outlet for North-
ern Pacific and Great Northern into
Chicago. Again Harriman went to
Morgan. " I demand an interest in
Burlington for my Union Pacific," he
said. Hill shook his head, and Morgan
smiled.

They failed to note the threat im-
plied in this unusual request. Before
they knew what was going on, Harri-
man had purchased in the open market
a majority of the stock of N. P. Har-
' riman's campaign culminated in May,
1901, with N. P. shares quoted at $1,000
a share, throwing the whole stock mar-
ket into one of the worst panics ever
recorded. Harriman won the first
round.

But there was a right of the common
to call in the preferred stock, and by
exercising it over-night, the Hill-Mor-
gan group, holding mostly common, stole
a march on the Harriman group, holding

200

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

THERE ARE TWO FACTO
PROSPERITY. ONE
THE OTHER IS

mostly preferred.
Harrimanwas check-
mated. The com-
promise agreed on
was the" Northern
Securities Company,
whereby both were
to deposit their
shares, and thus es-
tablish a " commu-
nity of interest."

It is a matter of
too recent history to
need recounting how
the government in-
tervened, instituted
the Northern Securi-
ties suit, disrupted
the merger, and flung
all into chaos again.

Harriman wanted his original N. P.
shares back. Hill and Morgan wanted
to divide both N. P. and Great North-
ern pro rata. After a long suit, the
Hill-Morgan plan prevailed. But even
then Harriman wasn't altogether beaten.
In 1906, when the rumors were afloat
of the cutting of the Hill melon in the
shape of distributing profits from ore
lands, and these stocks were booming,
he sold the stocks at a profit of $35,-
000,000, and with this, in the open mar-
ket, Harriman later increased his hold-
ings in Baltimore and Ohio, and New
York Central.

If he couldn't control the Northwest,
then he would creep back into the East.
West and Southwest were his.

Beaten by Hill and Morgan.

Harriman had a new fight on his
hands every few months after that. He
had been elected a trustee of the Equita-
ble Life Assurance Company, and, as he
increased his influence, he tapped another
source of capital for his great enterprises,
second only to Standard Oil. When
Hyde and Alexander began to row, Har-
riman began to secure control of the
company.

At the beginning of the row Harriman
was Hyde's closest adviser ; but, for some
reason or other, after the Frick commit-
tee report, Hyde suddenly conceived the
suspicion that Harriman was playing
him false.

RS WHICH WORK AGAINST
IS IDLE MEN, AND
IDLE CAPITAL."

Now, Mr. Hyde
was more interested
in social matters
than in finance. Like
many another man,
if he couldn't have
it all, he was not
averse to pulling
d o w n the whole
building over the
ears of every one
concerned. In his"
almost Gallic man-
ner, he one day ac-
cused Harriman of
treachery. Harri-
man, bursting with
rage, almost lost the
power to speak. His
reply was a classic

in the cartoons for a time :

" Wow, wow, wow! "

Harriman resigned. Then Hyde be-
gan to dicker with Ryan. Harriman
was boiling over with anger at this coup
of Ryan's, arranged by the adroit hand
of Root.

" Not Yet; but Soon! "

He made a threat to get even with
Ryan. All this was brought out during
the insurance investigation. Among other
questions asked Mr. Harriman was
whether he had yet made good his re-
venge? His answer created a new piece
of classic slang :

" Not yet; but soon."

Out of the depression of 1903-1904,
and the uncertainty of the exposures of
financial rottenness of 1905, the Harri-
man system came — still on top. There
was nothing that could put it down. For
it was not, as so many people said, a
speculative venture ; speculation was re-
duced by knowledge to a certainty.

Then came the boom of 1906 — a boom
of even greater proportions than those
after McKinley's first election and in
1901. The system went ahead just the
same in prosperity as in panic. The cul-
mination was the Union Pacific dividend
episode, when for the first time ten per
cent was declared on the common in
August, 1906, along with five per cent
on Southern Pacific common, as an initial
dividend.

HARRIMAN.

201

There was one phase of this episode
that very vitally affected Harriman's at-
tainment of his ambition. When he de-
cided to raise the dividend he casually
omitted to mention it to any one in ad-
vance. No one in Wall Street was
" on." No one had loaded up with the
stock to make a coup.

If there was to be any speculating in
Union Pacific and any great money made
out of it, Harriman was going to do it
himself.

Just as a side diversion came the final
fight with Fish about this time.

It was a long fight, involving the

western coast. More than half is com-
pleted. Harriman's work in Mexico has
been of so great size that he has en-
countered there much the same opposi-
tion as at home. His relations with the
government have been such that there,
too, an anti-Harriman party has grown
up in opposition to Diaz.

Harriman was undoubtedly looking to
the development of Mexico with much
the same kind of longing as Hill looks
at the Canadian northwest.

All the time Harriman was looking
for eastern outlets to the Atlantic — the
dream of all railroaders — " ocean to

IN WALL STREET HE
WAS AN ACTIVE, ENER-
GETIC SPECULATOR.

seeking of proxies in the ends of the
earth. Fish was ousted from the presi-
dency of Illinois Central for casting
sheep's-eyes at Hill. His successor was
a Harriman man, Mr. J. T. Harahan.
That was the last of Harriman's long
and spectacular fights in railroads and
the markets. He made many conquests
afterward, but they were mostly peaceful
conquests.

" The north and south Harriman lines
from Puget Sound to Guadalajara, Mex-
ico, are almost as important as the lines
east and west," said Mr. Harriman in an
interview just before he died.

In Mexico the Southern Pacific plans
the construction of 1,537 miles down the

ocean." He had passed through many
panics and escaped unhurt. His asso-
ciates remarked that they guessed Harri-
man enjoyed panics. He smust have en-
joyed the one in 1907-1908. It virtually
completed his ocean-to-ocean plans — not
only with one line, but with three.

In April, 1908, the Erie short-term
notes matured. Harriman and a number
of other railroad men and bankers met
at an up-town club one night to deter-
mine what should be done on the next
and last day, when $5,500,000 must be
paid by that road.

It was one of Erie's chronic crises.
Harriman argued that Erie was worth
the money needed, that the recovery from

202

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

ff/LL

MOJZGAy

GOU£J3

panic would be delayed unless the notes
were met. All night Harriman stood
alone; the others favored a receivership.
They argued till morning, and still stood
the same. Harriman went home, still
thinking it over. Then, before the close
of the business day, he sent Morgan a
letter, saying he would pay the notes
himself.

That action, single - handed, against
the judgment of the directors, was char-
acteristic. It saved the Erie, and it
saved more than one other corporation
from a receivership. It helped the re-
turn of prosperity. Above all, it clinched
Harriman's ocean - to - ocean control by
means of Erie.

Products of the Panic.

Besides his Baltimore and Ohio hold-
ings, there have been mentioned the Har-
riman investments in New York Central,
and hence also in Lake Shore, another of
Harriman's ocean-to-ocean connections.
Just what the Union Pacific holdings are
is not known exactly, but it is known that
up to the very day
of his death Harri-
man's mind was ac-
tive with plans for
the betterment of
New York Central.

Still another* prod-
uct of the panic Avas
the acquisition of the
Central of Georgia
by the Illinois Cen-
tral. The great in-
dustrial development
of the South strong-
ly attracted Harri-
man ; it was just the
sort of thing he
liked to get in un-
der and capitalize in
advance.

HIS MANNER IN BUSINESS WAS COLD
AND SNAPPY.

HARRIMAN ROADS, COMPARED

WITH THOSE OF HILL,

MORGAN, THE VANDER-

BILTS, AND GOULD.

When the news of Harriman's death '
reached President Harahan in the South,
he exclaimed: "The South will never
know what a good friend it had in Mr.
Harriman."

Ocean to ocean, lakes to gulf, middle
West, far West, Pacific coast, Mexico,
the Orient, Northwest. Southwest, South,
and to a great extent the East and New
England — that was the great Harriman
railroad empire' when the little railroad
Corsican passed away at Arden on Sep- \
tember 9.

His Personal Side.

What manner of man was this man
Harriman? First of all, he learned rap-
idly. Once he was secretive. But from
1905 to 1908 he was in a lot of trouble
with the people through ignorance and
misunderstanding. Then he did what
he never did before in his life. He be-
gan to talk to newspapers.

It was as if the Sphinx spoke. He
kept in touch with public sentiment
through a most comprehensive and elab-
orate press-clipping system, operated by
a competent man in the office of each
general manager. All the papers of a
locality were sum-
marized as to their
attitude toward the
roads, and the sum-
mary was telegraphed
to Mr. Julius Krutt-
schnitt, director of
maintenance and
way, in Chicago.

Everything w a s
expressed in percent- .
ages and figures. It
was an accurate gage
of public opinion ;
and after it had been
collected and unified
at Chicago, Mr. Har-
riman read it. Noth-
ing like it had ever
been attempted.

HARRIMAN.

203

He was doing everything to overcome
his aloofness. He was not so averse to
meeting strangers, and instead of stamp-
ing and swearing at reporters, he called
them " My boys," and spoke of them as
his friends.' When he came back from
Europe, dying, he insisted on seeing the
reporters in his private car.

It was a different Harriman.

He made one vital remark at a din-
ner : " There are two factors that work
against prosperity. One is idle men ;
the other is idle capital."

" I have never put my mind on any-
thing yet that I haven't been able to
accomplish," he replied. " My brain
now is keener than it ever was ; and if
hard work won't affect it, how will it
affect my body? I thrive on hard
work."

Even when he did go in search of
health he could not put business away
entirely. Some time ago, when he was
ordered to take an automobile trip to
Europe, away from railroads and tele-
graphs, he consented.

^V-4, __OjW>

/&: > AMI \v^

He had said that he was going to re-
tire on his sixtieth birthday, in 1908.
That time came, and he announced that
he was too busy to think of it. But all
that time, as during the previous five
years, he was really fighting the greatest
battle of all — against ill health.

His greatest victories were won while
he carried on this losing fight. Yet he
never let the truth become known to his
foes or even to his friends — perhaps only
to himself at the very last. Yet, for
many years he was forced to wear cor-
sets for spine trouble due to his inactive
physical life.

Time and again his doctors warned
him to retire. But to no purpose. They
didn't even get him to keep his promise
about retiring at sixty. When they ar-
gued with him, he replied that his nerve
power would pull him through.

WHEN HE THOUGHT OF GASOLINE
MOTORS FOR RAILROADS.

But as he convalesced he began to
think of his string of machines as a
railroad train. Then an idea came to
him. He began to keep strict account of
gasoline expenses. The drivers began
to worry over his supposed economy, and
trouble was averted only when he assured
them that, hi wasn't spying on the
amount of gasoline they burned up.
Harriman's restless mind had conceived
the idea of gasoline motors for separate
coaches on small spurs of his railroads.

Always Practical.

He was investigating. When he got
back he had some such coaches built,
and they are to-day running on many
small lines where the traffic is too light
for a locomotive to pay.

Even last spring when, in alarm, he

204

THE RAILROAD MAX'S MAGAZINE

had to take a vacation, he couldn't quite
make up his mind to quit. His vacation
was in a tent in Mexico, where his new-
est interests lay.

A telephone wire kept him in touch
with business all the time. Then he
decided to go to Europe. He must have
felt it was a losing fight, but he neg-
lected no chances. That was how he
conducted his business fights. Might it
not succeed in the fight for life?

While in Europe, fighting his last
fight, he learned that a plot had been
hatched to wrest from him control of
his railroad empire, and no ship could
take him home
quickly enough.
He knew what it
meant.

He carried on
everything as if a
long life of power
and health lay be-
fore him. He did
everything but talk
of death. He fin-
ished his new home
at Arden. He com-
pleted the plans to
carry on his roads
after his death.

He came home
to defend his em-
pire and to die,
and he died in his
armor — one of the
most heroic rail-
road figures that
ever lived.

Harriman was a
small man, nar-
row chested, look-
ing anything but

the part of a great railroad builder. But
though frail in physical strength, he was
one of the most resourceful fighters of
modern times. There was only one word
he didn't understand, and that was
" quit." Life to him was a long, un-
yielding fight. And yet there was an-
other Harriman that the world did not
often see.

What He Did for Boys.

( >ver on the East Side of New York
there is a handsome building on Avenue

WALTER AVERILL HARRIMAN,

THE DEAD MAGNATE'S ELDEST SON, NOW LEARN-
ING THE RAILROAD BUSINESS IN THE HOPE
OF SUCCEEDING HIS FATHER.

A, opposite Tompkins Square. It is the
Boys' Club. Those East Side boys saw
the real Harriman. When .they gave a
play he was always one of them. Once,
when they couldn't get a hall, he hired
Sherry's for them. Often he dropped in
to see how the club, was getting along.

On an outing he had been known to
bat out flies to the boys. He took them
up to Groton once for an athletic con-
test with that aristocratic school where
one of his sons was studying, and rooted
for the- East Side boys. Was that the
Harriman of Union Pacific?

Harriman had a golf course laid out,
and then never
played over it. Yet
he only spent four
days a week at his
■ busy office. His
recreations were pe-
culiarly his own.
Building the great
home on the high-
est of the Ramapo
Mountains, and
contemplating its
broad thirty thou-
sand acres, was
one of them. His
devotion to his
f a m i 1 y was an-
other. But the
Harriman of stren-
uous play — never.
His greatest recrea-
tion was, after all,
business.

One thing hurt
him. He k n e w
that the world
thought he had
no friends, that
he made railroad men under him mere
machines, and that the men hated him.
Once, in a burst of self - defense, he
exclaimed : " Ask the workers on my
railroads if they're not all Harriman's
friends. And then, if they won't testify
for me. ask my neighbors. If you think
there is no humanity in Harriman, go
up to Arden and find out."

But the only side that really count-
ed was the Harriman who would be
railroad king,- the man who would " go
on as long as he lived." Whatever he
was doing, he was always building.

GENERAL BURKETT'S DISCIPLE.

BY J. R. STAFFORD.

An Ignorant Man Is a Weak One,
But Strength is Often Disguised.

'EAH. It would take all
the bread an' meat ye
got there, mister, to fill
me up._ But I jist cain't
bear to eat when any one
is watchin' me, so if it's
jis' asame to you, I'll take the grub an'
go off by myse'f to eat it." The rather
foolish-faced, lanky, and ragged boy of
twelve or thereabouts looked appealingly
down into the hard eyes of Old Burkett.
Burkett, grizzled and unkempt — after
the fashion of market hunters — squat-
ting, huge bulked, before the fire on
which a frying-pan sizzled, puckered his
tufted gray brows in calculation as he
looked from the lad to the big camp oven
filled with new baked bread.

" Boys," he at last observed, " has no
insides." Then he stared for a moment
around the camp and suddenly exclaimed :
" Boy, ef ye air a tramp, w'y up an'
say so. But ye needn't be one no more.
I'm u needin' a boy powerful bad. 'Tain't
the work so much as that I'm a gettin' old
an' need a young an' handy feller to talk
to of a night. W'y not jist stop 'ith
me?"

Out of the rapture into which he had
been thrown at sight of a gun leaning
against the tent; " the youth replied me-
chanically :
- " Nope, I gotta go."

Burkett, smiling through his beard,
spread the newspaper thoughtfully
brought by the young vagrant, and on it
dumped the ovenful ; then, having poured
over the bread the contents of the frying-
pan, he made up a bundle, incomparably
ungeometrical in shape. After a pride-
ful survey of this he clutched it tightly
and again persuaded.

" Boy, you air a passin' up a powerful
good chance to make somethin' out o' yer-
se'f . A powerful good chance ! I got a
little double bar'l shotgun I'd give ye.
An' I'd Tarn ye to decoy ducks an' geese
an' shoot 'em on the fly. An' I'd show
ye how to ketch fish in the summer an'
mink an' muskrat in winter time. An'
of a night we'd set by the fire an' I'd tell
ye about the war an' Pickett's charge.
An' by the time ye growed up, ye would
be a man; 'stid o' jist a bum."

For a moment the youth's spaniel-eyes
brightened on these vistas of delight, but
the glow suddenly went out as, with a
gulp and a look of fear, he exclaimed :

" Nope, I gotta go. I jist gotta go."

Burkett tossed him the bundle. Al-
ready moving off, he caught it and kept
going as fast as his awkward legs would
carry him. Underfoot, the corn-field,
littered with last year's stalks, was deep
with mud from the March rains, but he
never stopped to rest, maintaining his
ungainly trot until it had carried him the
full half mile to the railroad track.
There he vanished behind the tall grass
fringing the right of way.

At that, the duck-hunter started in
pursuit. He crossed the field in the
boy's tracks and, approaching the rail-
road fence with noiseless step, at last put
a steadying hand to a post and cocked
his head to listen.

He heard the voices of men, and then
crawled carefully between the wires. As
he smashed his way through the screen
of crackling stems and blades, three men
lolling about a fire lifted their faces in
lazy inquiry.

Obviously they were tramps. It was
apparent also that they were now eating

205

206

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

a dinner at Burkett's expense, for their
hands were clutching huge biscuits he
had baked, and rinded bacon he had
fried. Between them lay the newspaper,
bare of everything but crumbs and - a
solitary half biscuit. Upon this rem-
nant, the boy, who sat apart, was gazing
in profound speculation.

Burkett understood. Without a word
of warning he dashed at the feasters,
now rising to their feet. Into their
midst he shot with an ear-splitting
screech. Like a bomb he seemed sud-
denly to explode, hurling terrific fists on
every side. The assaulted went down
together on the trampled grass, where
they sat, gingerly feeling their bruises.

" Now," the victor commanded, " you
bov ; you come 'ith me. These fellers is
no good. You jist stand right up now
an' tell 'em they air a pack o' boy-robbin'
skunks."

The lad, staring open-mouthed at the
burliest of the trio, started to obey, and
then trembling, stopped.

" Tell 'em whut I say," Burkett fairly
boomed. " Ef they even dast to open
their heads to ye, I'll give 'em a dang
sight more! "

At that, in a kind of panic the youth
dashed to the cover of the hunter's elbow,
and from that redoubtable position not
only repeated Burkett's characterization
of the trio, but others of his own compo-
sition strangely picturesque and profane.

When the long-pent torrents had
flowed till only the dregs of epithet re-
mained, Burkett took him by the hand.
Then the pair, having crawled back into
the field, crossed it to the camp.

" Whut's yer name, boy? " the old. man
demanded as they entered the tent.

" Fellers called me Squib."

" Well, ye air a goin' to be more than
any blank ca'tridge ef ye stay an' grow
up 'ith me. I had army trainin' an' I
hain't forgot it. I wuz a soldier under
Pickett."

He paused, and a strange fire gleamed
in his eyes as with shaking head he de-
clared, " Boy, them days I wuz jist nach-
erally hell an' repeat." But his glance
softened as he concluded :

" I am a goin' to name ye Bob Jones,
after the boss I rode in Pickett's charge,
an' all the good an' bad water span'l
dawgs I've owned sense the war."

In this manner, the waif became Bob
Jones, and his fortunes linked with those
of Old Burkett.

When the fact became generally known
up and down the Bottoms, the good
people - — for everywhere there are good
people — generous to think and do, espe-
cially to think for others, made up their
minds the boy should have a better
chance, for to them Old Burkett's con-
duct in every particular shouted the very
antithesis of their ideals.

They dwelt in fixed abodes, he roamed
along the Missouri, sheltering in a tent.
They planted and plowed and reaped,
sweating with toil and worry, he merelv
hunted and trapped and fished, leisurely
and carefree. They gave full weights
of grain they had produced, he often art-
fully sold mud -hens for teal, bullheads
for catfish, and, it was affirmed, had
palmed off rabbit skins for muskrat hides.

After they had paid for the neces-
saries of life they put the remainder of
their money at interest, he invested his in
whisky, or lemon extract, which went
further.

On Sundays they went to town to sit
soberly in the church and listen to ser-
mons of peace, after which they cordially
shook hands with even those they might
have disliked. He came to parade the
street drunkenly and collect a crowd of
loafers, to whom he would boastingly tell
of the war and Pickett's charge, in which
he claimed to have actually killed one
hundred of the enemy, and he would
wind up then by daring any one to fight
him. In short, he surpassed the ordinary
type of river-rat in general worthlessness.

It was with these facts in mind that
Deacon Smith got up in prayer-meeting
one Wednesday evening and earnestly
pleaded that the brand might be plucked
from the burning. A newcomer, who did
not know much about -Old Burkett. but
who made up for this trifling lack of
knowledge in a courageous zeal for good
works, volunteered to go to the camp and
get the boy.

At the next - meeting ' this one limped
painfully to his pew. When experiences
were in order he instantly rose and, with
a blackened eye fixed sternly on the
deacon, vehemently repudiated the mis-
sion he had so blithely pledged himself
to perform.

GENERAL BURKETT'S DISCIPLE.

207

Again the deacon pleaded eloquently,
but no one volunteered. Then, being a
conscientious man, he rather grudgingly
signified his intention to go himself.

So, next day, with his gun on his
shoulder, for he loved to hunt, he made
his way to the river. As the mallards
Avere flying well, he first attended to the
business of killing a dozen or so of them.
At noon he strode up to Old Burkett's
camp. The man and boy were already
there eating dinner.

" Burkett," the deacon spoke with a

the boy, to whom this golden opportunity
had been offered, instead of embracing
it, merely stuck out his tongue and
wagged his head. Very naturally this
offended the deacon, and very naturally,
too, he exclaimed :

" If you don't come, I'll cut a switch
an' tan your jacket."

" Umhu ! " the refusing one dared,
" you tetch me an' the general he'll make
more'n a Christian man o' you. He'll
make ye outrun yer dog a gittin' acrost
that field."

" EF THEY EVEN DAST TO OPEN THEIR HEADS TO YE, I'LL GIVE 'EM A DANG SIGHT MORE ! "

forced civility, " that boy ought to be in
school."

" You an' him fur it, deacon. Ef 'e
wants to go 'e kin go."

Astounded at the ease with which he
had gained his end, the good man, some-
what pridefully shouldered his gun and
commanded :

" Come with me, boy. I am goin' to
take ye home and make a Christian man
of ye."

He was now further astounded, for

At this, though roaring with laughter,
Old Burkett began to roll up his sleeves.

" You have already corrupted him,
mebbe beyond redemption," the deacon
declared white-lipped — for he expected a
beating — " but I shall go to the law. He
sha'n't be your disciple no longer."

" All right, deacon," Burkett boomed
with unexpected good humor, " I jist
wisht ye would hoss us into the court."

Wherefore a couple of days afterward
the sheriff came to the camp and took the

208

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

pair to the county seat, where county
court was in session.

Now, the county judges were farmers,
and they did not wish to put any new
burden on the taxpayers. Moreover,

His sallow face flamed red, his brown
eyes glowed like two coals from which
a breath had swept the ash ; and, jumping
up and down in a kind of paroxysm, he
screamed :

"he'll make ye outrun yer dog a gittin' acrost that field.

Deacon Smith had worked against the
election of two of them. Besides, there
were some sixteen voters present in the
room at that moment fiercely demanding
an appropriation of thirty-seven dollars
and thirty-five cents for a bridge over
Squaw Creek.

They of course felt a vague interest
in the boy. They listened .impatiently to
the deacon and then, the presiding judge
having asked Bob if he wished to leave
Burkett and go to the deacon, and having
received a surprisingly emphatic negative,
they dismissed the whole matter and
turned their attention to real business.

Forthwith, Bur'zett* led the boy into
the Probate Court and, by means of much
red tape, painstakingly unrolled, adopted
him.

Then the pair marched proudly down
the corridor and, coming out, found the
deacon sitting dejectedly on the steps.
At sight of him the boy paused abruptly.

" When I git big I'll kill ye. I'll
kill ye ! "

" Hush, Bob Jones!" Old Burkett
chided fiercely, " ye dassent to kill 'Cep-
in' in war. Tell 'im ye'll pound the soup
out of 'im."

" Then I'll pound the soup out o' ye.
•I'll pound the soup out o' ye!" The
lad's voice echoed with unabated wrath.

At that the duck-hunter caught him
up, and then, with a mighty swagger,
quitted the courtyard.

That was the last effort made with a
view of separating them. Under Old
Burkett's tutelage, the lad grew to be
an ungainly but very strong man, pro-
foundly igorant, and, of course, supreme-
ly disdainful of all things outside of his
own little world.

In that narrow circle, however, he
was really a genius. He shot, with a pre-
cision marvelous even among men
brought up from childhood to the gun ;

GENERAL BURKETT'S DISCIPLE.

209

and as a fisherman, trapper, or boatman
he was equally proficient. His attitude
toward Old Burkett was also worth com-
ment.

His readiness to obey that worthy
was a constant reminder of that other
famous Bob Jones of Pickett's charge,
while the devotion that shone always
from his brown eyes recalled the faithful-
ness of all those spaniels, which since
the war had borne the name. In fact,
save for two rather trivial personal in-
terests— his hatred of Deacon Smith and
an astonishing delight in his own silky
and inconsequent whiskers, his whole
thought and effort were for his guar-
dian.

It would seem that all this devotion
might have had an ennobling influence
on its recipient, but it is a lamentable
fact that Old Burkett never changed
his ways one whit. Through all the
years he scoffed at industry, other than
his own; told wilder tales than ever of
his prowess in the war ; grew more quar-
relsome with the world in general, and,
since Bob's efforts brought more money,
drank even more prodigiously.

Thus it happened that one sleeting
day in March, the old man having gone
to town for shot shells, returned to the
camp with his pockets filled with bottles
from Jack Renfro's drug-store instead,
and going out to his shooting-pit in the
afternoon did not return.

When Bob came in from running a
line of mink traps that night, he went
out there and found him, stiff and cold
in death. He carried the body back to
the tent and sat with it until day. Then,
leaving the dog to watch, he ran all the
way in to town. Quite out of breath, he
entered the furniture-store and asked
for a coffin, which he naively promised
to pay for as soon as the shooting
opened.

The dealer was a tight-fisted and un-
imaginative man. He scoffed at the idea
of a sale on terms requiring him to wait
for his money until wild geese and ducks,
at that moment roaming over Florida or
headed for Nova Scotia, for all he knew,
should fly a thousand miles or more to
Eiselman Bar with no other purpose in
their fool heads than to get shot. More-
over, he was a brother-in-law to Deacon

IN THE PRESENCE OF THE LOAFERS CONGRE

GATED AT THE DRUG-STORE, REQUESTED

RENFRO FOR "SOME WRITIN'S TO

PUT OVER THE GENERAL'S

GRAVE."

2 R R

210

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Smith. He dismissed the would-be cus-
tomer and his proposal as preposterous.

Dismayed beyond description, Bob
rushed down to Jack Renfro's drug-store
and poured out his troubles there. Then
Jack, though he was a flashy young fel-
low of rather doubtful morals — his drug-
store was really a dive — straightway has-
tened to the furniture-store, and with
his own money somewhat ostentatiously
paid for a casket.

The gratitude of Old Burkett's pro-
tegee at this was pitiful. His further
efforts to gather a crowd for funeral
honors on behalf of his dead were, how-
ever, altogether fruitless. So he got the
long box on his back and plodded alone
across the fields to the camp.

Next morning he moved the tent.
Where it had stood beneath the great
sycamore, in a spot commanding a wide
sweep of the river and the shooting
grounds of Eiselman Bar, in the spot
dearest of earth to Old Burkett, he dug
the grave. There, with only the solemn
spaniel looking on, he heaped the mound
with loving care.

That afternoon he went back to
toAvn, and in the presence of the loafers
congregated at the drug-store requested
Renfro for " some writin's to put over
the general's grave.,"

The crowd, of course, laughed, but
Renfro, who was one of the best fellows
on earth — extrinsically — inquired with a
rare deference what it was that the epi-
taph should convey.

" I want it to say the facks. The
general, he wuz a soldier, an' as brave
as they ever wuz. He didn't fear noth-
in', nothin'." A titter ran round
at this, whereupon Bob straightened his
stooping shoulders and with a look of
mild reproof on his rather vacuous face
he concluded: "An' he wuz a mighty
good man, fur he took me from tramps
an' made me whut I am."

A shout greeted this, but Renfro, with
a solemn wink at this and that chosen
habitue of the place, tore a piece of
Avrapper from the roof at his elbow and
then, getting out his pencil, bowed over
the counter -and-, wrote the following :

" General Burkett, age, place of birth
and cause of death unknown. Claimed
to have killed one hundred men in Pick-
ett's charge. This is likely, for ever since

the war, wherever he has gone he has
always left behind him a string of dead
soldiers. 'His good works live after
him. Witness Bob Jones, his mark."

He made Bob subscribe to it with a
cross, after which he showed it to the
crowd. Then amid the bedlam that
went up, he got a big flask from behind
the prescription case and proffered it
to the guileless one.

" Ef it's booze," Bob declared slowly,
" I don't want it. The general, he pri-
vately told me often, when he wuz sober,
that ef it hadn't 'a' ben fur booze he
might 'a' ben knowed fur a great man by
more people than jist me an' hissef."

" All right, Bob," the druggist re-
turned with unruffled suavity, for he was
making sport to please the crowd. " I
suppose now that the general is dead
you'll quit the old river?"

" Nope. Jist keep on asame old way.
When a feller has been brought up to a
good business as I have he ort to stay
with it. The general he alius 'lowed
that he would have been a heap better
off ef he had stayed with the army after
the war. Ef he had, though, I never
would 'a' run acrost 'im. It might 'a' ben
better fur him, but it would a ben al-
mighty tough on me."

At this even Renfro gave way to his
long-pent laughter. Then, since he was
beginning to feel some qualms, though
they were, it must be admitted, vague
ones, he passed over the paper.

Bob took it, and putting it carefully
in the pocket of his flannel shirt, ambled
out where the March sunshine soon drove
all doubt from his simple mind.

Two or three days after that, when
the wind had swung round to the east
where great cloud-drifts lay, threatening
storm, Deacon Smith, venerable now and
softened by the years, but with his old-
time ardor for shooting unabated, came
down to the river for the sport that a
rain would surely bring. His youngest
son, a man of thirty, was with him.

As the two were passing the sycamore
they noted that the tent was gone.
Wherefore, in that curiosity that all men
display in the presence of deserted home
sites, they went to it and found old
Burkett's grave, and above it Renfro's
epitaph, tacked neatly on the shining
bark.

GENERAL BURKETT'S DISCIPLE.

211

Now the deacon did not comprehend
that clause — " has always left behind
him a string of dead soldiers," but the
son did, and explained that it referred
to Old Burkett's trail of empty bottles.

On a sudden then the old man saw in
the ignorance that had suffered such a
cruel joke a long-hoped-for opportunity
to rescue the half-savage Bob. More-
over, his heart was strangely touched at
the symbolism of Burkett's grave.

But by dint of much sober argument
he was at last convinced of the trick that
had been played upon the memory of
his friend.

" All right," he admitted sadly, " I
knowed they wuz somethin' wrong at^the
time, by the way they laughed. They
hain't no one that's all gooet^ like the
general wuz. I wisht I wuz with 'im."

" Oh, no," the deacon gently remon-
strated from the depths of a sudden ab-

THEN HE SAT BOLT UPRIGHT, AND, WITH THE MATCHLESS STRENGTH OF HIS ARMS ALONE,

ROWED IN A CUNNING FRENZY.

He forgot all about the shooting, and
peering round soon discovered the new
location of the tent. The two approached
it and found its owner at home. He, of
course, greeted them with his old-time
curses.

" Who writ that epytaft? " the deacon
demanded.

After a long silence Bob declared that,
though it was nobody's business, Mr.
Jack Renfro had been kind enough and
fair enough to give the general his due.

straction, " you want to go to a better
place than that."

Then after a silence he roused bright-
ly and pursued, " You jist come on out
on the bar with Jack an' me an' shoot
awhile an' forgit your troubles. When
we git back we'll write somethin' suitable
fur Burkett."

" Couldn't ye do it now? "

" We better be a gittin' to the point,"
the deacon replied, as glancing out along
the spit he saw geese and ducks already

212

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

swarming in above it, " the shootin' is
a goin' to be somethin' wonderful. We
kin write U at any time. Git yer gun
an' come."

" Nope, I guess not. I'd rather set
an' think."

Moralizing, the pair hurried to- the
river bank, down it, and thence over the
wide stretches of dead water.

Out on the very point of the bar the
old man and the son dug their pits has-
tily, put out their decoys between
the pits and the edge of the sands where
the black waters of the main channel
crinkled and sucked by, and then, with
their faces set toward the shore across,
they waited the return of the flock.

Presently rain began to fall, and the
wind, that had been fresh and strong,
now rose until it boomed mightily over
■the great valley. At that, the birds,
blinded and beaten, hurtled in never-end-
ing swarms overhead and swept down
confusedly for the shelter of the spit.
The deacon and his son stood up load-
ing and firing with all their speed and
skill ; and in the mad excitement of the
sport forgot all else.

It was just about noon that the clouds
suddenly parted, the wind fell and the
sun came out brightly and the birds all
flew away. The hunters stared across
the river, noted the wondrous lustre with
which the farther shore shone, and then
discovered that the waters had risen.

With a profound sigh, for this meant
an -end of the sport, the old man turned
his head to look back over the way, very,
humanly anticipating his regret at de-
parture, and was attempting to solace
himself with a bit of philosophy con-
cerning the brightness that comes after a
storm, when on a sudden he gave vent
to an exclamation strangely vehement
for a deacon.

The bar, or rather a great portion of
it lying between them and the shore, had
disappeared. Where before for many
years it had risen, now, a black tossing
of waters swept, and at every moment
grew wider. The Missouri had changed
its course.

The two scrambled from their pits,
and huddling together gazed with start-
ing eyes as whole acres of the sands
slipped down and sank away.

Presently from the bank, down which

they had scrambled in the morning, a
skiff shot out. It came with speed toward
them, but the cutting waters also came.
The man in it bent himself far forward
at each stroke, and> then witfi braced
feet hurled his whole weight upon the
tether of lis arms, and the oars with
never a splash went up and down like
the wings . of a flying bird. Like
a bird the boat skimmed on, but engulf-
ment approached even swifter.

Then he sat bolt upright and, with
the matchless strength of his arms alone,
rowed in a cunning frenzy till the oars
showed as but a rolling sheen, and the
hull lifted until it seemed fairly to fry.
Whereat the two who watched whirled
up their caps and cheered migMily, for
he was gaining now. Then, when the
point on which they stood had fallen
away to a space "no wider than an oar
length, he swung the boat alongside.

With a choke in his throat the deacon
quavered, " Bob Jones, God Almighty
is behind a man that kin row that way,
but the boat won't hold us all."

For answer the boatman tumbled
weakly out, and, gripping the painter
tightly with both hands, cried in a com-
manding fury, " Git in. Git in." Won-
dering what further marvel of his craft
he would display, whereby three men
might ride to safety in a boat designed
to bear but one, they blindly obeyed him.

Then he said, " I couldn't a got to ye
with the big skift. But this'n will float
ye till ye hit some bank." He flung the
rope into the narrow prow and with a
sturdy kick on the gunwale shoved off.

They caught the oars and wielded
with all their strength to win back to
him, but in the heart of the main chan-
nel of the Missouri, at flood-time the
currents are mighty. When at last they
faced the bow about, a score of boat
lengths separated them from the dwind-
ling circle at his feet.

From it he hailed simply, " They is
no use, men. Three would sink the skift
an' no man could live in this water even
with a hang holt at the stei • Lelr 'er
drift fur fear o' ice cakes floatin' down."

Then the last of the sands slowly
settled and the dark and swift flood
swept them remorselessly from view, but
around him it seemed to rise gently, and
gently it bore him down.

Great American Train
Robberies.

BY JOHN P. DUXTER.

WE are able to add No. 15 to our series of Great American Train Rob-
beries. It is a startling, gripping story. Strange as it may seem, it
didn't happen in the Far West, where the doughty deeds of modern
Dick Turpins have added so much to history. It occurred in Pennsylvania —
the Keystone State of; this gentle-mannered, effete East.

The spot selected was ideal. The night was dark and rainy. The
scheme was well planned. The robber was a cool, calculating desperado.
Nothing in the history of train-robbery reads more graphically.

No. 15.— THE LONE BANDIT OF THE "PENNSY."

He Just Missed Getting Away with Over $500,000, but the Total

Amount of His Haul Was Exactly $65 in

Lincoln Pennies.

HADES of the lone-hand ban-
dits, Perry and Witreck ! A
Wild West train hold-up in
the teeming heart of Pennsyl-
vania, single-handed, and with
a successful getaway ! That,
too, in this year of civili-
zation, 1909.

Most amazing, in many ways, -of all
the fourteen " Great American Train
Robberies " told in The Railroad
Man's Magazine, is this, the fifteenth
and final story in the series. Here, al-
most under our very eyes, is pulled off
one of the last, if not the last, of the
big deeds of daring of the road-agents
of the rail. For, meanwhile, the gentle
art of train-robbery is passing into de-
cline and fall, and the figures- of Jesse
James, Hedgepeth, Evans, Sontag, Mor-
gan, Searcey, the Younger gang, the
" Wild Bunch," are receding into history.

Began in the October, 1906, Railroad M

Only the most colossal nerve, aided
by equally unusual luck, made possible
this latest exploit. It is significant that,
even after all the deviltry that marked
the palmy days of the old-timers had
been resurrected, this robber, in the
heart of civilization, got away finally
with exactly sixty-five dollars in nice
new Lincoln cents ! \

Never, on the lonely plains of the
Far West, was a train held up and
looted in a bolder or more .sensational
manner than was the Pittsburgh and
Northern Express on the Pennsylvania
Railroad, early in the morning of
August 31. Never was a lone and
audacious robber more wofully sold than
the man who pulled off this job — he
actually missed getting over half a mil-
lion dollars.

Lewistown Narrows, where the deed
was done, is ideally located for just such

an's Magazine. Single copies, 10 cents.
3

214

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

a purpose. Threading its serpentine
course in and out among the mountains
of Pennsylvania, the Juniata River is
closely paralleled by the Pennsylvania
Railroad.

It is one of the most wildly beautiful
spots in the Alleghenies. For miles on
this side of the river not a house is to
be found, though the Narrows is only
fifty-three miles from Harrisburg, the
State capital. On one side is the river ;
on the other are the mountains, rising
abruptly and forming a deep, narrow
gorge.

Old residents of the section on either
side of the Narrows recall that the point
at which the express was held up was
the scene of numerous highway robberies
in the days when David Lewis and his
band operated in the mountains around
Lewistown and Bellefonte. The -old
State pike from Philadelphia to Pitts-
burgh passed through the Lewistown
Narrows, where the tracks of the Penn-
sylvania Railroad now run, and Lewis
and his highwaymen frequently held up
stage-coaches bound east or west.

They continued to operate from 1814
to 1820, when Lewis and his chief lieu-
tenant, Connolly, were captured and shot
by a posse, and the gang dispersed.
Since then, for nearly ninety years, no
highwayman had dared operate there.
That's how daring was this modern
hold-up.

Had the highwayman been the most
artistic of theatrical managers, instead of
a vagabond but pretty well educated for-
eigner, as he seems to have been, he
could not more excellently have staged
and carried out his plot.

A Criminal's Paradise.

The Narrows is a rift between the
mountains, some ten miles in length and
not much over an eighth of a mile in
width, with piles upon piles of loose,
jagged rocks covered with underbrush,
and known under the name of " Black
Log Mountain."

Beside the Juniata River an artificial
bed has been formed for the railroad
tracks to rest upon. At many points
there is a sheer descent of thirty or
forty feet straight into the river - bed.
There is only room for the towpath of

the Pennsylvania Canal and the old
State road between this and the abrupt
ascent of " Jack's , Mountain," one of
the highest -and most rugged in that sec-
tion of the State.

The lofty mountains, more even than
the tangled scrub timber, cast deep
heavy shadows over the tracks at this
point until, in the daytime, except when
the sun is overhead, they are of almost
Stygian darkness. There is absolutely
no life in the vicinity after sunset, ex-
cept the seminightly trips of the track-
walker.

Once a criminal gets into the moun-
tain fastness, he can travel far into the
Virginias before coming to cleared land.

Carried Over $500,000.

Train No. 39 has the reputation,
among railroad men who know, of being
a treasure-train. Nightly it carries from
$50,000 to $200,000. Other trains carry
more money and valuables than this ;
but, after all, No. 39 is a pretty regular
carrier of large sums. At this particular
time it was a richer haul than ordi-
narily.

The Pittsburgh and Northern Ex-
press, as it is. known to the public, leaves
Philadelphia shortly after 9 p.m., and
Harrisburg at 12.01. On the night of
August 31, it was composed of five
Pullman sleepers filled with passengers
and three express cars, two of which
had come up from Washington in the
afternoon and had been transferred to
the train at Philadelphia, while the
other was from that city itself.

In one of the Washington express-
cars were five big steel safes, crammed
full of new bank-notes in the denomi-
nations mostly of one's, two's, and five's
— perhaps something over half a million
dollars.

In the Philadelphia express-car were
shipments of money and bullion to
banks farther west, as well as checks
and valuable papers to an unknown
amount. No one, except the Treasury
officials in Washington and St. Louis,
knew the combination of the five big
safes, but the express messenger in the
other car knew that of the smaller safe,
in which the smaller amounts of bullion
and coin were placed.

GREAT AMERICAN TRAIN ROBBERIES.

215

At this particular season of the year,
when the East was hurrying " crop
money " to the West to facilitate the
handling of the harvests, the train was
likely to be a particularly rich haul.
Moreover, it was the thirty-first of 'the
month, and usually there was, also, on
this day over $300,000 in the. pay-en-
velopes of the Cambria Steel Company
of Johnstown for September 1.

cars. All this the robber must pre-
sumably have known when he deter-
mined, on this dark and overcast night,
to hold up No. 39.

Donnelly Hears the Torpedo.

It was about 1.30 a.m., and the train
was running along smoothly at about
fifty miles an hour, when suddenly En-

THERE WAS NO ANSWER — JUST THE TWO ELOQUENT OPEN MOUTHS OF THE AUTOMATICS.

It so happened, however, that on this
night the pay-roll had been delayed to- a
later train. But the robber must have
known a lot about the inside, as the gang
did in the famous Mineral Range hold-
up. Some years before, on this train
it had always been the practise to have
a guard with a loaded repeating rifle in
the coach behind the express-cars.

It was his duty to get out and patrol
the treasure-car whenever a stop was
made. But this had been discontinued,
and the messengers and baggagemen
now relied on the carbines in their own

gineer Samuel Donnelly heard what
sounded like a torpedo under his engine.

He pulled back the throttle and, fol-
lowing the rules, after slowing- down,
proceeded under control. Then came
another explosion more violent than the
first, and a whole series of them, shat-
tering the head-light and breaking the
windows of the cab.

He turned on the emergency-brakes,
and the wheels were clamped tightly
while the train came to an abrupt stop.

Donnelly peered out into the darkness
ahead, fully expecting to see a wreck.

216

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Instead, a gruff voice from behind
him rang out sharply :

" Get down out of there! Quick! "

Donnelly turned hastily, only to find
himself facing the cold, blue, yawning
mouths of two automatic revolvers. If
they were pointed at you, you would
tremble if even a fly walked over the
trigger — the kind that will send half a
dozen bullets _into you in as many
seconds.

Behind the automatics was a grotesque
figure.' It was apparently that of a
short, stockily built but very muscular
man. From beneath his black slouch-
hat a gunny sack hung down, covering
his face and even most of his body.

Slits were cut in it through which his
piercing black eyes snapped sharply.
Even the burlap did not tone down the
rapid fire of profanity which blazed
from his mouth.

Donnelly hustled down to the ground
as. the robber also leaped off the steps
of the locomotive.

Just then the fireman, Freeman G. D.

Willis, came around the engine. He
had stepped out at' the first sign of
trouble to see if anything 'was wrong
with the engine. He hadn't . time to
report that the headlight had been
smashed.

" Hands up ! Be quick about it ! "
yelled the highwayman, firing a few
shots just for the moral effect. " If
either of you say a word before I tell
you, I'll kill you both ! "

Then followed a brief parley.

" Any mail-cars? "

"No."

"Any express-cars?"
_ "Yes."

" Any monev? "

" No'."

"You lie! ^ Lead me back to them!
And be careful ! "

Fortunately, the car containing the
safes with the half million dollars was
the second in the train. The first car
contained the single safe" with the
smaller amount. The engineer was
forced to beat on the door. John W.

EVERYTHING THAT LOOKED LIKE MONEY WENT INTO THE BAG.

GREAT AMERICAN TRAIN ROBBERIES.

217

THE ROBBER HAD CHOSEN THE PENNIES.

S. Harper, the express messenger,
opened it.

" What's the matter up the line?" he
drawled, not for a moment dreaming of
such a thing as train-robbery in Penn-
sylvania.

There was no answer — just the two
eloquent open mouths of the automatics.
Harper started back to the carbines in
the corner, then stopped as if frozen.

"If you move again before I tell you
to, I'll blow you up ! Up with your
hands ! " yelled the robber. " See those
dynamite cartridges in my pocket, too,
eh?"

Lined Up the Crew. ,

No one cared to trifle with the walk-
ing arsenal of death after that. With
the utmost alacrity the engineer and fire-
man jumped up, under orders, into the
car, while the robber followed, and lined
up all three in the corner farthest from
the carbines.

Just then the messenger from one of
the other cars, T. M. Clayton, stuck his
head in the door to find out what was
up. He didn't even have time to ask

his question, but was expeditiously lined
up by the side of the other three.

The road-agent hadn't really got down
to business before up came I. R. Poffen-
berger, the conductor of the train, swing-,
ing his lantern and calling out to know
why the train was stopped.

" Throw up your hands and get back
there !" answered the bandit, adding an
argument from one of his revolvers while
he kept the other slowly swinging back
and forth on a level with the fifth ribs
of the four men lined up in the car be-
fore him.

The first shot went through Poffen-
berger's hand, and, as he ducked and
ran, a veritable broadside followed him.
, "By a miracle, the shots went through
his coat-tails, and nqt through him. But
so far as the men in the car knew, he
was dead as a door-nail.

At any rate, the highwayman had
shown his quality — he was ready to fire
at a hostile eye-wink. ' Then he pro-
ceeded to take advantage of the few
minutes he had in which to do his real
work.

Under his directions, while the fire-
man held open a sack, Harper was

218

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

forced to open the safe and take out the
contents. As the highwayman inspected
each bag, he determined whether to take
it or not, ordering Harper to place it in
the bag which Willis held.

Some bags of bullion went in. Then
some bags of currency, and some pack-
ages of papers that looked as if they
might be bank-notes. Bundles pre-
sumably of jewelry were discarded as
too bulky, but everything that looked
like money went into the capacious maw
of the bag that Willis held.

" Right heah is whar' he broke his
merlasses jug," as Uncle Remus put it.

While no one knew the combinations
of the five safes of the other car, the
bandit might have dynamited them and
got a chance at half a million. In the
car he entered, he mistook the heavy
bags of uncoined bullion for coin. The
bags of what seemed to be gold coin
were really nothing but Lincoln pennies.

As for the packages that seemed to be
treasury-notes, they contained nothing
but checks and commercial paper. The
whole thing made a heavy bundle, more
than he could quickly and "conveniently
carry in his hurry to get away and start
the train off again.

In fact, the pennies themselves — some
eleven thousand of them — weighed over
seventy pounds ; and, after you drop the
two decimals off, they weren't much of
a haul, at that.

Up the Mountainside.

"Pick up that bag!" he ordered
Willis, when it was evident that the safe
had been thoroughly looted and that the
time was growing short.

"Now carry it up this path!" he
added.

Then, as the fireman preceded him up
the mountainside, he turned to the en-
gineer.

" Now, you go back to the engine, and
don't you stop till you get to the next
station ! "

After a few minutes' climb, Fireman
Willis was told to drop his burden in
a thicket. ^

" Good night and good luck," said the
bravado. " Get back to your train, if
you can. I hope to see you again ! "

Willis was only too glad to return on

a run, and more than glad to just
scramble aboard the train. Donnelly
had been much too cautious to run his
train out blindly, but had reconnoitered
the track for several yards ahead, find-
ing near the rails a quantity of dyna-
mite large enough to blow up the .train,
provided he had not stopped just when
he did after the second explosion.

Indeed, the bandit had intimated that
if anything went wrong he wouldn't
hesitate to biow up the train. Not five
days later, in another part of the State,
yeggmen dynamited a train on another
road for the purpose of concealing a
robbery.

The Passengers Sleep.

While all this rapid-fire excitement
was taking place up at the head of the
train, only three or four of the most
wakeful of the passengers in the sleep-
ers had the slightest inkling of what
was going on. Some were for going
ahead with Conductor Poffenberger and
putting up a fight, but most of them
dived back into their berths, and got
exceedingly busy secreting their money
and valuables in unlikely places, so as
to be protected if the trouble extended
back into their cars.

But the majority of the passengers
didn't know a thing about it until they
reached Pittsburgh the next morning and
reporters approached them for accounts
of the hold-up. The train was delayed
so short a time by the hold-up that it
came in practically on time.

At the first tower = station, Donnelly
had stopped long • enough to telegraph
the news : " Train No. 39 held up,
masked bandit, Lewistown Narrows,
1.30 this morning. Loss slight."

Within an hour a posse on a special
train was on its way from the division
headquarters to the Narrows, followed
later by Willis. The Pinkertons had
been notified, and were on their way;
the State constabulary had sent out or-
ders to look for the robber ; local and
long-distance telephones were buzzing
all over the State ; telegraphs were
spreading the news to every flag-station,
and the newspapers were hurrying the
story over the land.

With the first break of light in the

GREAT AMERICAN TRAIN ROBBERIES.

219

LEWISTON NARROWS, PENNSYLVANIA, THE SCENE OF THE LAST GREAT ROBBERY.

East, the side of the mountain was liter-
ally alive with searchers. Suddenly a
shout of joy rang out. Only a few hun-
dred feet away from the spot where the
fireman had dropped the sack, a bag
had been picked up. It was heavy, and
the searchers expected to find in it the
pennies.

They literally yelled when they saw
it was the bag of bullion. The robber
had made another blunder, and had
chosen the bag of pennies rather than
the uncoined gold.

A few hundred yards farther' was
found a bag half full of pennies — the
seal intact, but the bag slit with a knife.
EI and fuls of bright new Lincoln cents
lay scattered in every direction.

Boys were set to work picking them
up, and all but about six thousand five
hundred were recovered. Even those
made quite a load.

After the trail of pennies ended
little further was found, except the torn
and discarded envelopes of papers and
the gunny-sack with the eye-slits.

Even when bloodhounds, kept for this
very purpose by the B. and O., at Chil-

licothe, Ohio, had been brought to the
scene, and had picked up the scent, it
was soon lost.

The highwayman had disappeared as
completely as if the darkness had swal-
lowed him. The wide-flung net about
the scene never gathered him in, in spite
of the score- of dogs and over two hun-
dred officers and citizens.

And so, as usual, it was the little
fatal mistakes after the big work had
been done successfully that prevented
one of the most daring hold-ups in the
history of American railroading from
being a complete success. Until it ac-
tually happened, no railroad or express
official would have believed such a thing
within the range of possibility on the
roadway of any of the great Eastern
trunk lines.

" There has been nothing like it to
occur on any Eastern railway in some
twenty-five years," said one official.
" It won't occur again in twenty-five
more. Possibly we have fostered the be-
lief that such a thing could not be done
here in the East, and were not looking
for Wild-West episodes."

Fighting the Ticket-Scalpers.

BY H. A. KOACH,

Assistant Chairman, Railway Ticket Protective Bureau.

WE reproduce, to illustrate this article, specimens of forged tickets, others
that have been " laundered," and still others that were treated with
volatile ink. They show how far unscrupulous men will go to gain
their ends. Some of these bogus tickets were so cleverly " made " that they
fooled the keenest railroad men, and one daring scalper even boasted that it
would be mere play for. him to make a ticket that would be good " to ride
around the world."

How the Protective Bureau Finally Landed on the Dishonest Scalpers
and Began the Slow but Effective Process of •
Bringing Them to Justice.

SECOND ARTICLE.

EBRUARY 3, 1903, the nor the magnitude of the work to be

Railway Ticket Protec- accomplished in the elimination of these

tive Bureau was effectively self-constituted railroad ticket-agents,

organized. Its object, as .. The policy of the bureau was similar

stated in its articles of to that of the American Bankers' Asso-

organization, is " the de- ciation and the Jewelers' Security Alli-

tection and prosecution of forgers, coun- ance. No let-up on an)r suit commenced,

terfeiters, and unlawful manipulators of no compromise of any kind, but simply

railway tickets or other evidence of pas- constant and vigorous prosecution when-

-senger transportation, and such other ever and wherever sufficient evidence of

duties germane to its purpose as may be lawlessness had been secured.

assigned to it." It be-
came effective at once.
The policy of the
bureau was to be de-
termined and its busi-
ness conducted by an
executive board con-
sisting of the chair-
man or commissioners
of the several terri-
torial passenger asso-
ciations. It was not
realized at that time
how strongly the
scalper was entrenched

Qtszi for One Cousin wis first Class Pi

CLEVELAND "4", O.

■— to — ~ |

SHELBY. JO.

Via Short Ltrfe, and voi\ f (r One °^y
from date of sale sta n_ .a '>>„ c±

on back. "■. ^W ■' .

THIS TICKET HAS BEEN OVER THE ROAD

TWICE. EACH TIME THE CONDUCTOR'S

CANCELLATION WAS OBLITERATED

BY THE AH) OF A "B.C."

PUNCH.

The first year was
devoted to securing
data and information
showing the extent
of the frauds prac-
tised by the scalpers,
instructing conductors
how to examine rail-
road tickets to detect
manipulations, etc.
The services of a
corps of competent
detectives, familiar
with the scalping
business, was secured.

Scries began in October Railroad M»n'i Mftgasine. Single copici, (0 cents.

FIGHTING THE TICKET - SCALPERS.

221

These men were sent to the larger
cities and often obtained employment in
scalpers' offices, thus being able to render
daily reports advising the bureau of the
frauds perpetrated by these people.

Through this systematic supervision
the bureau was soon in possession of the
necessary information with which to
wage a successful warfare against this
illegal traffic.

It was found necessary to secure the

The membership lines of the bureau
were advised by circular letters of irregu-
larities discovered, and suggestions were
made to them how to safeguard their
tickets. Where a ticket was in use that
could be easily altered by scalpers, its
withdrawal and the substitution of one
more difficult to manipulate was recom-
mended.

The use of safety inks, in the filling
out of tickets, which would withstand

RAILROAD COMPANY,

CI 0512 EMP%Y^E^DPa^^ -***•■

s&%L 1905

from ^jCJtkMlJuSLajei^

GOOD UNTIL

Sis.

^SM COUNTERSIGNED BV

THIS TICKET, THE WORDS "& SON" WERE ADDED BY THE SCALPER. THE
OF THE PASS WAS EXTENDED FROM MAY 30 TO DECEMBER 30.

cooperation of the auditing departments
of the railroads, so that altered tickets
found in collections would be sent to the
bureau with as little delay as possible.

It was soon learned that the majority
of altered tickets emanated from such
cities as Atlanta, Indianapolis, Chicago,
St. Louis, Buffalo, Kansas City, Denver,
Cincinnati, San Antonio, and New Or-
leans.

Such altered tickets as came to the
notice of the bureau, through the col-
lections of the railroads or through pur-
chases made at scalpers' offices were care-
fully examined, each alteration noted and
compared with manipulations in other
altered tickets, and also with the reports
of the detectives employed by the bureau.

Checking Up Scalpers.

In this way. the workmanship of the
different ticket " fixers " became fa-
miliar and distinct traces of them and
their work could be maintained.

the acid tests, and many other sugges-
tions of a like nature were urged. Blank
forms were prepared for the use of con-
ductors when altered tickets were found
in the hands of passengers. These tick-
ets were " lifted."

The passenger was required to give
his name and' address ; date of purchase
of ticket ; name and description of party
from whom ticket was purchased, and
what rebate order, if any.

The conductor also had to secure what-
ever statement a passenger was told to
make to a conductor ; what envelopes,
cards, papers, or letters, for purpose of
•identification a passenger presented ; to
what point baggage was checked on a
ticket ; whether the baggage was checked
by the passenger or another party; also
getting a description of the ticket, with
its number, date, etc.

Many other suggestions were made and
adopted by the railroads, and it was their
cooperation with the bureau in every
matter brought to their attention which

222

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

largely contributed to the great measure
of success achieved.

If any question ever existed as to the
necessity and expediency for such an or-
ganization as the Protective Bureau,
its experience effectually dispelled the
doubt. What the bureau was enabled to
discover in the extent and character of
the frauds which were boldly perpe-
trated by these lawless ticket - scalpers
should convince even the most skeptical
that it is fitting they were put to an end.

EjreuRsiow

■ncKET.~(RET*mN Coupon.)

From

L^^t.^^r^,

To HILLSBO

VIA.

.ONLY.

GOOD FOR ONE CONTINUOUS THIP, AHD

Void after OHsjT^vyjWy 00

Not good unless stamped by Selling Agent, and presented before the
expjr&tJGn cf Time Limit. ^. ^J%

61 09 i Form E.

THIS TICKET WAS ORIGINALLY SOLD FROM LITCHFIELD TO

HILLSBORO, ILLINOIS. " LITCHFIELD " WAS REMOVED

AND "INDIANAPOLIS, IND.," SUBSTITUTED.

Perhaps the most profitable manner of
swindling the railroads was by altering
the destinations on tickets, thereby en-
hancing their value.

All Writing Removed.

For instance, a ticket would be pur-
chased by the scalpers at the railroad
station, reading over more than one rail-
road and requiring the issuance of two or
three coupons. A skeleton form of ticket
— which is one whose coupons are in
blank — would be used to route the same,
the names of the railroad line and the
destination being placed on it in writing
by the agent.

The scalper would submit the entire
ticket to a bath in certain liquids, there-
by removing all trace of writing. If
the ticket was tot? much discolored by the
acid it would be dyed or recolored with
water-colors and restored to its original
tint.

To further avoid detection it would .
be used on night trains only. The ticket

would then be routed via some line which
would permit the longest possible haul,
in this way often enhancing .the value of
the ticket ten-fold.

Good Around the World.

When one considers that a single cou-
pon frequently carries a passenger a
great distance, as from Chicago to Al-
buquerque ; and another from Albu-
querque to California points, it is easy to
see the enormous profits made
by the scalper from the sale
of tickets manipulated by
this method.

The boast made by one of
the scalpers is apropos: "Give
me any kind of ticket with
enough coupons on it, and I
will make it good to ride
around the world."

The plugging of expired
tickets, examples of which
are shown in the illustrations,
became so general that scalp-
ers thought nothing of it.
The writer recalls an incident
to the point, showing the ex-
tent of the moral perversion
among these scalpers, when
one of them called on him and protested
against the surveillance maintained on
his office.

He claimed that he Avas absolutely
honest and never resorted to altering or
changing the destination of tickets, but
ait the same time admitting frankly that
expired tickets were plugged and sold

190

by him, saying that
this and it was not
honest practise.

every scalper did
considered a dis-

In the Laundry.

It was considered good form and a
business necessity to have what is termed
a " laundry " in connection with every
ticket-scalping office. This " laundry "
was a back room where the ticket or
pass received its final touches in altera-
tions.

It is a well-known fact that almost
every pass which found its, way into the
hands of a scalper and which read,
" Good for John Brown," had the addi-
tion of " and wife " or " and sister "

FIGHTING THE TICKET - SCALPERS.

223

placed upon it, thus making it good
for two persons.

If a call came for three persons
to use the pass, the addition " and
daughter" or "and son" was made.
The railroad companies, no doubt,
would now be carrying entire bat-
talions on this class of transporta-
tion if Mr. Scalper had not been
suppressed.

Lost or stolen annual passes, is-
sued to railroad employees of dif-
ferent lines, found their way to
the scalpers, who made a specialty
of this class of transportation.
Such a pass usually had the name
of the person to whom issued type-
written on its face. All trace of writing
would be removed, the number of the
pass would be changed, and it would
then be made to read for " John Brown
and seven men " on account of " adver-
tising " or " construction."

Large Profits Made.

Parties of six or seven people would
be made up and the pass placed in the
hands of one of the creatures or em-
ployees of the crooked scalper, who would
accompany the passengers to their desti-
nation, being careful to keep the pass in
his possession.

" Old stock " (expired tickets) which
had accumulated in the hands of the
larger scalpers who were too conscien-

TICKET ORIGINALLY ISSUED TO SHORT DESTINATION,

OF A VALUE ABOUT $6, MADE TO READ FROM

KANSAS CITY TO CHICAGO, CHICAGO TO

INDIANAPOLIS AND INDIANAPOLIS TO

MONON, THEREBY ENHANCING ITS

VALUE TO ABOUT $l8.QO.

PART OF TICKET SHOWN AT BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.

tious to make the alterations themselves
or sell them over their counters to their
customers, but who were not too scrupu-
lous to dispose of them to other scalpers,
would be eagerly competed and bid for
by the smaller fry.

In fact, the saying became common
that " a ticket never expired in a scalp-
er's hands." Some of these buyers of
expired transportation traveled to smaller
cities where scalpers had been in business
for years, and for a few dollars pur-
chased large numbers of such tickets.

Even if some of them could not be
revived, due to the fact that the year
calendar limits would not permit, they
could always be used for matching or
plugging other tickets, the paper of
which was the same color, and the cou-
pons used to paste onto other con-
tracts— thus making one ticket out
of two.

The contract form, giving the
year, month, and date calendars, is
generally termed a " header," and
represents the issuing line. Cou-
pons can, of course, be routed via
any line with which the contract-
ing lines has interline routing
agreements, and, therefore, large
profits could be made by the use
of the coupons from the expired
tickets.

Frequently, through tickets are
canceled by the first conductor by
one or two punches in the lower
right-hand corner, by the second
conductor in the middle of lower
part of ticket, and are supposed
to be taken up by the third con-

224

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

ductor. Scalpers will send a ticket the
distance of the first conductor's run, re-
ceive the ticket back by mail, showing
but one cancellation in lower right-hand
corner.

With their shears they will cut off this
cancellation and send the ticket out for
a second run. If the cancellation can-
not be removed in this way, it is altered
by the aid of the " B. C." punch, which
indicates that baggage has been checked.

This " B. C." punch usually obliterates
the conductor's cancellation. If this
cannot be done, cancellations are prompt-
ly plugged, and in this way, two or three
and sometimes as high as ten rides, over
the division of this conductor, can be ac-
complished before the ticket is finally
sent through to its destination.

More Scheming.

To avoid the scrutiny of the gate-
keepers, a ticket is purchased to some
short destination and presented at the
gate so as to permit the passenger to pass
through. He is told to present the ticket
bearing the longer destination to the con-
ductor, who, supposing that it has passed
the scrutiny of the gatekeeper does not
give it as close an examination as he
should.

If the conductor is known to be care-
ful or " wise " to altered tickets, the
scalper either avoids sending such ticket
over his run or furnishes the passenger
with a ticket to the end of the conduc-
tor's run, and instructs the passenger to
present the altered ticket to the second
conductor, the scalper having first placed
proper cancellations on it to mislead the
second conductor into the belief that it
has passed the scrutiny of the first one.

To the layman who is unfamiliar with
the methods of railroading, it would
seem impossible or unreasonable that
forged tickets could be used to such an
extent as to seriously affect the revenues
of the railroads.

It would be reasoned that, inasmuch
as tickets are cancelled by the conductor,
and turned into the auditing department,
the fraud would be discovered at once.
This is true provided the tickets always
reach the auditing departments, but this
is not the case.

One of the cleverest forgeries perpe-

trated in Chicago a few years ago was
by the following method:

An entire forged ticket, purporting to
be issued at some Eastern point, having
but one coupon to its destination via a
Western railroad, was extensively dealt
in by a gang of forgers, who never sold
the ticket to its destination, but to some
point short.

Rebate from Passengers.

In other words, they never permitted
the ticket to get into the hands of the
last conductor to cancel it. They would
exact a rebate from the passenger, draw
a sight draft on the bank in the town
where he was going for the amount of
the rebate, and would at once send to
this bank the amount to be paid on de-
livery of the ticket, the bank returning
the unused portion of the ticket to them
by mail.

So careful were they to whom they
sold this ticket, that a prospective pur-
chaser would be shadowed during the
entire day by boys employed for the pur-
pose.

If the passenger in any way aroused
suspicion by entering one of the regular
railroad ticket-offices or a building
where one of the passenger associations
was located, or could not give the names
of reputable citizens of Chicago to vouch
for him, the ticket would not be deliv-
ered to him.

It required considerable skill and pa-
tience to gather sufficient evidence with
which to successfully prosecute this gang
of forgers, but if was finally accomplished
and they were sentenced to terms in the
penitentiary of Illinois.

I recall quite vividly an instance in
the trial where one of them made the
claim that we could never produce evi-
' dence to convict, as they had been careful
not to sell to " stiffs " — a " stiff " being
some one employed by the bureau to test
the scalpers.

His Waterloo.

This name was also given to any one
arousing suspicion. A clerk would use
the words " stiff hat " in conversation
with a scalper to indicate that the party
trying to purchase a ticket was a spotter.

FIGHTING THE TICKET - SCALPERS.

225

At the trial in question, the
witnesses had been kept in the
background, but during the con-
versation had with the scalper,
an elderly, benign gentleman en-
tered the court-room.

The scalper gave a horrified
gasp and exclaimed, " Great
Heavens ! That isn't one of your
witnesses, is it? "

I replied that it was.

He said, " Let me tell you.
That old man was passing my
office one morning with a folder
in his hands. He looked so good
to me that I asked him if he
would not like to buy a cheap
ticket. He replied that he
would ; that he was here visit-
ing his daughter, but that he in-
tended to return to his home in
Minnesota the next night.

" He was so unsophisticated,
apparently, that I induced him
to buy one of these ' phoneys,'
never even requiring him to pay
a rebate, but simply giving him
an envelope directed to me in
which to return the unused por-
tion.

" I gave him a lot of advice as
to the many pitfalls of a great
city, even going so far as to take
him to the elevated railroad and
showing him just how to reach
his daughter's the easiest way.
I surely got a hot one when I
picked up this chap."

We are glad to state that this
benevolent-looking old man made
one of our best witnesses and
aided materially in the conviction
of the forgers.

There was considerable danger
in the printing of an entire
fraudulent issue of railroad tick-
ets. A safer, but as profitable,
method was purchasing tickets to
some short destination directly
from the railroad companies. This des-
tination would then be erased and a
destination to some point on a branch
line close to a junction point would

EXCURSION TICKEtT

1 CT C^CP

woo&mlyfar Continuous Trie bem'-n 'Zi o« 2a VV^'iLi

tfontjrtbr Conti nuous Trip'bugin nin8 on da it of *ale

4o;

Via- !

issued

Void dfte

ForhrTi^

NASHVILLE, TENN.

To dbjjpeairateffifei

itVIN V "*$& lS,,hKT^?S/?nd Stub must be fi-'l«» Vainly
..itn ikk. Tn;s Stub with Coupon attached ff «olH -f™- a

^ 2S&3** O'^thotrt Coupon if soS fbr abound T^Su^bt

CO:

: Li E q b v i£=

> tOUI5VltLE^H5 NaSHVILL£ RAl L ROAD CO**

VC^auoziiBas.

TlSS|W»-722-Tia»-*2-3a-90I14-I75.TgS^21tfr-
33/J-4#8-42T-478-%9Q.609-670.CSr-Cia5-rr40 (*T7I
F143-rfe4F(77 H272-H322|H332

H469-N6 63-KB!90-UC22d^
NO STOP-OVER ALLOWED. " Gen. p«s a^*

HERE ARE REPRODUCED THE STUB AND GOING AND
RETURNING- COUPONS OF A TICKET ISSUED BY THE LOUIS-
VILLE AND NASHVILLE RAILROAD, APRIL 2J, 1898, FROM
NASHVILLE TO LOUISVILLE AND RETURN, AT ONE FARE
FOR THE ROUND TRIP. THE GOING PORTION OF THIS
TICKET WAS PROPERLY USED. WHEN THE RETURN POR-
TION APPEARED IN THE COLLECTIONS OF THE AUDITOR
IT WAS DISCOVERED THAT THE TINT HAD BEEN ENTIRE-
LY REMOVED FROM IT AND THAT . THE WORD "CIN-
CINNATI " HAD BEEN SUBSTITUTED FOR THE WORD
"LOUISVILLE." ALSO THAT THE RETURN LIMIT HAD
BEEN RAISED FROM MAY 31, 1898, TO JUNE 27, 1898.
THE ACTION OF THE ACIDS NECESSARY TO REMOVE
THESE NAMES ALSO DESTROYED THE TINT. COMPARISON
ALSO SHOWS A DIFFERENCE IN STAMPS OF THE WORD
"SPECIAL." ,

conductors changed, the ticket Avould re-
main in the passenger's hands, merely
showing the first conductor's punches,
and he would pay cash fare from the
be printed on them, the printing making junction point to his destination. At the
the ticket appear more bona fide than destination the ticket would be turned
writing would have done. over to a confederate of the scalper and

This junction' point being where the a small rebate paid the passenger. The

3 R R

226

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

ticket would be returned to the original
scalper, who would use it again and
again after the cancellations had been
plugged.

Crooked Scalpers Organize.

The rebating of these forged tickets
necessitated some organization of the
crooked scalpers, and what was known
as the " American Traveling Brokers'
Association " was formed. This organi-
zation had no offices or officers, and its
only purpose was to hoodwink the travel-
ing public into the belief that they were
dealing with members of a legitimate
organization among the scalpers known
as the "American Ticket Brokers' Asso-
ciation."

The members of the fake association
displayed membership certificates on
their walls to which they would point
when passengers hesitated about buying
a ticket, saying, " We are regular mem-
bers of the American Brokers' Associa-
tion ; we guarantee our transactions and
if anything should happen that this
transportation is not accepted, we would
be compelled to refund your money."

These men, in case of arrest and prose-
cution, would flock to the aid of each
other, many would commit perjury with-
out the slightest hesitation, approach
jurors during the progress of the trial,
and in fact would do everything thqy
could to defeat the ends of justice.

A Special Ink Used.

One of the earliest impositions prac-
tised by the scalpers was that of using
volatile ink in signing tickets. This ink
when dry could readily be removed by
rubbing with a cloth or brush. In pur-
chasing a round trip signature form of
ticket from the agent at the station, the
passenger would be instructed to use a
fountain pen furnished by the scalper,
containing this ink, and to sign his name
lightly.

The ticket would then be used to
its destination, the return portion rebated
at the scalper's agent, who would prompt-
ly remove the signature as explained,
placing thereon the name of some other
purchaser to whom he had sold this por-
tion of the ticket.

Children's tickets, issued at half rate,
or half tickets were another source of
profitable income. The figure " y2 "
which had been cut out by a punch would
be plugged, or if written in it would
be erased, and in this way the ticket
could be made good for an adult.

One of the most flagrant swindles per-
petrated by the scalpers was that of in-
ducing passengers to use what they
termed the " Fast Stock Express."

In a large city like Chicago there are
many men who are temporarily stranded
and who are willing to ride in almost any
kind of car to reach their homes.

The scalpers had arrangements to fur-
nish helpers to a number of stockyard
agents who shipped cattle to Eastern
points. These helpers were required to
" punch up " the cattle that fell down
in the cars. Long poles were furnished
these helpers and the work was very
arduous.

" Fast Stock Express."

The scalper would tell a party who
came to him for a cheap ticket that he
would get him home for a small sum.
He would, of course, have to ride on the
" Fast Stock Express," but that it only
took some three or four hours longer
than the passenger - trains to make the
tup. Furthermore, he would have a de-
lightful journey, and could rest in the
caboose, which was almost as comfort-
able as a sleeping-car.

After separating the unsophisticated
one from his money a trip would be made
to the stock-yards, the man turned over
to the agent, and the profits divided. The
agent would put the man in the caboose,
and after the train left the city the vic-
tim would be handed a long pole and
told to work.

If he refused he would promptly " hit
the gravel " some tAvo or three hundred
miles away.

It frequently happened that more vic-
tims were secured than could be accom-
modated on these stock-trains, but this
did not deter the scalpers from taking
the money for the " Fast Stock Express."

One night a Polish Hebrew was found
sitting disconsolately in an empty caboose
at the stock-yards. The night-watchman
asked him what he was doing. He said

FIGHTING "THE TICKET-SCALPERS.

227

he was waiting for the train to start,
that he had paid his money to a ticket-
scalper who had put him aboard the
caboose, which he could not be induced
to leave until the police were called.

He afterward endeavored to get his
money back from the scalper, but was
compelled to sue. The case was aired
in "all the newspapers at the time. Many
letters of complaint were received by the
scalpers from their victims whom they
had induced to take this journey, which
they read to each other with merriment.

The railroads thought that they had
solved the problem of avoiding manipu-
lations and alterations of tickets when
they instituted what is called a train
check. All tickets presented on trains
were at once taken in charge by the con-
ductor and train checks were issued. In
this way a ticket was at once turned over
to the auditors. ,

Train Checks Useless.

It was found, however, that the
scalpers were as expert in forging these
train checks as they were in forging
tickets. Entire issues of them were
counterfeited, and the same methods
were used to prevent their falling into
the hands of the auditors as in the case
of tickets. The following clever method
was evolved by a Denver scalper :

A train check bearing 'a thirty-day
limit reading from Denver to Chicago
would come into his hands. He would
sell .forged train checks, bearing this
same number, as far as Kansas City,
having them mailed back to him by an
associate on whom it was rebated.

He continued to issue forged train
checks during the entire month, bearing
the same number as the original, the
numbers being placed on with a number-

ing machine. In this way he could keep
a train check working every day, bearing
the same number; but if, by chance, the
forged train check was not mailed back
to him he would cease using that number
immediately.

The forged check going to the audi-
tors would check up with the envelope
from which the original had been taken
and, of course, would be found correct.
Thousands of dollars were lost to the
railroads by this method before it was
exposed and the guilty scalper prose-
cuted.

Worked Even When Insane.

Such, in brief, Avere the miscreants
the Protective Bureau were pitted
against. It found them bold because
they had so long been undisturbed in
their vocation. It found them skilful
because their calling required skill. It
found them hardened in their vicious
practises. But, in the end, it invariably
found them cowardly and cringing when
brought face to face with the law.

A certain scalper, one of the cleverest
ticket-forgers in the country, wa's em-
ployed by a St. Louis scalper, solely for
the purpose of altering and forging
tickets. His work became well known,
and the constant fear of arrest and prose-
cution, together with the close confine-
ment day after day and month after
month, shattered his health and he be-
came a nervous wreck. Finally he was
taken to an insane asylum, where he died.
It is said that during the time he was
in the asylum the only thing that would
quiet him was to give him pieces of
colored paper, some paste and the tools
of a ticket-forger, with which he would
contentedly work, under the delusion that
he was still alterine; railroad tickets.

The third and last article in Mr. Koach's series will appear in our December number.
It will deal with the methods by which the dishonest scalpers were finally put out of business.

A TALLOW-POT'S LAMENT.

BY JOHN G. RUSSELL.

Written for "The Railroad Man's Magazine.

^HE engineer rides on his seat;

1 he conductor rides back in the car ;
The brakey, by Moses !
Leads a life full of roses,
But the tallow-pot handles the bar!

The yardman, he's home every night;
The hogger, he sleeps on the road;

The hostler gets hay

All night and all da}
But the fire-boy must move all the load.

The trunk-smasher's job is a pipe;

The flaggy, his job is a dream;
But you hear me whoop
For the lad with the scoop,

'Cause he manufactures the steam!

It's down with his dirty old phiz,
A shoveling fit to beat sin;

The conductor's all right,

A neat, pretty sight,
But the fire-boy gets 'em all in!

The brass collars, t. m's., and supe's
Are dandy when all's said and done,

But they couldn't go far

If the lad with the bar
Didn't hustle 'em over his run!

So sing of your bold engineer,
Driving a monster of steel!

He is great in his place,

But if old dirty face
Don't hustle, he won't turn a wheel!

228

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

BY JOHN MACK STONE.

Three People Take an Involuntary Voyage
and Uncle Sam Is Defied to His Face.

CHAPTER I.

A Fight in the Bay.

ERHAPS it was because I
was raised inland that the
boat interested me. I stood
at the edge of the dock, ten
feet above the surface of the
water, looking down at it
intently. Of course, I had seen skiffs on
the park ponds, and larger rowboats on
the inland rivers, but never such a row-
boat as this — a craft where twenty men
could work at the oars, and wide enough
to. permit a line of passengers between
the rowers.

It was shaped peculiarly, too — cut
away at the bo\. to permit a speedy pas-
sage through the water, low amidships,
raised high at the stern. This high stern
fascinated me, and I caught myself won-
dering why it should have -been built
so. I was to learn within an hour just
why ; and to give thanks that it was so.

Almost before I realized it, it was
dark. I took my eyes from the boat and
looked out upon San Francisco Bay. A
short distance away a brilliantly lighted
man-of-war rode at anchor. Out toward
the Golden Gate, red and green lights
told Avhere a tramp steamer was anchored.
The boat below me belonged to the
tramp steamer. I knew that much, for
I had seen it leave the steamer three
hours before.

I had watched, fascinated, as the
regular, long sweep of the oars carried
it across the water toward the dock. From
a distance I had watched the men disem-
bark— a crew of tough-looking ruffians
I thought at the time, the majority of
them foreigners, jabbering some foreign

tongue, their hands and faces seamed by
rough work and living, and red from con-
tact with sun and wind and sea. They
had gone up one of the narrow side-
streets, leaving one of their number be-
hind to guard the boat.

I had watched, too, as this fellow
paced back and forth restlessly, mutter-
ing to himself, evidently chagrined be-
cause he could not join his companions
in their revel, or work, whatever it was
that had brought them ashore. After
an hour had passed, he had slipped away
into another side-street, perhaps to some
resort. And at the time I stood above
their boat, as night was falling, none
of them had returned.

It came to my mind suddenly that my
interest in things which were new to me
had dulled my common sense, that it was
already far past the dinner - hour, and
that my uncle would be anxious concern-
ing my whereabouts.

It would be better to explain here and
now that my uncle is Richard Engle, the
famous explorer. A month before, he
had visited my mother and me in our
home town in Indiana, and had enter-
tained us with tales of adventure in for-
eign lands.

He announced that it was necessary
for him to make a trip to San Francisco
on business, and I begged to be allowed
to go along. My mother had consented ;
that was how I came to be looking fool-
ishly down on this wonderful boat in
San Francisco Harbor.

Everything interested me during the
ride to the coast, but it was after I
reached the sea that my real interest was
aroused. For a week I had made daily
pilgrimages to the bay, there to sit on

229

230

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

the dock and watch the ships come and
go, load and unload, arrive from and
depart for the uttermost parts of the
earth.

This was the first time, however, that
I had failed to return to the hotel by six
o'clock. I decided that I should return
at once and never remain away so late
again. I remembered, too, that Uncle
Dick had tickets for the theater, and
if I did not hurry we should be late at
the play.

As I turned to go up the dock toAvard
the street, there came a Babel of cries
behind me, the rush of many feet,
screams and curses, and a shot. It
seemed that my heart stood still. I was
utterly unable to move, for the din was
one to strike terror to the heart of a boy
unused to such events.

Before I could step to one side the
rush of men was upon me. In the dark-
ness I could not see much, could only
realize that the men were those I had
seen come ashore in the boat below me.
They had been drinking, evidently, and
had had trouble with the police, for they
seemed highly excited, and cried to each
other loudly, and rushed toward the boat,
intent only upon getting in her and get-
ting aAvay.

The rush came so quickly that there
was no time for me to escape.

Half a dozen men hurled themselves
against me, I felt my feet slip, felt my-
self falling through space, gave a scream
that was not heard in that unearthly din,
struck against something hard with such
force that the breath was knocked out
of me. Before I could regain my feet
half a dozen men were upon me, falling,
fighting, screaming, struggling to get
at the oars.

Other men sprang down upon us,
sprawled to their positions, cried out to
each other in voices of anger and fear.
I realized dimly that one man was fight-
ing as though to regain his liberty, that
his clothes were half torn from his body.

I saw an oar lifted, saw it descend,
saw this man who fought rendered sense-
less by the blow. I had not seen his
face, yet I had seen enough to convince
me that he was not like the others, but
was American or English.

Some one gave a command in a loud
voice, and then T realized for the first

time that I had been thrust into the big
boat at the foot of the dock by mistake,
and that the boat was rushing through
the water- as fast as the rowers could
send it.

On the dock there was another chorus
of cries.

" Stop ! Stop, or we'll fire ! " screamed
a voice.

The men in the boat began cursing
again. I heard shots, saw flashes of
fire back at the dock, heard bullets
whistle by. Instinctively I flinched and
got down as low as possible in the bot-
tom of the boat.

Two men who were not rowing began
to fire in return. Then a regular battle
began between the men in the boat and
the men on the dock, and all the time
the cursing rowers pulled at their oars,
rushing the big boat through the water.

Directly in front of me a man
screamed, threw his hands above his
head, and toppled to one side. One of
the men who had been firing at the
dock sprang to the vacant place. The
Avounded man was kicked aside.

I had been unable so far to make my
presence knoAvn, and noAv fear clutched
at my heart, for such brutality Avas neAv
to me, and I began to AA-onder wrhat my
fate Avould be at the hands of these men.

I decided to remain in hiding as long
as possible, to Avait until my presence
in the boat Avas discovered, and then
tell a truthful story and trust to their
mercy, or the mercy of their commander.
The men on the dock AA-ere still firing,
but the men in the boat had ceased to
reply to their fire.

Near the stern there Avas a pile of
canvas, and toAA-ard this I crept as cau-
tiously as possible. OAving to the dark-
ness and excitement no one saAv me.

As I reached the pile of cloth I noticed
for the first time that a motor-boat Avas
coming after us SAviftly, and Avondered
Avhether it Avas endeaA-oring to overtake
us. I Avas not to remain in doubt long,
for as the motor-boat approached some
one in it commanded our boat to stop,
and upon getting no ansAVer, opened fire.

I crept beneath the camras. My heart
Avas pounding at my ribs. Our boat
stopped, and the firing became heaA-ier.
All the roAArers AArere using their Aveapons
now.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

231

Presently the boat shot forward again.
I put my head from beneath the canvas.
The lights of the motor-boat were far
astern. The men in it had been slain,
or had retreated before the heavy fire.
I could tell by the lights that the motor-
boat was putting back toward the shore.

Then I looked ahead and saw that
we were near the tramp steamer. As
we drew nearer, some one from the
steamer hailed, some one from our boat
answered. We drew alongside, and the
men scrambled over each other in a
frenzied effort to get on deck.

By peering from beneath the pile of
sail-cloth I saw the two men handed up
— the sailor who had been shot and the
other man who had been rendered sense-
less by a blow from an oar.

There were quick demands from some
one who spoke in a tone of authority.
I hid beneath the canvas again, for the
boat was being swung to the deck of the
steamer.

My sensations at that moment were
unpleasant, and I shall not attempt to
describe them. It seemed that even be-
fore the boat I was in had reached the
deck the steamer was under way and
rushing down the bay toward the Golden
Gate.

My terror increased. I was on a ship
leaving port, bound I knew not where,
companion to men whose appearance be-
spoke them brutes and who were "evi-
dently at outs with law-abiding people.
What was to become of me? What
would my uncle think?

I peered from beneath the canvas
again, crawled out and raised my head
cautiously until I could look down at the
deck. A group of men stood beneath a
light before the forward mast.

In the center, of the group, upon the
deck, was the body of a man — the man
who had been struck with the oar. One
of the sailors was dashing water in his
face, another was holding liquor to his
lips.

He seemed to regain consciousness,
then struggled to his feet quickly and
faced toward me, the sailors holding
back his arms so that he could do no
harm. As he faced the one I took to be
the ship's captain, the light fell full
upon him.

I gave a cry that would have betrayed

me but for the throbbing of the ship's
engines and the roar of the wind through
the rigging.

The man on the deck below, clothes
half torn from him, his face covered
with blood and dirt, his eyes flashing
angrily — was Uncle Dick !

CHAPTER II.

Under Fire.

CO great was my astonishment that I
^ lifted myself half over the gunwale
of the boat, trying to see and to hear.
Then I realized my position, and be-
came more cautious.

The steamer was rushing ■ down the
bay toward the harbor entrance, the
black smoke pouring from her stack. Far
behind, another vessel rushed after us,
evidently a police tug or a revenue cut-
ter. I saw all this at a glance, then
gave my entire attention to the scene on
the deck below ,me.

Uncle Dick was still struggling with
the men who held him, and as I watched
his struggling ceased, and I knew from
the look in his face that he felt this was
a time for cunning rather than brute
force.

" What is the meaning of this out-
rage?" I heard him demand. "What
ship is this? Where is her commander? "

The man I had taken to be captain
stepped nearer Uncle Dick and laughed.

" This is a steamer that changes its
name whenever it pleases the skipper,"
he said. " The skipper changes his name
as often as he pleases, also. At present
this is the steamer Faraway, and I am
Captain Hawson."

" Why was I decoyed to the water-
front, and there seized and made pris-
oner and carried aboard this craft? " my
uncle demanded again. "If you have
made a mistake in the man it would be
better to right it instantly."

"Your name is Richard Engle?" de-
manded Captain Hawson.

" If it is, what follows? "

" Well, if it is, it follows that there
has been no mistake," the captain re-
plied with his evil grin.

My uncle shook himself free of the
two sailors who held him and took a
step forward, facing Captain. Hawson.

232

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" Will you tell me why I am on this
ship?" he demanded.

"Do you not know?" the captain
asked.

" Most certainly I do not. Where is
this ship bound? "

" The port is not on the charts," said
the captain laughing.

" I demand that you answer me ! "

"Demand away!" cried Captain
HaAvson. " You are not going to whip
my entire crew and force an explanation,
are you? "

There was no mistaking the venom in
the captain's voice. My uncle turned
and glanced around him at the evil faces
glowering at him.

" A splendid collection of thugs ! " he
cried. " You must have scraped the
slums of the world to get them ! "

Evidently some of the men understood
English, for there were quick murmurs
among them, and two or three started
toward him. But Captain Hawson
raised a hand in warning.

" Don't touch him ! " he cried. " I'll
shoot down the first man who raises a
hand against Mr. Engle."

Uncle Dick whirled upon him.

" So ! " he cried, laughing himself.
" That is the way matters stand. You
have walked into my little trap. You
have not decoyed me aboard the Faraway
for purposes of your own, then, but are
only an agent for some one else.

" Very well. If you have orders to
deliver me a prisoner at a certain port,
be sure that you carry out your orders."

" We'll carry out the orders, all right,"
answered the captain angrily.

" And in the meantime, no matter how
nasty I get, you will see that I am not
harmed— is that it? I am worth money
to you if delivered to a certain port
alive, and worth nothing to you if dead.
Is that it? Now we understand each
other."

" Perhaps we do not," said the cap-
tain.

" You'll not tell me the ship's destina-
tion? "

" Not at present."

"I am to make myself at home aboard,
I suppose? "

" You are to be made comfortable.
But do not try any tricks," Captain Haw-
son warned. " You might as well take it

easy. I have nothing to do but capture
and deliver you. I'm not supposed to
torture you. The torture, I" understand,
will come later."

Again the captain smiled that evil
smile, and turned to give some orders to
one of the crew. My uncle brushed back
the hair from his brow, and looked ahead
toward the Golden Gate.

" My dear captain," he said, " you are
perhaps forgetting that "your men cre-
ated something of a disturbance while
capturing me. You are perhaps unaware
that the police knew something was
wrong; that I was able to call out to
them that I was being abducted. It is
just possible that there is trouble in store
for you. There is a tug following."

" The tug will scarcely overtake us
once we are upon the sea," the captain
said.

" It is possible that the fortifications
at Golden Gate have been warned,"
Uncle Dick said. " They may be on the
outlook for you."

" A ship has the right to- leave port,
sir," the captain thundered.

" Not at night without proper clear-
ance papers, especially when her skipper
and crew run away from the police."

" I am not worrying about the fortifi-
cations," the captain said.

" Then there are revenue cutters."

" They'll have to hurry to catch us."

" Perhaps you are used to evading the
authorities," my uncle insinuated.

Captain Hawson walked nearer to
him.

" Perhaps I have had some little ex-
perience in that line," he admitted. "And
perhaps your talking about it will do no
good. Suppose we let the matter drop
for the time being."

" Willingly," my uncle replied. " Es-
pecially as you are to Te busy with other
things for the present."

"What do you mean?" the captain
asked.

" There ! "

I saw Uncle Dick point to port. From
one of the splendid fortifications which
guard San Francisco's harbor a long,
bright finger of light shot out and illu-
minated the bay. Back and forth it
swept, resting for a couple of seconds
upon every vessel it spotted. They were
sweeping the bay with searchlights.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

233

Captain Hawson issued orders quickly.
Before he .had concluded the search-
light rested upon the Faraway, followed
it, made every inch of the ship as light
as day.

The Faraway continued on- her course.
Behind us the tug gave sharp, quick
whistles, imperative commands for us
to stop. Captain Hawson gave them no
attention.

I heard the report of a heavy gun, and
realized that the fort was issuing a com-
mand of its own. Still the steamer con-
tinued on her way. Other searchlights
flashed out from the other fortifications.
The narrow harbor entrance was as light
as light could make it.

There came another shot from the
fort, miore whistles from the following
tug. Then the whistle of the Faraway
spoke, loud and clear, like a human
being demanding to know what the row
was about. I saw two of the men run
aft, saw them unfurl the Stars and
Stripes to the breeze. Then the Faraway
whistled again, and kept on.

But the forts were not satisfied. There
was another report, and a shell screamed
past ahead of the steamer. Instead of
stopping she put on more speed and
dashed into the entrance.

Searchlights flashed angrily, the pur-
suing tug continued her staccato whis-
tling. I beard the report of another
gun, heard something strike, saw a blind-
ing flash, and heard a deafening roar.

The fort had done with nonsense.
The shell had struck the deck, and a
splinter had evidently smashed into some
part of the boat in which I was con-
cealed. Cries told me that some one had
been injured. Throwing caution to the
winds, I raised my head above the side
of the boat and peered down.

Two men were wounded upon the
deck. Captain Hawson was cursing and
crying out orders at the top of his voice.
Uncle Dick stood beside the mast, one
hand upon it, smiling at the scene.

" Perhaps you had better stop the
steamer," I heard him say.

Captain Hawson looked keenly down
the narrow, illuminated strait for a mo-
ment, then smiled queerly. He shouted
an order, and slowly the ship's engines
quieted their throbbing, and she stopped.
A confident smile crossed uncle's face.

"So you have concluded that discre-
tion is the part of valor that appeals
most to you just now? " he said.

" Exactly," answered the captain,
strangely undisturbed. " I hate to waste
United States powder almost as much
as I hate to run the gantlet when there is
an easier way to escape."

Scarcely had he finished before it was
apparent what he meant. The vanguard
of a dense sea-fog was already creeping
over the bow and turning the white
searchlight to a dirty yellow. Soon the
daylike glare had become an elusive,
scarce visible, smear, and to sight a gun
upon any object in the Golden Gate
would have been an absolute impossi-
bility. A sharp, triumphant order came
from Captain Hawson, and the Faraway
dashed recklessly on and on, courting
destruction every moment, but with the
luck of daring she gained the open sea.

CHAPTER III.

I Meet a Lady.

HP WO men sprang forward to carry out
A Captain Hawson's command to cut
away the wrecked boat in which I lay.
I felt the ropes give as they worked at
them. We were outside the range of the
searchlights now, and it was almost pitch
dark,' save where the light from the mast
cast its narrow reflection.

While the men worked at the ropes
below I slipped as near the deck as pos-
sible, undecided whether to show myself
or to make an attempt at escape. The
sea decided it for me ; for, as the last
rope gave away, the itearher lurched to
starboard, my hands were wrenched
loose, and I fell toward the deck.

As I fell, the half-wrecked boat went
over the side into the ocean. The two
men had sprung to the rail to see that it
cleared properly. I struck the deck on
my feet, within half a dozen yards of
them.

There was a large coil of rope near
by, and I was able to dash behind it. In
the darkness they did not see me, and
the roaring of the sea and wind prevent-
ed them hearing me.

" You'll have to submit to a search,
sir," I heard Captain Hawson tell my
uncle.

234

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

I heard my uncle laugh in reply, and
after a time the captain's voice again :

" Very good. You are at liberty to
come and go -as you please, so long as
you do not attempt any tricks. If you
do that I'll be obliged to confine you in
your cabin, of course."

" I have had no dinner," Uncle Dick
reminded him.

" I beg your pardon. You shall be
served immediately."

He called one of the crew and gave
him orders. Uncle Dick and the men
walked down the deck, within half a
dozen feet of me. Then they disappeared
below.

I took stock of my predicament. I
wanted to let Uncle Dick know that I
was aboard, and how I came to be there,
yet I did not wish to be discovered by
the crew. I remained behind the coil of
rope for fully half an hour before ma-
king a move.

The sea was comparatively calm, and
I had grown used to the rolling of the
steamer. I crept from my place of con-
cealment, and made my way cautiously
along the deck, keeping away from the
lights.

At a cabin door I heard voices and
hurried by. Once a sailor hurried by me,
and I crouched against the cabin, my
heart pounding at my ribs.

I was afraid to attempt to go below,
for there were lights everywhere, and
there was the danger of running into
some one coming up. So I went on to-
ward the stern.

I found no way there of getting below,
and dared not go too close to the man at
the wheel. I returned, and stood just
outside the circle of light, peering down,
wondering how I was to get to my uncle
without any one seeing me.

While I stood there Captain Hawson
came from forward and went below. He
entered the first cabin to the right.

I waited a moment, then followed him,
slipping down as quickly as possible. I
heard voices in the first cabin, among
them those of Captain Hawson and
Uncle Dick. There were footsteps upon
the deck. Some one was coming down.

There was no time to lose, no time in
which to plan. Without hesitation I
stepped to the first door on the left,
grasped the knob, felt it turn and the

door open, and the next instant was
inside the dark cabin, with the door
closed. I was just in time, for the steps
outside told me one of the c^ew had
come below to see the skipper.

I gasped for breath, and turned from
the door. There was no light in the
cabin except that which filtered in under
the door. The porthole was closed, and
I started to walk across toward it. Be-
fore I reached it I stopped, and my heart
stood still.

" Who is there? " a voice had asked.

I did not reply. The voice came to
me again.

"Who is there? Speak instantly or
I'll fire at you .L"

It was a woman's voice, but there was
the ring of determination in it, which
told me she did not speak without true
meaning.

I threw myself upon the floor.

" Don't fire ! For God's sake don't
fire ! " I gasped.

"Who are you?"

The words came from across the cabin,
where I judged the bunk to be. I heard
the swish of her skirts as she moved.
Then a match flared up, was touched to
a candle, and the light shaded. I sat up
on the floor.

" A boy ! " I heard her gasp in sur-
prise.

" Don't shoot ! " I implored.

She held a revolver in one hand, the
candle in the other, as she moved to-
ward me, trying to see me better.

"What are you doing here?" she de-
manded.

" I do not intend to harm you,'-' I an-
swered. " I — I had to come in here. If
I hadn't he would have seen me."

" Who would have seen }~ou? "

" One of the men. He was coming
below. I was standing outside. I opened
the nearest door, to escape him. He did
not see me enter."

" Who are you? " she asked.

" My name is Roland Burke."

" What are you doing aboard this
ship?"

" I was standing at the dock," I ex-
plained. " The men came back, running
away from the police, and I was hurled
into their boat before I could get away.
No one knows I am on this ship. You'll
not tell them? "

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

235

" I don't understand yet," she said.

" Don't you? They had captured a
man, and were bringing him to the ship.
After we got here I found that the man
they captured was my uncle."

" Your uncle? "

" Yes — Richard Engle. He is an ex-
plorer. Do you know him?"

For she had given a little cry when I
spoke my uncle's name.

" Never mind that," she said. " Why
do they want your ^uncle ? "

" I don't know," I replied. " They
are going to take him somewhere, so the
captain said."

" And no one knows you are on
board?"

"No one. You'll not tell them, will
yea? I want to get to my uncle, of
course, and let him know ; but I don't
want to tell the others. I am afraid."

She put the candle down upon the
table, and reached down and helped me
to my feet.

" You poor boy," she said.

" Why do you say that? " I asked.

" Do not ask questions now," she re-
plied, and there was a deal of sadness in
her voice.

" You didn't tell me your name," I .
said. " I want to thank you for not tell-
ing them I am here."

" My name is Ruth Holland," she re-
plied.

" Do you know why they are treating
Uncle Dick so?" I asked.

" Let us not talk about that now," she
said. " I think I know, but the story is
too long for me to tell you now."

" He isn't in danger, is he? "

"He is in grave danger," she said.
" We must help him — you and I. But
we must be careful now. They must not
know you are o 1 the ship. We'll have
to wait, Roland, until we get a chance — "

She ceased whispering, for there were
steps outside again, and some one knocked
on the door. Miss Holland pulled at
my arm, and motioned for me to get be-
neath the bunk. Then she dropped the
bed-clothing carelessly, so that I could
not be seen.

" Who is there? " she called.

" Captain Hawson. I want to enter."

" Come in," she responded.

The door opened, and I heard the
captain enter.

" You have been sleeping? " he asked.

" Yes," she said.

" I was afraid the gunfire had alarmed
you. There is no need for fear now."

" I did not hear it," she replied.

" The forts tried to stop us," the cap-
tain said. " We are away now, and
safe. Do you feel like eating dinner? "

"Can you not serve it in here?" she
asked. " I'd rather eat alone."

" No one will disturb you if you eat
in the other cabin. It would be more
convenient."

I heard him step across the cabin.

"What are you going to do?" she
asked.

" The bedclothes are falling on the
floor."

" I'll arrange them," she said quickly.
" Will you serve my dinner in here to-
night? "

" As you please," he answered, and
went out.

Miss Holland stepped across to the
bunk.

" Get against the wall and lie perfect-
ly still, Roland," she instructed me. " I
don't think you'll be discovered. I had
my dinner brought here, for I knew you
must be hungry."

" Thank you," I whispered in reply.

I was famished. I knew it the mo-
ment Captain Hawson spoke of dinner,
though, in the excitement, I had not real-
ized it before. I lay against the wall,
as she had told me, for several minutes.
Then I heard the door open again, and
some one come in.

" Captain sent dinner, miss," some one
said. I

" Put it on the table," she replied.

"Shall I wait?"

" Certainly not. I desire to dine
alone. I'll put the tray outside when I
have finished."

" Very well, miss."

The man withdrew, and for a moment
or so I heard no sound. Then Miss
Holland cautiously lifted the clothing
which hid me.

" Come out, Roland," she said ; " but
be ready to go to your hiding-place
quickly, if. any one comes."

That was a good dinner, and I en-
joyed it, although there was a scarcity of
knives, forks, and spoons. It was no
time for etiquette, however.

236

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" I believe you are a good boy, Ro-
land," she said.

" Thank you," I replied. " You are
certainly a beautiful young lady."

" Ah, Roland," she said, with a little
laugh, " for all the world like your
uncle ! " ,

" Then you do know him! " I cried.

Her face flushed rosy red as she
turned it away. Her voice caught a
little. When she looked back at me
again there were traces of tears in her
eyes.

" Let us not talk of him now, please,"
she said. " I know him — yes."

" Every one loves Uncle Dick," I said,
not knowing what else to say.

"Does every one?" she said, trying
to laugh again. But there was no laugh-
ter in her heart, and the poor semblance
of it that came from her lips lacked
merriment or joy, or even pleasure.

" Don't you? " I demanded.

" Roland," she said, " let us not talk
of him now, please."

" I beg your pardon," I replied.

We had finished eating, and I began
to wonder whether I was always to be
a prisoner in the cabin. Miss Holland
sat with her elbows upon the table, her
pretty chin resting in her hands, think-
ing. She seemed to have forgotten my
presence.

She was not any larger than I, but
was much older, of course. Her hair
was as black as night, her cheeks red, her
eyes flashing. Her neck and arms were
as white as marble, and her lips perfect.

She was very beautiful to look at, and
I wondered whether Uncle Dick had ever
loved her, and where he had met her,
and how, and why it was that she didn't
want to talk about him. I knew ever so
many girls back home who raved over
Uncle Dick, and talked about him every
chance they got. But Miss Holland
seemed different, somehow.

Just as I got through wondering this
there were steps outside again. I got be-
neath the bunk quickly, and she dropped,
the clothes so that I was completely
hidden.

Some one knocked at the door, and
Miss Holland told him to enter.

"You have finished eating?" asked
Captain Hawson's voice.

" Yes."

" There is nothing else you would
like?"

" Nothing, thank you."

" There is another passenger aboard,"
the captain said. " He is going to your
destination, too. Perhaps you'd like to
talk with him. May I bring him in? "

" Who is the gentleman?"

" Mr. Richard Engle," the captain
replied, and chuckled.

I heard Miss Holland rise to her feet
and move back toward the bunk. She
hesitated a moment before replying.

" I'll gladly welcome Mr. Engle," she
said finally.

The captain stepped out of the room,
and -Miss Holland stooped and whispered
to me.

" Roland," she said, " this interview
will pain me more than you can dream.
I'm doing it for your sake. It is a
chance to let your uncle know you are
aboard the Faraway."

Before I could reply the door opened
again, and my uncle entered with the
captain. I peered from behind the bed-
clothing to see what took place.

"Miss Holland, this is Mr. Engle,""
the captain said.

" Mr. Engle and I have met before,"
Miss Holland said, in a peculiar tone.

My uncle's face had gone white as he
looked at her. He staggered against the
wall of the cabin. His voice was hard
and cold when he spoke.

" Captain Hawson," he said, " I'll not
ask you again to tell me this ship's desti-
nation. Now, that I see Miss Holland
here, I fully understand."

CHAPTER IV.

A Gentleman's Duty.

T_T E bowed in cold courtesy and start-
-*--"■ ed to back out the door. I heard
Miss Holland gasp, heard her take a
step forward, and there was sadness in
her voice when she spoke.

" Mr. Engle," she said, " I would like
a few Avords with you in private."

"Is an interview necessary?" my
uncle asked.

" Must I beg you to grant me one?"
she said.

Uncle Dick stepped back into the
cabin.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

237

" i trust that I have not forgotten
how to act toward a lady," he said.
" Will you leave us alone, Captain Haw-
son?"

" With the greatest pleasure," the cap-
tain replied. " It seems you two people
are not exactly cordial toward each
other. It were better for you to be good
friends. You are to make a long journey
together."

Then he went out and closed the door.

"Well, Miss Holland?" my uncle
asked, turning toward her.

" What I have to say must not be
overheard," she whispered. "Do not
think I requested this interview for my
own sake.- I have news for you — some-
thing you should know."

"Well?" My uncle's voice Avas still
cold and hard.

" I wish you wouldn't use that tone
toward me," Miss Holland said. " Some
day you will learn — But never mind
that now. What I have to say to you is
this — your nephew, Roland Burke, is
aboard this steamer."

" Roland ! " my uncle exclaimed.
" What do you mean? "

" Hush— they may overhear us ! He
came into this cabin. I am hiding him."

"I don't understand. You don't mean
— you. can't mean that even my relatives
are not safe from — "

" His presence here is an accident,"
she interrupted.

Then she told him the story as I had
told her.

"Where is he?" Uncle Dick asked.

Miss Holland raised the bed-clothing,
and I crawled from beneath the bunk.
Uncle Dick hurried across the cabin and
took me in his arms.

" My poor boy," he said.

" Why? " I demanded.

" You have no knowledge — thank
Heaven — of Avhat is in store for you."

" What does it all mean?" I asked.

" Do not question now," he answered.
" We must keep you concealed, if pos-
sible."

" He may remain in here," Miss Hol-
land, offered.

" But there is a chance he will be dis-
covered. Would it not be better for him
to hide in my cabin? Then, if discovery
comes, I can at least be present to fight
for him."

" Are you afraid to leave the boy with
me?" Miss Holland asked.

For a moment they looked each other
straight in the eyes.

" It isn't that," my uncle said, after
a time. "What are we to do? The
captain may return soon."

" You'll never be able to get him to
your cabin without being seen," she said.

" Yet it must be done some way."

" Leave him here until there is a good
chance," she said.

" I'll come for him at the first oppor-
tunity," my uncle replied. " Let us hope
his presence aboard will not be discov-
ered. And yet — even so — there seems no
chance for escape."

" There is always a chance," Miss
Holland replied.

I stepped between them.

" What does it all mean?" I demand-
ed. " What is this danger of which you
hint? "

" You are to know nothing at present,"
my uncle said. " These fanatics — "

He stopped, for Miss Holland had
raised a hand in warning.

" If ill befalls this boy, it is your
work," my uncle said to her.

" It is not my work," she said.

Uncle Dick laughed cruelly.

" Do you think I do not understand? "
he asked. " Why talk of it at all? We
understand each other."

" There is a great deal you'll under-
stand some day," she told him.

Again that peculiar look flashed be-
tween them, a look of mingled anger and
defiance. The thing was getting on my
nerves. I was in the dark, seemingly in
danger,' though I knew not of what,
facing a secret understanding or misun-
derstanding between these two in which
I played no part.

I started- as though to speak, when
there came a knock at the door. It was
the work of a second to get beneath the
bunk again, and for Miss Holland to
drop the blankets before me. Captain
Hawson entered the cabin.

" Just thought I'd run in and see if
you'd killed each other," he said. " You
two had better make up and be friends."

" Captain Hawson," my uncle replied,
" you'll be kind enough to attend strictly
to your own business."

" Don't get nasty about it," the cap-

238

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

tain warned. " My men used you rough-
ly, I'll admit, but it was necessary. You'll
have no complaiwt to make during your
voyage. Just try to be comfortable."

My uncle laughed again. " They al-
ways give a condemned man all he wants
to eat," he said.

" You seem ^ to know what is ahead
of you," the captain said.

"Seem to know!" Uncle Dick cried.
" Do you think I do not? Do you think
I do not understand the language of
your crew — do not know from where they
hail? Do I not see this lady — here?"

"Mr. Engle!" Ruth Holland cried.

Captain Hawson threw up his hands
in despair.

" Stop it ! " he exclaimed. " I'll not
have any fights aboard my ship. The
crew does enough of that, without the
passengers beginning it."
' My uncle backed to the door.

" With your permission, Miss Hol-
land, I'll retire to my own cabin," he
said. " I'll see you again in the morning."

" Very well, Mr. Engle," she replied.

Captain Hawson laughed and fol-
lowed my uncle out of the cabin. They
had been gone for several minutes before
Miss Holland spoke to me. Then she
sat down on the edge of the bunk and
lifted the blankets, and I crawled out
and sat on the cabin floor before her.

"What is it all about?" I asked.

" I can tell you nothing," she said.
" You'll know all in time. , Here is a
revolver you may have, to use if it is
necessary. I have another."

I slipped the weapon in my pocket.

"You know how to use it?" she
asked.

" Very well," I answered. " Uncle
Dick taught me. He is a good shot! "

" Yes — he is a good shot," she said.

"You have seen him shoot?"

" Let us not speak of it now," she
said, and her face clouded again.

I heard the ship's bell strike then, and
she bade me get beneath the bunk again,
as though she expected some one to en-
ter the cabin. Indeed, I was no more
than hidden when the door opened and
half a dozen of the crew entered. They
did not speak, but ranged themselves
against the cabin walls, holding their
caps in their hands and looking at Miss
Holland as men look at a aroddess.

Presently one of them began speaking
in that peculiar foreign tongue, and at
intervals the others answered him.
Then the spokesman took from beneath
his jacket a small idol, and placed it
upon the table. They bowed before it,
and went back against the wall again.

Then the spokesman began in halting
English.

" Most exalted one," he said, " it is
again the hour, and we ask your an-
swer."

" My answer is still, No ! " Miss Hol-
land replied.

"You have considered well?"

"It is a matter that needs no con-
sideration," she replied.

" Great honor is preferable to death."

" Not always," she answered. " Some-
times death is preferable to what some
men call great honor."

" We will visit you again at the hour.
We express the hope that you shall have
changed your mind."

" I shall never change my mind," she
said.

They left her, but she remained stand-
ing before the table, looking doAvn at
where the small idol had rested. Sev-
eral minutes passed, and the door opened
again.

It was a stranger who entered, a man
who was either American or English —
Avho seemed apart from the others.

"You!" Miss Holland exclaimed.

"Does it surprise you?" he asked.

" I knew you had something to do
Avith it, but I did not think you had
courage enough to be aboard yourself."

" Perhaps I am not lacking in cour-
age," he said. " Does my presence
annoy you? "

" It does," she said frankly.

"Why should it?" he ' demanded.
" It would be better, don't you think, to
treat me with courtesy? "
. He had stepped to the table, and
stood just across from her. I saw his
hand go out toward her, try to clutch
at hers. She stepped back against the
bunk.

" It is time to have done with non-
sense," he said, following her. " Why
do you hold out against me as you do?
Can't you realize that vou are help-
less?"

" There is always a chance," she said.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

239

"Not when Frederic Welch engineers
the job! "

" You have made mistakes before,"
she reminded him.

" P>ut not this time," Welch said.

" Will you kindly leave my cabin? "

" When it pleases me."

" I ask you to leave the cabin," she
said.

"And suppose I refuse to go?"

" I'll call for help ! "

" No man aboard this ship would
raise a hand to help you if I bade him
otherwise ! "

"Leave my cabin,". she said again;
"for you are here only to insult me!"

" I have offered you ho harm."

" Your very presence insults me,", she
said. " Will you go? "

"Suppose I refuse?" he said, laugh-
ing at her.

I heard her breath coming in quick
gasps. Like a flash, I had sprung from
beneath the bunk and confronted him.
It was a foolish . thing to do under the
circumstances, but I had been reared
carefully, and knew a gentleman's part ;
and this man was of my own race, not
a foreigner whose manner and method
I could not understand.

He reeled against the wall as he saw
me, astonished beyond speech.

" Mr. Welch," I cried, " a gentleman
always does as a lady requests ! "

I stood there before him, my hands
clenched, my teeth shut tightly.

He laughed. " A gentleman ! " he
sneered. " What do you know about,
gentlemen, you young cur ! "

As he spoke he struck me across the

(To be co

face with the flat of his hand. Miss
Holland gave a little scream and reeled
against the table.

The revolver Miss Holland had given
me was in my hand. I struck out with
all my strength, and" the butt of the gun
crashed against his temple before he
realized what I intended to do. He
reeled, then crashed to the floor like a
senseless being.

" Roland ! Roland ! " Miss Holland
was crying.

" Do not be frightened," I told her.

Welch staggered to his feet, his face
purple with rage.

"You young cur!" he screamed.

I saw his fist uplifted, saw him start
across the cabin toward me. There was
no defense I could make, except to
shoot, and I did not want to take a hu-
man life. Yet I was determined not to
submit tamely to an assault, and so
raised the revolver.

" Don't shoot him, Roland ! " Miss
Holland was crying.

He did not seem to see the weapon
I held, but sprang on toward me. My
finger touched the trigger. Then the
cabin-door was hurled open, and some
one threw himself into the room and
upon Welch's back.

In an instant Welch was hurled the
length of the cabin, to crash against the
porthole. There he stopped, his eyes
blazing back at Uncle Dick, Miss Hol-
land standing between them, I resting
against the bunk.

"A man who insults women and at-
tacks boys is a fitting person to be mixed
up in this business ! " my uncle cried.

nticued . )

SPECIAL CARS FOR AUTOS AND FISH.

FIFTY auto railway cars, something en-
tirely new in railroad-car construc-
tion, have just been turned out by the Mil-
waukee road at its shops in Milwaukee.

These cars, substantially built and ornate
in appearance, each forty-one feet in length,
are intended solely for the transportation of
automobiles, which has come to be a large
item in the transportation business.

The special " Milwaukee " cars for this
class of shipment are designed with a view
of carrying complete automobiles without

the least twisting or cramping. Large,
double doors are located on each side, at
the opposite ends, so that the machines may
be easily loaded and unloaded.

Another new style of car now being built
by the Milwaukee road at its shops is a spe-
cial refrigerator car for the Pacific coast
fish-trade. These cars are about the size of
the regular baggage-car; are of the pas-
senger-train style and finish, carrying the
Milwaukee road's regular color, and are sup-
plied with a complete refrigeration-plant.

Observations of a Country
Station-Agent.

BY J. E. SMITH.

No. 18. —Billy M. Has a Merry Time Trying to Make the Rubes

Fall for a New Blue Uniform with Gold Braid

and Brass Buttons.

years ago — or, to put it
more definitely, the post-,
tertiary period of the mam-
malian age — the only ap-
parel covering the genus homo was
coarse, unkempt hair.

ACK in the mulligatawny age, there were no blue uniforms, no gold
say two or three million buttons, no badges.

The pioneer conductor and brakeman
appeared in bobtail coats, wide-buttoned
checkered pantaloons, and derby or
slouch hats. They had on them no dis-
tinguishing marks. They could only be
told from the passengers by acquaint-
I got this irom Darwin the scientist, ance, or by evidences of authority,
or from Dooley the philosopher, or The conductor careened up 'and down
from Professor Doodlespeck of Petro- the aisle of the coaches, and collected
leum University, Illinois, but I don't re- cash fares without regard to Interstate
member which. This is a mean and mi- Commerce laws or State Commission
worthy reflection for a proud man to rules. He was not even annoved with
indulge in; but whenever I look upon a duplex cash-fare receipt. He just
a Pullman conductor in his new spring took the money and put it into a deep
uniform, it" comes to me in that way. pocket and passed on to the next pas-

Now, from the bristling, ' nucleated
epidermis of the tree - man to the fine
blue-and-gold braid of a parlor-car man
is a long way. Yet, many of us were
here wThen the blue and the gold braid

senger. Simple arrangement, wasn't it?
Knew the Con Personally.
People did not care whether they

appeared among us, and we have wit- bought tickets or paid the conductor,

nessed within easy memory this last There was no penalty. They often knew

phase of evolution to the point of spot- the conductor personally, and the fellow

less elegance. sympathy and human touch naturally

led to the cash fare.

Evolution Is at Work. But the first conductor that ran the

first train and collected the first fare

The matter is placed before the reader had a wag for a 'passenger. The wag

in this way to remind him that, even in handed the conductor a piece of silver,

railroading, the forces of evolution are The conductor gave it critical scrutiny,

at work, and that changes and improve- It had an unknown head on one side and

ments are constantly taking place. a strange tail on the other. It was

There was a time in railroading — not Mexican, Canadian, or Egyptian — the

more than one generation ago — when puzzled conductor did not know which,

Series began in the July, 1907, Railroad Man's Magazine. Single Copies, 10 cents.

240

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT. 241

" Here," he said to the passenger, " I
can't use this."

" Then give it to the company," re-
plied the wag.

A very clever retort, was it not?

This first conductor then passed on
to the second passenger. The second
passenger was not a wag, but was nosey

If that does not bring a sickly, half-
hearted smile, tell him about the con-
ductor you know who worked ten year?
and saved enough from his salary of one
hundred per to buy a section of Illinois.
That may arouse interest. At least, it
will show that you are wise to the game.

Joke No. 3 on the conductor was per-

vrr — 7

and curious. He paid a cash fare, and petrated fifty years later by the railroad
the conductor thrust it down deep into itself, when they equipped him with a
his trousers. cash-fare receipt, which enables the pas-

" Say," said the passenger. " How senger to know all the particulars, and
can you tell what's your
money and what's Jhe com-
pany's? "
- " Very easy," replied the
conductor, who was a nifty
proposition, and afterward
owned the road. " When I
get through, I toss all the
money to the top of the car.
All that sticks to the bell-
cord belongs to the company.
What comes down is mine."

Just then the train whis-
tled for Herkimer. The
brakeman twisted the brakes,
and more cash fares came
aboard.

George Stephenson, who
invented the road, and B. F.
Morse, who later added cer-
tain improvements, were occu-
pying the next seat together,
and laughed heartily at these
jokes, which are officially la-
beled No. 1 and No. 2.

"By heck!" exclaimed
Morse. " People air a going
to say a mighty lot of funny
things about conductors and
cash fares."

They have, they do, #and
they will. No. 1 and No. 2,
vinted in 1827, have not been
improved upon, and are now
recognized as standard by all
railroad organizations.

When a passenger wants
to be pleasant with the con-
ductor, he tells one or both'. The best preserves the identical memorandum for

ALL THAT STICKS TO THE BELL-CORD BELONGS TO
THE COMPANY."

plan is to tell No. 1 going down, and
save No. 2 for the return trip. That
shows versatility. When a conductor
does not enthuse over either of them,
ask him bluntly when he expects to have
enough to quit railroading.
4 R R

the road's accounting department.

Joke No. 3 is intended to head off
jokes 1 and 2, just as one train-order
often annuls another of previous num-
ber.

Along about the same time it occurred

242

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

to some one in authority that the plain-
citizen's attire had certain disadvantages,
as any rogue could impersonate a con-
ductor and beat him to a cash fare.
Passengers often found it difficult to
pick him out when wanting information.
The first thought was to tag him with a
badge. Then they had him wear a cap,
and finally he appeared in the military
splendor of a blue uniform, brass-but-
toned and gold-braided.

The Foolish Question.

The conductor has always remained
true to his colors. No matter how
stifling, oppressive, or sweltering the
day, he moves down the aisle, panting
and perspiring, with every stitch of his
regalia hung upon him.

The panting passenger throws off his
coat and bares his neck to any welcome
breeze that comes in at the window.
The conductor is permitted to unbutton
his vest, but beyond that he violates the
proprieties. He takes his fully togged,
at 99 Fahrenheit. There is no better
subject in all this broad expanse to hail
with that jocular query, "Is it hot
enough for you? "

That's a torrid - season joke on the
conductor. Official label, No. 4.

Some roads go even farther and uni-
form their station employees.

Billy's Glad Rags.

Billy M. was agent at K. when the
B. and B. road issued a " glad rag " ulti-
matum to all its agents, ticket - sellers,
and station baggagemen.

" I had to do it," said Billy, " or quit.
I didn't want to wear a blue uniform
and cap. In a small town, everybody
looks you over and makes remarks. I
knew when I went up street I would
create a sensation. Of course, I could
have kept a citizen's coat, vest, and hat
at the station, and changed when I sal-
lied forth among the ribald population,
but that's too much trouble.

" Two days after I received the outfit,
I boldly walked up to the post-office in
full official regalia. I was hailed with
loud acclaim. Small boys ran along be-
hind me, and tradespeople came to their
doors to look me over. They called me

' major,' and piped off the outfit with
all the ready wit a village commands.

"I comported myself with dignity.
After all, there is something stiffening
in blue clothes and gold trimmings.
They lend to poise, decorum, and cir-
cumspection. They drew attention to
me, and I unconsciously stepped higher
and breathed deeper. I returned to the
depot feeling I was no longer unnoticed
and unsung.

" During the day I handled some
mailbags, hustled some baggage, trucked
in a lot of green hides and a number of
tubs of ancient butter, together with a
general assortment of merchandise in
barrels, boxes, and bags.

Decorum and Other Lugs.

" I solved the problem of an agent's
uniform in this way. In addressing the
public over the counter or through the
window, a neat uniform and spick and
span appearance add to his prestige ; but
from lugging the dead calf from the
scales to the trucks, common jerkies have
all other outfits beaten a mile.

" A day or so after I had been wear-
ing my blue uniform," Billy continued,
" I went out to the platform and struck
a posing attitude that all might see. An
old G. A. R. man hobbled up, gave me
a look, and saluted. I saluted in return.

" ' You fellows had it easy,' said he.

". ' Deuce Ave have,' I said warmly.
' What do you know about our work ? '

"'Me know!' bristled the old man
with a shriek. ' Wasn't I with Phil
Sheridan all through it? Wasn't I in
the battle of Chickamauga — huh?
Wasn't I at Missionary Ridge — huh?
Wasn't I right to the front in the Wil-
derness, and at Yellow Tavern, and
Hawes' Shop, and Cold Harbor ? What
did that little skirmish of yourn at San
June amount to? We had worse'an that
every morning before breakfast. We
wouldn't give a scrap like that a name.
Makes me tired — '

"Me! A Cheap Soldier! "

" ' Hold on ! ' said I. ' I'm no rough-
rider — '

" ' Ain't you a Spanish-American? '
" ' No ! ' I veiled. ' I'm the railroad

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT.

243

station - agent. This is
my new uniform.'

" ' Durn my buttons,'
half - apologized the vet-
eran ; ' but the way you
was stand'n' there, all
perked up, made me
think you was one of
them Sunday-school pic-
nickers back from Cu-
bay. It just kind a riles
me to see 'em posin'
around. Honest it does,
mister. I beg your par-
don. I do, sure ! '

" It didn't stop there
altogether," continued
Billy. " A bright new
uniform is a shining
mark. There is an ec-
centric old farmer who.
occasionally w a 1 k s to
town and passes the de-
pot in doing- so. He is
somewhat near - sighted,
and he took notice. He
stopped and shook hands
with me.

" ' Where are you lo-
cated, captain?' he
asked.

" ' Right here,' I said.

" ' How is your good
work coming on ? '

" ' Very well, indeed,' I replied.

" ' You people do lots of good,' he
said warmly. ' How long will you be
stationed here ? '

" ' Until I'm ordered elsewhere.'

Now a Salvationist!

'' ' Regular military discipline,' he
chuckled. ' Couldn't be conducted on
any other plan. What a genius General
Booth is ! What an organizer ! '

" The old gentleman fumbled in his
pocket, then thrust forth his hand with
a sudden impulse. I gave him a good-
by hand-clasp. I thought it was that.
But it was more. In my palm there was
left a shining silver dollar.

" ' Hold on,' said I in amazement.
' Haven't you made a mistake? '

" ' Not a word. Not a word,' he re-
plied with a sort of eager happiness.
' It's a dollar. I know it's a dollar. I

TELL HIM ABOUT THE CONDUCTOR WHO WORKED TEN YEARS

AND SAVED ENOUGH FROM HIS SALARY TO BUY A

SECTION OF ILLINOIS.

am happy to give it, sir. I know it will
be wisely spent. I donate a dollar, some-
times two, every year.' ■

" A man can have different varieties
of amazement. Maybe you don't know
that. Mine was the rooted, tongue-
cleaving kind. I actually stood there
and let that old man move off, and
found myself clutching that shining buck
as if it was the last one that would ever
come my way. •

" The next day a timid-looking boy
came to the depot with a large bundle.

" ' Grandpa sent this up,' he said.

"'Where does it 2:0?' I asked.

Doting Some Good.

to the
under-

" ' Dunno ; just said give it
man in the uniform and he'd
stand.'

" It was a bundle of old clothing —
grandpa's second contribution.

244

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" Now, I suppose I should have sent
both the bundle and the dollar back to
the old man, with the proper explana-
tion. I have a strong but phlegmatic
conscience. I delayed. But at last I
sent the money and the clothes to the
captain of the Salvation Army at the
nearest city. I signed, ' From a
friend.'

" On the Great Record grandpap will
get credit for that. I prepaid the ex-
press on the outfit — thirty cents. That
much was out of my own pocket. That
means one small mark for me.

" A day or so after this incident I
again sauntered out on the platform in
■full regimentals and drew myself up in
a sort of magnificent fulness, so satisfy-
ing to the man in striking attire, when
a wild-eyed, hatless young man rushed
upon me and grasped me by the arm.

" ' Come on, quick ! I want you ! ' he
bellowed. ' Hurry, before they get
away ! We'll get all three of 'em ! The
dirty dogs ! '

" I don't understand the witless im-
pulse that sent me along with that fel-

low. But I went with him on a trot.

He was in a ranting frenzy. He
brought me up in front of a saloon, half
a block away.

"'Arrest all of 'em!' he shouted.
' They kicked me out ! Git 'em ! Git
'em ! '

" He stood off a little, waving his
arms and shouting encouragement, and
waited for me to sail -in. I hesitated.

" ' Are you afraid? ' he yelled.

Then, Chief of Police!

" Now, that fellow's brand of hypno-
tism was only good for thirty seconds,
and I came to.

"'What's the row?' I asked inno-
cently.

" ' Don't let 'em get away ! ' he
shrieked. ' Get all of 'em. They kicked
me out ! '

" ' I don't se'e why I should have any-
thing to do with it,' I began to protest.

" ' What! Ain't you the chief of po-
lice? ' he roared.

" I admitted that I was not. I was

THEY CALLED ME ' MAJOR,' AND PIPED OFF THE OUTFIT WITH READY WIT.

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT.

245

only the station-agent of
the B. and B. Railroad,
in my new uniform.

" ' Where is the po-
lice ? ' he cried.

" ' There's only a town
marshal,' I replied guilt-
lessly. ' You will find
him on the vacant lot be-
hind the blacksmith lot,
pitching horse-shoes.'

" That's what a new
uniform does for a man,"
continued Billy. " In one
week I was a Spanish-
American soldier, a cap-
tain of the Sva lvation
Army, and the chief of
police. Why don't they
*dress us different?

" When I become gen-
eral manager, they'll all
wear bright yellow With
black stripes. There'll be
nothing else like it under
the sun. The instant you
lay your eyes on one of
'em, you'll know what he
is, 'and you'll never think
he's anything else. Watch
out for 'em!

" Another thing," con-
tinued Billy. " There's no
style to the make-up.
There is no proportion or
fitness. Only one kind of
cap — flaring at the top like the old hay-
burner stacks.

The Dinky Cap.

" Take a skinny man with no chin or
cheeks, and how does he look in one of
them? I leave it to you — can there be
anything worse? Over on the B. and C.
road they have the flat-crown dinky cap.
They have a few fellows over there that
run out on corn and alfalfa, and meas-
ure eighteen inches from jowl to jowl,
and they actually place dinky caps on
those mounds ! That's landscape gar-
dening for you ! What we want in uni-
forms is proportion, and we'll take duck
for summer-time — light weight and light
color.

" Occasionally you find a physical
make-up that fits into the standard uni-

'i don't u

NDERSTAND THE WITLESS IMPULSE THAT SENT "
ME ALONG WITH THAT FELLOW."

form at every angle. Do you know
Thomas A. Muggs, that runs our
through run into Chicago? He's one
of 'em.

" When Thomas A. rigs out for his
run, there's three of them — Lord Ches-
terfield, Beau Brummel, and Thomas A.
Muggs. Thomas is fifty, and a bach-
. elor. He never talks ; just takes it all
out in dignified pose and courtly de-
meanor. His fad is spotless linen and
precious stones. He invests all his sur-
plus in gems, and he wears them — fine
ones, too.

" When he comes into a coach and the
light falls on him, it is the same as a
distant glimpse of the South Side yard
on a dark night.

" His occupation is the very best for
exploiting the vanity that possesses him.
He meets people every day — hundreds

246

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

"we do not handle counterfeits, sir! you have been
imposed on elsewhere ! "

of •them. They look at him closely.
He flashes back all the Tiffany elegance
a good salary permits.

" When he passes a ticket back to a
passenger, and the passenger inadver-
tently diverts an eye for a brief moment
to the jeweled finger holding the ticket,
Thomas gets thrills that you and I wot
not of.

Thomas Gets Thrills.

" Thomas has a sort of cat-and-water
horror of one duty — that of rejecting a
refractory passenger. It musses him up
so. They tell me that when this must
be done, Thomas goes to the baggage-
car and daintily detaches two or three
thousand dollars' worth of ornaments
before undertaking the operation.

" Very often, when he returns, the
fervor of the belligerent has somewhat
cooled, and actual hostility is averted.

" I understand the road thinks well
of the plan, and may insist on other
conductors equipping themselves with a
bunch of Kohinoors.

" The laugh is now on Thomas. I
started to tell you the story. Did you
ever notice the pair of cuff-buttons he

wore for a long time?
He paid five hundred
dollars for them. Two
hundred and fifty dol-
lars each — think of
that ! They were gen-
uine sapphires, and
Thomas prized them
very highly.

" One day, not very
long ago, when Thom-
as's train pulled into
the station at Chicago,
there was something
of a jam of hurrying
passengers in the ves-
tibule, and Thomas
tvas jostled a little in
straightening out the
confusion. When the
last passenger was out
and lost in the swarm-
ing multitude beyond
the gate, Thomas disr
covered that one of
his cuff - buttons was
missing.
" A thorough search of the coaches
failed to locate it. Thomas lamented
the loss very greatly. Not for the price,
but because he was attached to the stone.
You and I do not understand that.

"Of course, he quickly inserted an
' ad ' in the ' Lost ' column of the
dailies, describing the button, and offer-
ing a suitable reward. He really ex-
pected no results ; but there was a bare
possibility that it might have fallen into
honest hands. The unexpected hap-
pened. This letter came to him in
response :

" Kind Sir :
" I have noticed your advertisement
in the Morning Planet. In leaving my
train in the Union depot a few days ago
I picked up a cuff-button some one had
dropped. I had no opportunity to find
an owner. I have it now in my posses-
sion. If it is yours, you may call at
my apartments, No. — Mohammed Ave-
nue, and recover the same. The stone
and button are rather unusual, and I
chink if you can show its mate no
other identification will be required to
prove that you are the rightful owner.
Very sincerely,

Mrs. V. M. Moriseex.

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT.

247

" Thomas hastened to the place indi-
cated.

" He was met by a pleasant-faced old
lady with snow-white hair.

" ' I found a cuff -button,' the lady ex-
plained, ' as I was leaving the train at
the Union Depot last Thursday after-
noon. When I saw your " ad " in the
" Lost " column of the Planet, I took it
you were the rightful owner. I presume
you have the mate.'

" Thomas produced the mate from its
tissue Avrappings and handed it to the
lady.

" ' I think that is it,' she said, looking
it over.

" She unlocked a convenient drawer
and took out the other button, and care-
fully compared them.

" ' I think there can be no mistake,'
she said, returning them both to
Thomas. ' They are quite unusual, but
they match in every respect. I suspect
they have a pretty fair value.'

" ' They cost me five hundred dollars,'
blurted Thomas.

" ' Indeed ! ' she exclaimed with mild
surprise.

" Thomas wrapped them up carefully
and put them safely away. Then, some-
what awkwardly, he fished up a twenty-
dollar gold coin. 'It's your reward for
returning the lost piece,' he said.

" ' Really,' she protested, ' I could not
accept anything. One hardly expects a
reward for doing right. I cannot pos-
sibly— I — I- — • Still, I might take the
coin and • turn it over to the mission as
a contribution, from you, a stranger.
The credit to be yours.'

" It was arranged that way.

" It isn't often a lost gem of that
value falls into honest hands and is re-

turned to the owner ; but now and then
there is an honest man or woman even
in a great city. Here's a match, Dio-
genes.

" A month later, Thomas noticed one
of the settings was loose, and that the
cuff was blacked where the button
rubbed. He hastened to the jeweler of
whom he had purchased the pair and
complained.

" The jeweler gave a quick but critical
glance.

" ' Diable ! ' he exclaimed. ' You
never bought these of us ! They are
cheap imitations, both of them! Not
worth five dollars a pair ! We do not
handle counterfeits, sir ! You have been
imposed on elsewhere ! Indeed, you
have, sir ! '

" Thomas hastened to Mohammed
Avenue. The gray-haired lady was not
there — 'had never been there — was en-
tirely unknown. She had never been
heard of at the mission, either.

" Didn't she turn a neat one on
Thomas? What's the use, Diogenes?
Blow it out ! "

Blue uniforms, brass buttons, gold
braid, diamonds, and sapphires. " All is
vanity!" exclaimed Solomon, early in
the struggle. " Why not go back to na-
ture?" exclaims Billy of to-day.

At the same time, Billy brushed a
little dust off his blue pants, picked
some lint off his blue coat, and passed
his hand over the badge on his gold-
braid cap for a brighter polish.

" Each of these stripes," he said, and,
I thought, with a touch of pride, " repre-
sent five years of service with the com-
pany. Come around again forty years
from to-day, and I'll show you ten
of 'em."

TRAINS FORBIDDEN TO RUN BACKWARD.

THE Michigan Railroad Commission, re-
cently declared by the Supreme Court
to be absolute boss of the railroads in Michi-
gan, has issued an order prohibiting the
running of trains backward or with cars
ahead of the engine. The various lines
were given ninety days to put in Y's and
turn-tables, and it is probable that the order
will cause trouble because of the expense.
The chief reason is that the engineer does

not have a clear view of the track over the
pile of coal on the tender. It is supposed
that the recent accident at Ottawa Beach
was caused by running in this manner. On
some roads trains are backed for many
miles.

The order also provided that combination
passenger and baggage-cars shall not be run
with the passenger compartment next to the
engine.

WHAT'S THE ANSWER?

By ike
Ligki of
the Lantern

Questions
Answered
for
Railroad Men

ASK US!

WE like to be as useful to our readers as we can; but, because of the great popularity
of this department, we are forced to impose certain restrictions. In future, we
shall be compelled to limit its scope to the answering of questions of an inform-
ative, technical, or historical nature only.
We receive dozens of queries in regard to the right person to apply to for certain
classes of employment. If the writers^ will pause for a moment to consider, the title of
the proper official will readily occur to them, and in any case the information can be
obtained by application to the headquarters of the company involved, much more quickly
than we can publish it.

If a reader, after following these directions, still finds himself lacking in information,
and will write us, giving his full name and postal address, we will try to satisfy him
through the mail, but we cannot answer any letter in which it is not made clear that
some real difficulty exists.

IS it consistent with good railroading to
make a meet order on form " 19 " to be
delivered to the ruling train, and is it
a violation of the standard code to make a
meet order on form "19" at all?

A. H., Wichita Falls, Texas.

It is not consistent with good railroading
to use form " 19 " as you suggest in first
part of your question, on roads where both
forms are in use. For the remainder,
would say that the standard code gives in-
ferior train " 19 " order, but superior, or, as
you term it, ruling train gets " 31 " order.

AH. F., East St. Louis, Illinois. — To ob-
• tain position with a surveying party
application should be addressed to the chief
engineer of the railroad where employment
is desired. You should endeavor to learn
the road which has new work under way, or
in contemplation, as the chances for employ-

ment in that contingency would necessarily
be brighter.

The necessity for experience on the part
of the applicant depends largely on the po-
sition desired. Refer to March, 1909, num-
ber of The Railroad Man's Magazine,
which contains much valuable information
regarding this work.

WHAT are the hand and lamp signals,
also the steam-whistle signals?
(b) What is a first-class train, and
is it superior to a regular, and how?

E. McC, Butte, Montana.

The hand and lamp signals are as fol-
lows: (1) Swung across track, "stop"; (2)
raised and lowered vertically. " proceed " ;
(3) swung vertically in a circle across the
track, when the train is standing, " back " ;

248

BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN.

249

(4) swung vertically in a circle at arm's
length across the track when the train is
running, "train has parted"; (5) swung
horizontally in a circle, when the train is
standing, " apply air-brakes " ; (6) held at
arm's length above the head, when train is
standing, " release air-brakes."

The steam-whistle signals are: (1) One
short blast, " stop, apply brakes " ; (2) two
long blasts, "release brakes"; (3) one long
and three short blasts, " flagman go back and
protect rear of train " ; (4) four long blasts,
"flagman return from west or south"; (5)
five long blasts, " flagman return from east
or north"; (6) three long blasts, when
running, "train parted"; (7)- two short
blasts, answer to any signal not otherwise
provided for ; (8) three short blasts, when
train is standing, " back " ; (9) four short
blasts, "call for signals"; (10) one long
and two short blasts, to call attention of
the same or inferior class to signals dis-
played by a following section. To be an-
swered -by two short blasts of the whistle ;
(11) two long and two short blasts, ap-
proaching public grade crossings; (12) one
double long blast, approaching stations,
junctions, and railroad crossings at grade;
(13) two long and two short blasts, to be
repeated at intervals, approaching obscure
crossings; (14) four short blasts repeated,
to be given by engineer on siding, or on
double track, to warn a passing train that
it is following another train too closely.

(b) Trains of the first-class1 are superior
to those of the second-class ; trains of the
second-class are superior to those of the
third; and so on. Extra trains are inferior
to regular trains.

The above is quoting the book of rules,
but the exact definition of what comprises
a first-class train can only be derived from
the time-table ; there is not general uni-
formity in the classification. Ordinarily, all
passenger-trains are first-class, but we have
in mind one road where only electric trains
are so designated ; steam passenger-trains,
second-class, and scheduled freight-trains,
third-class.

(c) There are many books on railroad-
ing. If you will send your full name and
postal address and state more specifically
your needs, we shall be glad to give you a
more detailed answer through the mail.

WH., Milner, Idaho. — We have made
• previous mention of the Continen-
tal code, used in wireless telegraphy, in past
issues of this department. See the magazine
for August, 1909.

It differs from the Morse code in having
no space letters, dashes being employed in
lieu of spaces. Simply substitute these for

the spaces in the Morse code and you have
the information.

GH., Ogesna, Wisconsin. — There are
• many occupations in a large round-
house for men without trades. For
instance, flue-cleaners, arch-brick men, pit-
cleaners, wipers, fire builders, engine watch-
ers, turntable men, and helpers for ma-
chinists and boilermakers, and the other
trades.

An inexperienced man would likely be
assigned as a helper, or to whatever in the
judgment of the foreman or master me-
chanic he is best fitted for. The position of
hostler, which your letter indicates as the
one you have in mind, is quite responsible.

Hostlers, as a rule, move engines from
the point where the engineers and firemen
leave them, until they are finally placed over
a pit in the roundhouse. In some instances
they take the engines from the roundhouse
to the station for other trains, and the regu-
lar crew takes them there. This means, of
course, moving over, often, several miles of
yard tracks, and it is necessary that the
hostler pass the eye examination and be fully
qualified for the signals.

.Such .responsible positions pay about $3
per day, and often engineers are used at the
regular road rates. Hostlers are generally
promoted from hostler helpers, who receive
from ^1.25 to $175 per day. Hostlers not
engaged on main line tracks are paid any-
where from $1.75 to $2.50 per day.

HO invented the Stephenson link
which is used in locomotive valve
motion, and what is its history?
E. C, Hornell, New York.

We can quote no better authority than
Angus Sinclair on this subject. He says:
" There is no doubt but that the link was
invented by William T. James, of New
York, a most ingenious mechanic who also
invented the double eccentrics. He experi-
mented a great deal during the period from
1830 to 1840, and while his work proved of
no commercial value to him, it is probable
that Long, who started the Norris Locomo-
tive Works at Philadelphia, and introduced
the double eccentrics, was indebted to James
for the idea of a separate eccentric for each
motion.

" The credit of inventing the shifting
link is due to William Howe, of Newcastle,
England. He was a pattern-maker employed
by Robert Stephenson & Co., and he invent-
ed the link in 1842 in practically its present
form.

" Howe's idea was to get out an improved
reversing motion. He made a sketch of the

250

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

link, which he explained to his employers,
who were favorably impressed with his idea
and permitted him to make a pattern of it,
and afterward gave a trial on a locomotive
constructed for the Midland Railway Com-
pany. It proved successful the first day.

"Although Stephenson gave Howe the
means of applying his invention, Howe
failed to perceive its actual value, for it
was not patented. Seeing how satisfactorily
it worked, Stephenson paid Howe twenty
guineas for the device and secured a patent
under his own name."

This is how the link comes to be called
the " Stephenson Link." The credit for this
invention was not extravagantly paid for.

CE. W., Denver, Colorado. — You no
• doubt refer to the Oroyo Railroad,
which has its terminus at Callao, South
America. You might address this railroad at
Callao, Peru, and information on the lines
you seek would doubtless be forthcoming.
Or, again, possibly the Bolivia Railway
Company, which has an office at No. 35
Nassau Street, New York City, New York,
may set you right in the matter.

Don't go there until you find out all about
it. If you have back numbers of The Rail-
road Man's Magazine containing this de-
partment, read what has been said generally
in regard to railroading in the tropics.

£ -

LV. L., Waterloo, Iowa. — The Maryland
• and Pennsylvania Railroad, from
Baltimore to York, Pennsylvania, uses light
power. Its equipment consists of eleven
locomotives and one hundred and eighty
cars. This was formerly a narrow gage
line.

We are replying to your question on the
premise that you refer to standard gage
lines on which relatively light power is used.
The master mechanic of the road is George
C. Smith ; address, Baltimore, Maryland.

The Lehigh and Hudson River Railway
has forty-six locomotives and eight hundred
and fifty-seven cars. R. T. Jaynes, War-
wick, New York, is master mechanic. There
are others too numerous for mention in this
space, but this will no doubt suffice for your
purpose.

JH. A., Seattle, Washington. — We can
• give you no better advice than to per-
sonally interview the employing officers of
the service mentioned in Seattle. They will
cheerfully indicate what such positions have
in store for a young man, pay, and all other
features.
As a rule a railroad clerkship does not

open a promising future. It is a much over-
crowded business; and, in consequence, the
pay averages $45 to $60 per month for ordi-
nary clerkship.

SM. B., Dawson, Georgia.— The nearest
• district superintendent of the Pullman
company is the officer to be approached on
the subject of employment in the line you
mention. In your instance this would be
Mr. W. M. Camp, Atlanta, Georgia.

T^ J. C, Brooklyn, New York.— See reply
A • to a correspondent in September
number. If you have a locomotive which
will do as much work as any other engine,
with less operating cost, you have something
good, and need not concern yourself re-
garding your financial future.

Such schemes as indicated by the general
tenor of your letter are, as a rule, wild and
visionary. Do not lose sight of the fact that
truly great brains in the mechanical world
have worked years and years on the prob-
lem of transportation and that there can
scarcely be a factor bearing thereon which
has escaped consideration.

If you will write more in detail concern-
ing your scheme, we will be pleased to re-
view it and return an entirely frank opinion.

EB. L., Lancaster, Pennsylvania. — Par-
• ticulars regarding the Pennsylvania
Railroad school for telegraphers can be se-
cured from J. B. Fisher, superintendent of
telegraph. Broad Street Station, Philadel-
phia. We do not know the scope of the
school, but suppose that it is for the train-
ing of men already in the service who desire
to fit themselves as operators.

HAT becomes of the expansion and
contraction in a continuously welded
street-car rail?

L. A. B., St. Louis, Missouri.

In the first place, it is endeavored to weld
the rail-joints at as nearly a mean tempera-
ture as possible, so as to have as little
extreme contraction due to heat or cold.
The strain due to contraction is taken care
of by the fact that the cross section of the
rail is large enough to give sufficient
strength to withstand this pull without be-
ing strained beyond the elastic limit of the
material. This has been proved by tests at
the government arsenal, Watertown, Massa-
chusetts.

In the matter of expansion due to in-
creased temperature, it is largely checked by
the grip of the pavement in which it is laid,

BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN.

251

and most of the track which has been weld-
ed in recent years has been bedded in con-
crete base. Any movement which this grip
of the pavement does not hold goes into
slight irregularities of line, and we presume
the cross-section of rail may be slightly in-
creased. You must remember that as rails
are so largely in use in paved streets, only
a very small proportion of the surface is
exposed to the sun.

TR., Lebanon, Indiana. — Electricians are
• carried on the through electric-lighted
trains of the principal lines. On trains
equipped with axle light their duties are, of
course, such care of the various appliances
and light repairs to them which they may
be able to effect in transit. ,

The electric-lighted trains of the New
York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad
have a dynamo in the baggage-car run by
steam from the locomotive, and the neces-
sary attention to this dynamo when on the
road devolves upon the baggagemaster. The
pay of train electricians where such positions
are in evidence is approximately $75 per
month.

Full information can be secured from the
electrical engineer of the railroad which
you have in view. If you do not know his
name the title will suffice.

J P., Pleasureville, Kentucky. — Eighteen
• years is too young for a fireman. We
do not know of any locality where your
application would receive favorable con-
sideration.

CS., Los Angeles, California. — Address
• Railway and Locomotive Engineer-
ing, New York City, New York, stating the
book you want.

Gf. B., Dubois, Pennsylvania. — Any of the
• Western railroads offer good induce-
ments for boilermakers. The Santa Fe was,
and probably is still, paying forty-two and
one-half cents an hour west of Albu-
querque. Living is no higher than in the
East for a man of temperate habits.

IN what year did Westinghouse invent the
"ET" air-brake?

(2) Can you apply the emergency
more than once with the " ET " brake ?

(3) On what notch do you release the
brake on the train-line on the engineer's
brake valve?

J. G. C, Boston, Massachusetts.-

0) In the early days of railroading prac-
tically no attention was paid to the neces-

sity for braking power on the engine and
tender on account of the service conditions
prevailing, and fear of flattening and slip-
ping the driving-wheel tires. A little later
straight air-brakes, similar to those under
the cars, were applied to tenders; then, the
driver brake was .added, and later, as it be-
came necessary to utilize every possible
means for obtaining braking power, the
truck brake, thus forming the complete brake
installation.

Later, the development of the high-speed
brake equipment led also to the addition of
the high-speed devices to the locomotive
equipment. When further improvements be-
came necessary, the undesirability of adding
further to the existing equipment became
apparent, and it was resolved to depart from
the previous lines along which improvements
had been made, and to design outright an
equipment which would combine the func-
tions of several pieces of apparatus and in-
clude the features, required of a brake which
should meet the requirement arising from
present- day conditions, this equipment to
cover all kinds of service and classes and
weights of locomotives.

The brake known as the " ET," which, of
course, means " Engine and Tender," in-
cludes all of the advantageous features
which have been worked into previous equip-
ments, eliminates many of the undesirable
features inseparable from former types, and
provides many additional operative features
which have long been desired but hitherto
unobtainable with other types of equipment.

The first " ET " equipment was put in
service June, 1903, but you will, of course,
understand that this was more or less an
experiment at that time, and since then the
" ET " has been modified and improved in a
number of particulars, the present standard
being the No. 6 " ET " equipment, which
has been in service for about three years.

(2) After the brake-cylinder pressure has
been entirely released from emergency ap-
plication the brakes can be reapplied in an
emergency immediately, and full pressure
obtained. This operation can be repeated in-
definitely. It is presumed you understand
that this refers to the locomotive brakes
only, as on the car brakes the re-
sults of such an operation would de-
pend entirely upon the type of triple valve
employed.

(3) The notch employed to release the
locomotive brake using the automatic brake-
valve of the " ET " equipment is the run-
ning position notch, as the locomotive brake
is automatically held applied in all positions
of the automatic brake-valve handle except
running position.

(4) The reputation of the school you men-

252

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

tion is well established, but better infor-
mation than we give can best be secured by
direct correspondence with its management.

AB. R., McKeesport, Pennsylvania. —
• Note reply to E. B. L. above. The
majority of roads hire their operators, or,
possibly, make them from students which
some operators are allowed to take in their
offices. We have frequently outlined in this
department the necessary procedure.

JH. K., Terre Haute, Indiana. — The St.
• Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern is
now in the Missouri Pacific system. Ad-
dress A. W. Sullivan, general manager, St.
Louis, Missouri, in regard to chief train
despatcher.

The eye test is sufficient, as well as pro-
ficiency in his work, for the requirements of
an operator. The pay is from $15 to $25
per week.

Don't believe derogatory stories which you
may hear of any road until you have per-
sonally investigated the conditions. We
never heard any such assertion made con-
cerning this road.

BN. M., Wooster, Ohio.— The informa-
• tion required ean best be derived
from direct correspondence with the heads
of the signal department of road mentioned.
We might refer you to Mr. W. P. Allen,
inspector of signals, Philadelphia, Pennsyl-
vania.

MB., Spartanburg, South Carolina. —
• You are entirely too young to be
considered for the position of brakeman or
flagman on any railroad. -

HAT is horse-power as applied to a
locomotive, and how is it deter-
mined ?

G. A. J., Baltimore, Maryland.

The term horse-power was first estab-
lished by James Watt, who ascertained that
a strong London draft-horse was capable
of doing work for a short interval of time
equal to lifting 33,000 pounds one foot high
in one minute. This value was used by
Watt in expressing the power of his engines,
and has since been universally adopted in
mechanics.

The expression " foot pounds " is used to
denote the unit of work, and is the force
required to lift a weight of one pound
through a space of one foot. Horse-power
is the measure of the rate at which work is
performed and is equal to 33,000 pounds

lifted one foot in one minute, or one pound
lifted 550 feet in one second ; therefore,
one horse-power equals 550 foot pounds per
second.

The general formula for ascertaining the
horse-power of a locomotive is as follows:

PxLxAxN

= H.P.

33,000
in which :

P Means effective pressure in

pounds per square inch.
L Length of stroke in feet.
A Area of piston in square inches.
N Number of strokes (four times
the number of revolutions)
per minute.
H.P. Indicated horse-power.
The tractive power of a locomotive mul-
tiplied by the speed in miles per hour, di-
vided by 375, gives horse-power.

EH. U., Brooklyn, New York. — Oppor-
• tunities for the technically trained
man are exceptional in railroad service, but
it must be with the understanding and will-
ing acquiescence to start in the subordinate
grades. The position of mechanical engi-
neer on a large railroad is of the utmost
importance, as has before been mentioned
in this department.

,As you are a student of mechanical engi-
neering, and, presumably, have not yet grad-
uated, would .suggest that pending the com-
pletion of your course you get in touch
with the mechanical engineers of various
roads through the medium of correspond-
ence. Express a wish to enter their test de-
partment, which comprises work of the most
interesting character1, and, furthermore, ex-
actly along the lines of study which you have
pursued.

This work will familiarize you thoroughly
with the strength of material, etc., entering
in locomotive and car work, and will pre-
sent opportunity to participate in the various
train tonnage and other tests, the data in
connection with which can only be secured
by experts. The way to preferment is fair-
ly easy after once having become identified
with that department as an inspector.

.«*

LC. C, Northampton, Massachusetts —
• (1) The Pocket-List of Railroad
Officials is published quarterly by the Rail-
way Equipment and Publication Company. 24
Park Place, New York City, New York.

(2) The Newport and Wickford Railroad
is separate from any other system. It has
three miles of track, four feet eight and one-
half inch gage, one locomotive, and two

A NEW "WASTE" FOR OILING WHEELS.

253

cars. Mr. A. D. MacLeod is superintendent.
Address Newport, Rhode Island.

(3) The old Martha's Vineyard Railway
is now an electric line, steam having been dis-
continued several years ago. We do not
know what became of the one steam loco-
motive which formerly ran there. The last
engineer is now employed by the New York,
New Haven and Hartford Railroad at Bos-
ton, Massachusetts.

EJ. L., Kansas City, Missouri. — We
• think nineteen years is too young for
favorable consideration as Pullman con-
ductor. Call on Mr. F. A. Cooke, district
superintendent of that company at Kansas
City, and he will straighten you out.

CH. L., Princeton, Kentucky. — Yes, to
• all your questions.

HA. B., Pocatello, Idaho. — To express
• an opinion on the merits of one au-
tomatic switch over another would be to
touch on a matter which properly belongs

to the advertising department. The device
you mention is extensively advertised in
trade papers, and you can readily obtain all
information desired from the manufactur-
ers' literature printed lor circulation.

SB. L., San Francisco, California. — As
• you are now residing in the heart of
that section you should be able to ascertain
the demand for firemen on California roads
much more readily than we could.

-J*

EP., Chicago, Illinois. — Your age is just
• right for a fireman, and your pre-
vious experience as stationary boiler fireman
would no doubt help your application. Read
the " Making of an Engineer " in the August,
1907, number of The Railroad Man's
Magazine.

FW., New Haven, Connecticut. — You are
• entirely too young to receive any con-
siderations from railroad employing offi-
cials, except that they might consider you as
messenger if a vacancy existed.

A NEW " WASTE " FOR OILING WHEELS.

Samuel A. Flower, After Learning that 180,000,000 Pounds of Cotton
Waste Are Consumed Yearly, Invents a New Product.

SAMUEL A. FLOWER was called the
" man who watched the wheels go
round." A large majority of the turning
wheels, at least all of those of the railroad-
cars, rest on half bearings, and the lubri-
cating oil is applied to them by putting into
the box below a mass of waste soaked in
oil. The waste acts as a wick and, draw-
ing the oil up, presses it against the axle and
keeps the axle lubricated steadily until the
lubricating oil in the box is exhausted and
must Ik- renewed.

The best sort of waste of the several sorts
was found to be cotton waste, the refuse
from the cotton spindles and looms,
worth about eight cents a pound. Yet, so
great is the demand that the American
product of one hundred and eighty million
pounds a year is greedily absorbed by the
market. It has become the most profitable
by-product of the cotton-plant. Over forty
million pounds are shipped yearly to Ger-
many for cheap fabrics. Men make for-
tunes in gambling in it at fractions of a cent

254

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

profit. It never sells below six cents, and,
in some years, goes over ten.

This constant demand for waste makes a
two hundred per cent increase in price over
cost of production. Its use for wiping ma-
chinery is universal. But something else
was needed.

Flower was handicapped in every way.
He had nothing on which to begin but his
courage and his wonderful chances.. It was
a virgin field He was all alone in it and
had no fear of competition.

One of the first steps was the acquisition
of the knowledge that cotton waste has
never been entirely satisfactory. Sometimes
it is not resilient enough to hold up against
the axle when a costly and dangerous " hot-
box " ensues, and, sometimes, bits and par-
ticles become detached and get into the
close-fitting moving parts of the machinery,
causing great damage.

Cotton Waste Is Scarce.

So scarce is cotton waste at times that
some of the railroads that must have it or a
substitute, use unmixed cotton and woolen
waste, or woolen waste entirely, paying the
■bills and taking the consequences in trouble
and damages with a sour face.

Patiently Flower ' sought ■ the substitute.
It must be one that would be cheaper than
cotton waste, one that would be resilient
and springy no matter whether heavily
soaked in oil or very nearly dry, and that
would not easily part with fragments to get
into the machinery.

He had experimented with all of the in-
expensive fibers and all of them were quite
useless save coir — the fibrous component of
the outer coconut husk. His careful re-
search brought him to the conclusion that
this fiber was cheap enough and had the
resiliency. It has a stiffness and a rebellious
nature which give it a distinct character
among all fibers, and it is impervious to
both oil and water in its natural state.

Its best quality was that it would
neither shrink nor stretch. Plodding along
until he had hit the right thing, he found a
process of treating the coconut fiber that
curled it, and then when it was mixed with
cotton waste the combination was perfect.
A resilient lubricating waste had been de-
vised that filled all requirements.

It " wicked " the oil to the axle perfectly.
Soaked or dry it retained its form in all
temperatures and was very difficult to ignite.
Fragments of either of the two fibers were
infrequent in use. The last drop of oil was
used up, thereby effecting a great saving.
Less than half the previous quantity in
weight was needed — one pound of the mix-

ture was sufficient where a railroad car box
required two of the old cotton waste.

When he was sure that he had the right
thing, he secured his patents and then he
took it to the experimental department of
one of the great railroads. An extremely se-
vere test was proposed. A car that was to
travel to the Pacific coast was selected.
One set of boxes would be packed with the
new compound and another set with the
ordinary waste.

Flower knew he had found what he had
been looking for. He had learned that the
demand for waste for wiping machinery was
equally great and the supply quite as small ;
also, that the present commodity is not suf-
ficiently absorbent. First he tried jute fiber,
of the sort that is used in burlap and bag-
ging, and because in its natural state it is
non-absorbent his friends laughed at him.

At last the day came when the express-
car which had been made the subject of the
test was due home. A body of men whose
business it is to be interested vitally in eve-
rything that promises to save a penny or a
minute in the mechanical end of a railroad
gathered to examine the boxes and the ac-
cumulated reports.

Even Flower could hardly believe what
he saw. The cotton-waste boxes had acted
on the average. One had been repacked
and two partially refilled, and there had been .
the usual troubles. The four boxes packed
with the mixed cotton and coconut fiber had
given no trouble. They were as full and
springy as the day the car left, and there
had been an eighteen per cent saving in the
consumption of oil. - The man who had
watched the wheels go round to so good a
purpose was showered with congratulations
by men who rarely indulge in enthusiasm.

May Save Some Money.

One of the men drew the gray-headed
inventor to one side.

" See- here, my dear Mr. Flower (the
" my dear mister " seemed odd to the
modest man), you have to get a factory and
a plant to make this stuff, and I suppose
you will start out at once. Don't let any-
body fool you out of your rights. Now, I
don't know what these other fellows are go-
ing to do, but you can take my open-time
order for half a million pounds at six cents,
and begin to fill it as-soon as you can."

That night, as he went home, the song of
the wheels as they went around beneath
Samuel B. Flower was the tune of millions.
Over two hundred million dollars is spent
yearly for lubricating oils. Mr. Flower may
save the people who buy this oil some
money.

THE VANISHED FREIGHT.

BY E. FLORENCE

He Who Told This Yarn Wasn't Known as "Anner
Nias," but His Friends Galled Him " Monk Hausen."

J^HE loose- jointed individual

and the watery-eyed one

met on common ground.

They had both . been fired

from the same freight, and

were drawn to each other

— or, more correctly speaking, fired at

each other, for they came near colliding

in the process of ejectment.

" Must take us for blooming cannon-
balls," grunted the loose-jointed one.

" Yes ; those fellows are certainly on
the firing - line, all right," replied the
watery-eyed one. " Reminds me of the
way I've often floated through space in
Kansas, riding bareback on a cyclone."

"So you've been in Kansas, too?"
queried the loose-jointed . one. " Now,
there's a State that can boast some
about nearly everything. And, talking
of cyclones, did you ever hear how they
are formed?

" Well, I met an ex-college professor
out there who had succumbed to the wan-
derlust and hit the road, and he explained
the whole thing to me.

" You see, cyclones are formed in this
way : First of all comes one of those
scorching-hot days when the sun is on to

the job for a raise. He gets focused on
a certain locality, and fricassees the at-
mosphere at that location, and keeps on
plugging at it until the air is all con-
sumed.

" This creates, as it were, a hole in the
atmosphere. Then nature gets busy, and
sends a wireless to the spot where there
is an oversupply of the ethereal fluid, and
as soon as the C.Q.D. is received the air
makes a bee-line for that vacuous void.

" Sometimes it travels in a straight
line, and sometimes not. However, as it
travels, it assumes a rotary motion, due
to a law of physics that all swiftly
moving bodies must rotate. As it ad-
vances in its swift flight, it is utterly un-
selfish, for it takes everything along that
it comes up with.

" Houses, trees, and cattle are gath-
ered in its loving embrace, and the whole
blooming outfit forms a sort of relief ex-
pedition to the afflicted place. The world
moves, but Kansas is a whole moving-
picture show. Talk about the shifting
sands of time ! A Kansas cyclone is the
sine qua non of motion, and is entitled
to full honorary membership in the
Scene Shifters' Union.

255

256

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" It may leave a path of devastation
behind it, but think of what would be-
come of that airless void if the C.Q.D.
was ignored."

" That's so," replied the watery-eyed
one. " Nature has got railroads skinned
alive when it comes to delivering the
goods. Then, again, a cyclone is a great
factor in promoting social intercourse.
There are lots of people out there who
would never see each other were it not
for the fact that they are thrown together
by the thoughtful cyclone. I know of. a
couple of fellows who had not seen
each other for years, who met in the
air, both joy-riding aboard the same cy-
clone.

'"Hallo, Bill!' shouted one; 'I
haven't seen you for a good while.' ' No,'
yelled the other fellow ; ' I don't often get
up this way.' "

" Speaking of railroading," said the
loose-jointed individual, " I'd like to re-
late to you some c»f my experiences in the
railroad business. Back in the seventies
I did key-pounding down in Kansas, on
the P. D. Q..road. I held down a shanty
up along the line, forty miles from the
nearest refectory.

" Did nothing much but give the trains
clear track or hold them up to side-track
so's to let another train pass. The old
P. D. Q. was a single-track road, with
shanties and sidings at regular intervals,
at which a number of other~jays like my-
self did the brain-work of the system.

" I was holding down this King Will-
iam job in that Queen Anne cottage, with
no great white way nearer than the milky
' baldric of the skies,' and the only stars
I could flirt with were those winking at
me across millions of miles of space.
But I was not astronomically inclined —
gastronomy has always been my long suit.

" Well, this particular incident I have
in mind happened on one of those days
when nature seems to be resting and
getting ready for a grand-stand demon-
stration. Even the grasshoppers had
ceased their campaign against the crops.
As a rule, the quiet of my position never
bothered me much, but that day the si-
lence seemed to get onto my nerves.

" I seemed to sense something was go-
ing to happen, and felt as fussy as a mag-
netized kitten. There was a south-bound
train due at my villa at 7.30 p.m. I had

orders to hold it on the siding until the
north-bound passenger, due at 7.45, had
passed.

"I set my signals and busied myself
doing nothing until the south bound
should arrive. I felt mighty glad of the
chance for human companionship which
the side-tracked freight would supply.

"The sky had assumed a dirty- gray
color. The 'clouds seemed to hang bal-
anced overhead, without any sign of mo-
tion. The temperature had dropped
quite perceptibly, and, from indications,
I felt certain that there was a cyclone
sashaying around somewhere in my vicin-
ity.

" I was wondering if my villa was in
the path of the whirling dervish, when
the stillness was suddenly fractured by
the shrieking of the south bound's whis-
tle.

" I got ready to do the reception act,
and wondered why Jim Bludsoe kept his
whistle blowing.

"In a few seconds the big engine
loomed in sight. Along she came, like
a race-horse on the home - stretch, and
suddenly I realized that the big galoot at
the throttle was going to give us the
go-by.

" I grabbed my red flag and got busy
with the wigwag performance, but old
iron horse SAvished past with his long,
brown tail of empty freights strung out
behind like the appendage of a comet.

" ' What the Sam Hill's the matter
with that giddy choffer? ' thinks I. Then
it struck me all of a sudden that in about
seven and a half minutes there was going
to be trouble, likewise a lot of scrap-iron
scattered over the scenery of the Sun-
flower State.

" The north - bound train had already
entered the same block, and the two trains
would meet about half-way between my
bungalow and the next one south, on the
curve around a grove thereabouts. In
my mind I pictured the horror of the
scene.

" Say, did you ever read ' Ben-Hur '?
Do you remember the chariot-race, and
how that gay Lothario of the Ghetto had
ornamental spikes on the hubs of his chug
car ? Then, do you remember how, when
coming up the home-stretch, he spoke to
his team in Yiddish, and they spurted to
overtake the fellow on the lead?

THE VANISHED FREIGHT.

.257

" Also, do you remember how the bully
boy tacked a little to leeward, so that, by
the time the lead horses of the two teams
were neck to neck, his chariot swung to-
ward that of mister-man-on-the-lead, and
that harveyized toothpick on bully boy's
chariot-hub slid in between the spokes of
the -other fellow's wheel, and there wTas a
sound like the tearing off of several yards
of dry noise, and mister-man-on-the-lead's
chariot turned turtle, and Benny-boy fin-
ished first amid the plaudits from the
bleachers and the showers of American
beauties from the grand stand and
boxes ?

"You remember that, do you? Well,
that's the kind of noise I expected wQnld
vibrate the atmosphere of Kansas in a
few minutes ; but, as compared to this
noise, the noise of that chariot-face would
sound like the joyful coo of a happy in-
fant.

" My mind was full of the possibilities
of the situation, and I was standing there,
paralyzed, as it were, when suddenly there
was a roar, and the topography of Kansas
began doing the Wilbur Wright act.

" I was picked up bodily and hurled
against that shanty of mine with sufficient
force to knock the sense out of me. When
I came to I saw a train standing on the
siding. The crew were emptying the con-
tents of a water-pail over me and search-
ing my anatomy for injuries.

" As my gray matter resumed opera-
tions, I realized that it was the north-
bound passenger-train that stood upon the
siding. ' How the Sam Hill did you get
here ? ' I asked the engineer.

" ' Why, came in on my engine,' he re-
plied. ' Where's No. 23 — isn't she in
yet? I had orders to run through to X,
and expected to see No. 23 side-tracked
here. Not seeing anything on the siding,
I pulled up to investigate. What's up ? '

"'Didn't you smash into 23?' I
gasped.

; ' Sure not,' he replied. ' What's the
matter? Did you strike your head? '

" ' My head's all right,' I replied.
' Twenty-three passed here in a blaze of
glory some time ago, and if you didn't see
her, where is she? '

1 ' Come, man,' coaxed the engineer,
get word along the line and find out when
she is clue. I don't want to stay here all
day.' .

5 R R

" ' But I tell you she passed here,' I
insisted, and in desperation I rushed to
the key and pounded off an inquiry to the
fellow south of me as to whether 23 had
passed.

" The reply staggered me. He an-
swered in the negative.

"'Where's that train?' I shrieked.
' It passed here at 7.30,' I persisted. '

" Just then the rear brakeman came
running up the track with a cap in his
hand. ' Found this down the track,' he
said.. 'That's old Jim Bludsoe's cap;
and if his cap is here, he must have passed
here himself.'

" ' That's so,' rejoined the engineer.
'But what am I going to do? I can't
hang around here any longer.'

" Well, I wired to -the northern end for
instructions, and got word to send the
passenger along. Then the word went
over the line to the next station south,
to send out a searching-party for the
missing train. The track between my
shanty and the next one south was closed
to traffic pending the arrival of the
searching-crew. In due time they pulled
in on a hand-car, and reported that they
had seen nothing of the missing train.
I wired the information to headquar-
ters, and asked for instructions.

" ' Open up the road for traffic and
send men on foot to make a thorough
search for that train ; we need it,' came
the answer.

" I did as directed, and sent the search-
ing-party down the track. Told them to
spread out on either side of the track, and
work along until they found the wreck,
for I felt sure it must have run off the
track somewhere,

" After they had been gone about fif-
teen or twenty minutes, and I had raked
my brain for a solution of the matter, I
heard a whistle away off in the distance.
It sounded low, appearing to come from
the south. There was nothing due at my
place for an hour or so ; so I thought at
first it was a relief -party coming up to
help solve the mystery, but as the sound
continued, and did not get any louder,
I concluded that, whatever it was, it was
stationary. •

" The sound kept up for about ten
minutes, and then stopped. I waited for
about half an hour, and then I saw one of
the searching-party returning on the run.

^58

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

In the meantime headquarters had been
hammering me for news of the engine.

" When the special courier arrived, he
was winded ; so I saw it was no use trying
to pump anything out of him until he got
through with his breathing exercises.

" When he got his bellows working
again, I learned that they had found Jim
Bludsoe and his train about three miles
down the road, about a mile and a half
away from the track. Several of the cars
were standing on end, but the engine and
the balance of the train were right side
up, scattered over the face of the virgin
prairie.

" The searchers had heard the whis-
tle, and proceeded to investigate. They
had found the wreck as reported, with
old Jim standing in the cab, scared, wild-
looking, and battered."

"How the heck did they get there?"
asked the watery-eyed one.

" Well, they couldn't get anything out
of Jim. He seemed plumb locoed. When
I sent in my report over the wire, they
sent down a lot of experts to try and
salvage the train. Jim Bludsoe was the
only living critter left of the crew.

" They figured that the cyclone had
caught up to the train on its wild whirl
down the track, picked it up bodily, like
a blooming air - ship, and carried it
across the country to where it was dis-
covered. This was verified by the crew,
who came straying in like lost sheep from
the prairie whither they had blown.

"It was learned from them that the
engineer had developed a crazy streak
some time before passing my station and
chased the fireman out of the' cab. That
explained Avhy they gave my signal the
go-by. However, Jim Bludsoe never had
to .answer for his crazy act, for the last I
heard of him he was in a dippy domicile,
quartered in an upholstered boudoir."-

" And what became of the locomotive
and cars?" inquired the watery-eyed
one.

" Oh, they built a mile and a half
of track out to the scene, and the wreck-
ers salvaged the whole outfit.^JThe strange
part of it is that a prosperous settlement,
known as The Lost Freight, sprung up
at the terminus.

" But, then, that seems to be the cus-
tom in Kansas. Whenever any of the
real estate is shifted by a cyclone, the
natives send a tracer after it, and if it is
found in good order they migrate to the
spot.

" Why, I've seen the same family liv-
ing in the same house in a half-dozen
different counties. It/S a cheap way to
move, and, besides, you don't have to
bother about the selection of a site."

" That's so," replied the watery-eyed
one. " You don't happen to be related
to Anner Nias, do you?"

" No," replied the loose- jointed indi-
vidual. " My familiars call me Monk
Hausen. So long, pard. Thanks for a
verv entertaining afternoon."

DOUBT ABOUT HUDSON BAY R. R.

MANY doubts and rumors of doubts
have been going the rounds since it
was announced that the Canadian govern-
ment planned to build a line from Winni-
peg Ao Hudson Bay. The ice-bound condi-
tion of the bay during a considerable por-
tion of the year, and the bleak and unsettled
nature of the country through which the
line would have to* pass, have been quoted
as insurmountable objections to the scheme.
The recent preliminary report of the sur-
veying party sent out by the government,
however, • will set at rest many of these
doubts, though it does not bring a final
decision. The surveyors report that a line
could be built easily and cheaply, either to
Port Churchill or Port Nelson.

They estimate that the cost, including
harbor and terminal works, would be be-
tween seventeen and eighteen million dol-
lars. The engineers favor the line to Port
Nelson, as that point is some sixtj^ miles
nearer Winnipeg, and the port is ice-free
for about one month longer than is Port
Churchill.

The country through which it passes is
also much better adapted for agriculture.
In spite of this report, however, the govern-
ment will take no further steps toward the
construction of the line until it has fuller
evidence that the bay is open fcr naviga-
tion for a sufficiently long period each year
to warrant the establishment of steamship
lines.

Finding the Secret of the
Automatic Coupler.

BY E

BACON.

LIFE-SAVING inventions rank first in importance in the field of human
ingenuity. An invention that saves a man time and worry, that enables
business to be transacted in double the volume of former standards,
can be hailed with delight, but the life-saving device is hailed with a thank-
fulness that has in it considerable of reverence. Of all life-saving devices it
is doubtful if one can be found to rank with the automatic coupler. Every
year more men were sacrificed to the link and pin than in battles that have
decided the fate of hemispheres; and to Janney and Miller belongs the undis-
puted glory of having saved thousands of the country's sturdiest sons, and
what positions some of those sons have filled none can tell.

The Toll of Human Lives That Was Paid Before a Genius Among

Eight Thousand Men Found a Way to Prevent

the Slaughter.

HE automatic car-coupler,
which fastens by impact
and is unfastened by the
turn of a handle, seems
like a simple contrivance,
the invention of -which
could not have called for unusual me-
chanical ingenuity. To-day the auto-
matic coupler is used on every railroad
car in America, yet from the time men
first began to work upon the idea at
least thirty years passed by before the
device was perfected so that it could be
put into general use.

During that period scores of fortunes

were frittered away in the search for the
true secret of its mechanism, and the
labor of thousands of inventors ended in
disappointment. For a generation the
automatic coupler was a will-o'-the-wisp
to half the inventive genius of the
country.

Perhaps no other invention had ever
been attempted by quite so many men —
certainly no other that, when at last it
was accomplished, seemed so simple. It
was a search as popular, as absorbing, as
heart-rending as was that of the medieval
alchemists for a way of transmuting
gold.

259

III!

260

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Surely even the long-lived delusion of
the possibility of perpetual motion never
obsessed more dreamers of a mechanical
turn of mind than did this effort to
couple railroad cars automatically and
instantaneously without risk to life or
limb.

One wonders, when one examines the
modern coupler, which is far from being
a complex piece of mechanism, that it
took so long to perfect it, or that thou-
sands failed in their efforts to find the
secret.

The Coupler Fever.

In 1886 four thousand patents had
been granted at Washington for auto-
matic couplers, and twelve years later
the number had grown to eight thousand.
It is doubtful if two per cent of these
eight thousand inventions ever brought
a penny of profit.

It was in the late forties that the
effort to make an automatic coupler was
begun. And for forty years afterward — ■
in fact, for fifteen years after the solu-
tion of the problem — coupler inventors
were haunting the offices of every rail-
road in the country.

They came in swarms, inventors with
long hair and wild eyes, who dreamed
of becoming millionaires within the year ;
and others, sober-minded, practical men,
many of whom seemed to have come close
to the heart of the mystery.

When the fever was at its height the
traffic manager of a railroad would find
a line of coupler inventors stretching
from his door down the hall like a long
snake, every one of them with a miniature
train of cars, in all kinds of receptacles.

Perhaps fifty per cent of the hordes of
inventors would succeed in getting a
hearing. If one of them succeeded in
getting through the skirmish lines of
office-boys and clerks, who were accus-
tomed to shoo them away as if they were
book-agents or pedlers, he would lay
out a miniature railroad track on the
floor of the official's office. Then he
would set his cars on the rails and bang
them together with terrific force to illus-
trate the workings of his contrivance.

But somewhere there was a weak
point in every one of these inventions.
It was astonishing how many things

there were to be considered in the making
of a successful coupler. .The problem of
curves was the pitfall that proved the
undoing of many of the enthusiasts.

They had failed to realize that a
coupler that wrould not turn to right and
left at the knuckle would be serviceable
only on an absolutely straight track. Of
course,' there are inventors with such
buoyant optimism that they are not dis-
couraged when confronted with such an
obstacle as that.

" That is not the fault of my coupler,"
said one of them. "It is the fault of
your railroad. What's the matter with
relaying your tracks and taking the
curves out? "

At last a coupler inventor came along
whose idea did come into practical use.
He was Colonel Ezra Miller, of the
horse artillery. A dashing figure was
the colonel in New York City in the
forties, especially when on parade in his
showy uniform at the head of his Na-
tional Guard regiment.

He had traveled on the first trains in
the country, in the days when stage-
coach-bodies were placed on trucks and
run on strap rails. Railroads had had
a fascination for him from their be-
ginning.

He would spend hours watching the
trains go by on the Harlem road, until,
in 1848, he moved to Magnolia, Wis-
consin, to survey State lands. There he
became a justice of the peace : and later,
because of his fame as commander of the
horse artillery in NeAv York, the Gov-
ernor appointed him colonel of the
Eighth Regiment of the Wisconsin mili-
tia. Still he continued to spend almost
all his spare time studying railroads.

In those days the platform, buffer, and
coupler were placed below the sills of
the car, although the sills are the line of
resistance to any longitudinal blow. The
colonel saw the folly of this, and real-
ized that it added greatly to the dangers
of travel. Often it was responsible for
the telescoping of cars in collisions.

He determined that the platform,
coupler, and buffer should be placed on
a line with the sills ; that the cars should
be coupled with compression buffers and
with couplers that fastened by impact.
In 1863 he patented the "Miller plat-
form, coupler, and buffer."

FINDING THE SECRET OF THE AUTOMATIC COUPLER. 261

The coupler was automatic — the first
automatic coupler ever put into service.
Moreover, it prevented the oscillating
movement of cars acting independently
when coupled with slack links or chains,
a movement that caused many broken
rails and the violent whirling of rear
cars from the track. The compression
buffers made the train a solid whole.

Extra Hazardous Labor.

But although the colonel's invention
wras hailed as the greatest life-saving
discovery of the age, and was adopted
before long by every large railroad hi
the world, the great coupler problem
was not solved by any means. The
Miller coupler, which is referred to now-
adays as the " Miller hook," was in-
tended only for passenger-trains, and
the coupler problem pertained princi-
pally to freight-cars, there being about
forty times as many freight-cars as pas-
senger-cars in service in this country. .

While the hook, backed by the elabo-
rate platform and buffer, was a great
improvement on the old link and pin, it
would be impossible to apply it to a
freight-car. Then, too, the hook did not
always work instantaneously, and some-
times cars had to be banged together two
or three times before fastening.

Hundreds of men were being killed
and thousands injured every year be-
cause of the lack of an automatic freight-
car coupler. With only a few thousand
passenger-cars in use, and hundreds of
thousands of freight-cars, the adoption
of the Miller hook had scarcely a per-
ceptible effect upon the number of acci-
dents.

It was dangerous business coupling
cars in those days. There has never
been anything more disastrous to life and
limb than the old link-and-pin coupler,
and it is only ten years since the last of
them went to the scrap-heap.

Mutilated men were a common sight
in railroad yards. An instant's delay in
lifting the link and slipping it into place
might mean the loss of a hand or an
arm. Hundreds of lives were crushed
out between the heavy beams that acted
as buffers at the ends of the cars.

It was intended that there should be
enough space between these buffers for

a man's body, but all cars were not the
same in this respect, and sometimes the
buffers came close together. A man en-
! gaged in coupling cars had to be on
a constant watch to see that there was
going to be enough space left for him
when the cars should come together.

Uncoupling was almost as dangerous.
It had to be done with the cars in mo-
tion ; and at night, in the uncertain light
of a swinging lantern, it was not uncom-
mon for a man running along between
the cars to slip and go under the wheels.

During the years 1882, 1883, and 1884
the average annual number of men killed
in this country while coupling cars was
four hundred and fifty-nine, and the
number injured seventeen thousand eight
hundred and fifty, a total of eighteen
thousand three hundred and nine — more
casualties during one year than were suf-
fered by the Union army on the bloody
field of Gettysburg.

Confronted with such figures as these,
there began to be a public awakening to
the necessity of putting an end to the
slaughter. The Master Car Builders'
Association took a hand in the matter,
and its members began to demand a
standard type of coupler.

Clearly a standard type was a neces-
sity, since no railroad's freight-cars were
confined to its own lines. The associa-
tion appointed a committee to look into
the matter.

The Weeding Process.

The committee looked over the field
to discover an automatic coupler that
would fit all requirements, and they
found a few thousand kinds to choose
from. The hungry coupler inventors,
scarcely any of whom had succeeded in
marketing their wares, came down upon
the committee like a vast army, equipped
with diagrams and models.

It was decided to hold a aeries of tests
to determine which was tne most satis-
factory of all the couplers offered. In
1885 the association's committee held
trials at Buffalo, with the intention of
recommending twelve makes.

They expected a horde of inventors at
these trials. As a matter of fact, only
forty-two kinds of couplers were pre-
sented for the tests. Most of the rest

262

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

had not been brought out by the inchoate
model stage.

As a result of the tests the committee
chose six automatic couplers of the link-
and-pin type, and six known as vertical-
plane couplers, so called because they
came together on a vertical plane. A
year later the committee held further
trials at Albany, where thirty-three kinds
of couplers were tried.

At Boston, in the same year, one hun-
dred and seventy-three couplers were
entered for competition before the Mas-
sachusetts State Railroad Commissioners.

The master car builders at last picked
out the one coupler that they considered
the most satisfactory of the lot. It was
a coupler of the vertical-plane type, and
had been invented by Eli H. Janney,
who at that time was unknown.

Janney had been brought up on a
farm in Virginia. For fifteen years he
had been experimenting in an attempt
to solve the coupler problem, and as
early as 1873 had hit upon the design to
which the master car builders gave first
place. For five years after getting his
patent he had tried in vain to interest
railroads in his invention.

His original invention was' a passen-
ger-car coupler, and for passenger-cars
the railroads were using the Miller hook,
and did not care to go to the expense of
making a change. At last the Pennsyl-
vania took a fancy to his coupler for
their passenger-cars.

Then, in 1882, using the same contour
lines for the clutching part of the ap-
paratus, he invented an automatic freight
coupler, and it was this invention that
won out in the master car builders' tests.

Janney's Two Devices.

Janney's first invention consisted of a
coupler body with a bifurcated head and
a revolving hook or knuckle, with a ver-
tical lock actuated by a flat spring, lock-
ing automatically on the closing move-
ment of the knuckle. His invention of
1882 had a vertically moving locking-
pin, especially suited to freight service.

As the rules of the master car build-
ers prohibited them from adopting any
device covered by a patent, however,
they succeeded in inducing the parties in
interest to waive their patent rights to

the Janney contour lines. This opened
the field for other inventors and manu-
facturers to come in and furnish coup-
lers having the contour lin'es that the
association had adopted, but with differ-
ent locking mechanisms.

Even now the battle was only half
won. It would cost a good many mil-
lions of dollars to equip all the freight-
cars with automatic couplers.

The railroads didn't care to spend the
money. Congress had to take a hand,
and in 1893 the Safety Appliance Act
was passed that compelled the roads to
use automatic couplers on all cars, giv-
ing them until August, 1900, to complete
the reform.

The Vanished Horde.

To-day, in spite of the fact of the
eight thousand patents that have been
granted, there are not more than fifteen
makes of couplers in general use, all
having Janney's contour lines, which the
master car builders made the standard.
Some of the manufacturers bought up
several of the patents to combine them
into one coupler, but it is safe to say that
considerably less than two hundred of
the eight thousand were ever sold.

The making of automatic freight-
couplers is exclusively an American in-
dustry. In the British Isles and in the
European countries they use screw coup-
lers, which take several minutes to fasten,
and the old link and pin. American
manufacturers have tried many and many
a time to induce the Englishmen to make
a change, but without success.

Not one of the horde of coupler in-
ventors made any great fortune. Yerv
few made anything. But Colonel Mil-
ler's platform, buffer, and hook brought
him a quarter of a million dollars, and
Janney is supposed to have made a good
deal more than that.

Still, not every inventor who has
achieved great wealth has contributed so
much toward saving human life as Mil-
ler and Janney; No man loses his life or
is maimed nowadays in --this country
while coupling cars. If it were not for
the automatic coupler the number of
killed and wounded, taking into consid-
eration the increased number of cars,
would be more than fifty thousand a year.

A Track -Walker's Devotion.

BY EDMUND G. KINYON.

THE TRUE STORY SERIES. Even the unbalanced mind
leans to the instinct of preserving human life. This bit of history
shows how duty can become so prominent a part of a man's life that the
'idea of it lives on after all but the merest physical vitality has departed. In
the old track-walker's case physical life is, in fact, secondary to and probably
dependent upon this overpowering instinct to accomplish' what he believes
to be his mission.

TRUE STORY, NUMBER THIRTY- EIGHT.

How an Old Man's Task Has Become the. Unbroken Thread That

[Has Held Him to Life After the Light of

Reason Failed.

4.MES DRUMGOLD'S name
does not appear upon the pay-
roll of the Southern Pacific
Company, yet for more than
twenty years he has patrolled
the seven hundred miles of
desert track stretching between Los An-
geles, California, and El Paso, Texas.
He has rendered as faithful service as
any other track-walker in the pay of the
company.

There is deep pathos in this story of
Drumgold, or " Crazy Charley," as he
is known all along the way. It is a
striking example of that devotion to an
imaginary duty which ofttimes possesses
a mind which has slightly left its moor-
ings. Drumgold is old and gray, and
his body is bent and worn with years of
heavy labor and exposure ; yet no in-

fluence can induce him to desist from his
self-imposed task.

He is a martyr to a deranged intellect,
•an intellect which forces his tired body
to this endless pilgrimage in the belief
that the safety and lives of thousands of
passengers depend upon his faithfulness.

Many years ago, when the Southern
Pacific was first built across the desert,
Drumgold was employed as track-walker
in a lonely section. For a number of
years he performecl his duties in a most
trustworthy manner ; then, somehow, the
great desert, with its sameness and mys-
tery and solitude, got into his brain, and
he saw queer visions and conversed with
unseen persons as he went about his tasks.

Rumors of his condition reached the
superintendent's office, and in due time
an order was issued discharging Drum-

Series began in the October, (906, Railroad Man's Marazinc. Single Copies, (0 centi.

263

264

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

gold from the service of the company,
and another man was sent to take his
place.

But Drumgold argued with himself
that harm would surely come to the pas-
sengers and trainmen should he cease to
patrol the track, so he disregarded the
order and continued his inspection.
Heretofore he had patrolled only a few
miles of track ; now he resolved to patrol

He stoutly refuses all invitations to
ride, asserting that he must walk in
order to do his work properly. His eye?
are constantly upon the track. Every
foot of rail is scrutinized, every bridge
and culvert and cattle guard inspected.
No high-salaried engineer is more pains-
taking and tireless.

-Drumgold's vigil has not been entire-
ly in vain. In at least two instances he
has prevented disastrous
wrecks. One night a pas-
senger-train was flagged
in a deep, winding canon,
and Avhen the crew ran
forward they found
"Crazy Charley" shrink-
ing against the wall of
the cut.

The train proceeded
slowly, and just around
the bend a blazing bridge
was found. In another
instance a cloudburst
washed out a section of
track. An approaching
freight-train found dan-
ger signals between the
rails, but there was no
one in sight. Later it
was learned that Drum-
gold had placed the sig-
nals and then hid from
view.

Many times he has
given section bosses and
road -masters in-
formation concerning
defective track or
weakened bridges, and
such information has al-
ways been found relia-
ble'.

Many efforts have been
made to induce Drum-
gold to give up his weary
the entire desert, and that is what he wandering. At first the company feared
has been doing for the past twenty years, that evil might come from his presence,
Every trainman is familiar with the and he was ordered repeatedly to stay
bent, worn figure of " Crazy Charley," off of the right of way, but he always
although he avoids the towns and is sel- ignored the orders.

dom seen by the residents of the country Wealthy relatives have pleaded with
through which he passes. The trainmen him in vain. At one tune a brother ob-
sight him daily at some point along the tained a promise from him that he would
way, trudging beside the tracks, labori- remain in one place provided a house
ously carrying a roll of blankets, a little was built. A comfortable cottage was
cooking kit, and a canteen of water. accordingly erected at Cabazon, Cali-

THE TRAINMEN SIGHT HIM DAILY AT SOME POINT ALONG THE
WAY, TRUDGING BESIDE THE TRACKS.

A TRACK-WALKER'S DEVOTION.

2G5

fornia, near the railway track, and com-
pletely furnished.

The old track-walker seemed satis-
fied, and agreed to remain there the re-
mainder of his days. He slept in his
new house just one night, then started
for El Paso, five hundred miles eastward.

Recently this same brother resolved
to make another effort to rescue the old
man from his life of hardship. He ob-
tained permission to ride the cab of
freight-engines, and spent several days
in search before locating the wanderer.

Finally, far out on the Salton desert,
twenty miles from a station, the old man
was sighted at dusk, squatting beside his
tiny camp-fire. The train was stopped
and he was taken, half forcibly, aboard.

The brothers left the train at Indio

and spent the night at the town hotel.
" Crazy Charley " went to bed, faith-
fully promising to accompany his brother
to San Francisco. In the morning he
was gone. During the night he had
arisen, and started on his endless journey.

Summer and winter, storm and sun-
shine, are alike to Drumgold. Nothing
deters him from his daily pilgrimage
along the track. Those who have taken
note of his movements assert that he
averages the round trip of seven hun-
dred miles between Los Angeles and El
Paso once each year.

So far as known, he never proceeds
beyond those cities, although they by no
means mark the confines of the Southern
Pacific system. Why he has selected this
particular stretch of track is a mystery.

WHY HE DOESN'T LIKE "UPPERS."

They Would Be All Right, Says the Traveler, if Provided With a
Private Elevator and a Dressing-Room.

"'TWKE it from a man who has tipped
A sleeping-car porters from Montreal
to Pensacola, and from Seattle to San
Diego," said an old traveler to a writer for
the Washington (D. C.) Post, "the upper
berths on sleeping-cars ought to be abolished
on general principles, and the Minneapolis
man who has complained to the Interstate
Commerce Commission about them, and who
wants them put at a lower rate than lower
berths, has a drink coming when I meet him.

" Of course, there are a few fresh-air
fiends who stand out for the uppers, and
aver they are superior to the lowers, but
the great majority of travelers utter inde-
corous remarks when the man behind the
ticket-window says, ' The best I can do is
an upper.'

" Uppers would be all right if each one
were equipped with a private elevator and
had a dressing-room attached, but the dis-
comforts which they provide offset the ad-
vantages which are claimed for them about
three times over.

" I'll admit that there is a freer circula-
tion of air up there. Sometimes it's so free
tli.it the doctors get a nice thing out of it.
Also, if the ventilators aren't working prop-
erly there's sometimes a free circulation of
black smoke, which is a bit disconcerting,
to put it mildly.

" The climbing up is what gets me. You
have to wait your turn for the ladder, while
the lucky chaps in the lowers make facetious
. remarks which are calculated to disturb
your balance when once you do get your
feet planted on the ladder. Then when you
once get up and find yourself sitting on the
edge with your feet dangling over the aisle
you are confronted with the problem of un-
dressing.

" When you get some of your things off
and start to hang them up you find that
you've got to disturb the serenity of the
person in the lower berth if you want them
to hang right so that they won't be all clut-
tered up across your feet.

" You have to pull out the curtain and let
them fall down below the level of your bed.
Once when I did that a fussy old maid,
who occupied the lower berth, and who had
apparently noted my operations with grow-
ing alarm, called out in a shrill voice, warn-
ing me against invading her privacy and
threatening to sick the porter on me.

" After you're once wrapped up in the
blankets there is a certain sense of freedtmi
up there that you don't get in -the more
confined lowers, and if there aren't many
tunnels with their accompanying smoke, you
sleep pretty well, but when it comes to get-
ting up, your troubles are renewed."

McAllister's grouch.

BY CHARLES WESLEY SANDERS.

When He Found Out Who the Operator
at MX Was, It Vanished Like the Mist.

cALLISTER'S promotion
had been rapid. He
had blown into the chief
despatcher's office one
afternoon and asked for
a job, having ridden
from the western terminal in a caboose.
He had answered questions satisfactorily,
and the chief had sent him to a way-
station to work nights.

" Say, that man at BG is a whirl-
wind," the third - trick man said next
morning. " He sends like a machine,
and I never had to call him more'n
twice."

" Think he'd be all right copying up
here?" the chief asked.

The copier on the third trick had quit
the week before, and the chief had been
hesitating whom to put in his place.
There were, of course, any number of
operators who could have done the work,
but the chief wanted a man who had the
making of a despatcher.

So, when McAllister came to work the
next night, he found a message ordering
him to report for duty on the third trick
at the despatcher's office in twenty-four
hours. He came — a tall, dark - haired,
blue-eyed young man — who spoke only
when business demanded it, and who
eternally smoked a long, thick, very
black cigar.

Everybody admired him on the spot
for his ability, but he made no friends
personally. When he was spoken to he
answered with a hod, when pressed; by
a monosyllable when necessary.

Sometimes he was almost discourteous.
The chief dropped in one night while
the despatcher was at luncheon, and
wanted to know where 48 was.

" It's on the sheet," McAllister said,

shifting his big cigar and leaning back
in his chair.

The chief had a notion to speak
sharply, but he only looked at the sheet
and went into his own office.

" I wonder what's eating that fel-
low," he said to the trick - man when
they met on the stairs a little later.

"He's a queer fish," the trick - man
said. " I feel like smashing him one
in the jaw sometimes, but I'm afraid I
couldn't get away with it."

The reason for McAllister's grouch
was very simple and as old as the race.
He had been disappointed in love. Like
all persons who have been so disappoint-
ed, he kept on thinking about the girl.
He had her picture always with him,
and wrote a letter to her every night —
and then tore it up. After the letter-
writing he would pace his room.

" I'll be hanged if I'll pay any more
attention to her," he would say, and
then he would dwell upon her looks and
her ways till his heart was like lead.
And then his grouch would sweep over
him like a flood, till he was immersed.

He had worked his way to the first
trick on the road where he had learned
telegraphy. Her father was the chief.
McAllister and the girl became engaged.
The father died. Unwise investments
had taken all his money.

Even the home had to be sold to meet
debts. The girl had a mother and a
sister to care for. The mother was in-
capable of effort for herself, and the
sister was too young to do much at
breadwinning. The superintendent gave
the girl a place as a telegrapher in the
yard office. McAllister was furious.

"What are you going to work for?"
he demanded.

266

MCALLISTER'S GROUCH.

2G7

" We must live," she said.

"I'm working, am I not?" he asked.

" Why, yes," the girl said gently,
" but—"

She paused and looked at him appeal-
ingly. He had a temper and looked at
things simply.

" But you couldn't let me help you? "
he. finished for her.

His anger rose higher. To think of
her going to work made his blood boil.
According to his way of thinking, she
might easily have let him take care of
the family, or she might have married
him at once. But he was too angry now
to suggest that latter.

" You are speaking harshly," she said,
still gently.

He fumbled for a cigar.

" Well," he said slowly, and his voice
was harder and more bitter
than he was justified in letting
it be, " well, if I'm not good
enough to help you, we might
as well call it quits."

He had not meant quite that.
He had no idea of giving her
up. But he hurt her so that
her own temper rose. She
straightened herself and looked
at him kindly.

" You are going rather far,
aren't you? " she asked.

" Why, no ! I'll go farther
than that if I like."

"Indeed?" She rose and
walked to the door. " You may
come to see me again when you
can act like a gentleman."
Then she left him.

He sat for a moment, listen-
ing for her return. There were
two closed doors between him
and the sound of her weeping.
He arose and left, slamming
the door behind him. He heard
next morning that she had gone
to. work.

He resigned to the chief des-
patcher as soon as that official
came to the office. The chief
knew that it was futile to question or
argue, and he accepted the resignation
with a sigh. McAllister was a good man
— too good to lose, in spite of his pecu-
liarities.

And now he was working a trick on

a road two hundred miles away, but ever
she dwelt in his heart. He grew sad-
der and colder and sterner ; and she, do-
ing the task she had set herself to do,
wondered how he was and whether he
ever thought of her?

For lovers' quarrels partake of such
folly and madness.

The first-trick man was ill. McAl-
lister and the second-trick man were di-
viding the time — McAllister working
from midnight till noon. This gave him
two sets of operators to work with, the
day men and the night men. He had
got the night men trained, because they
were afraid of his speed and his sharp
way of doing business ; but he had had
one or two wire fights with the day men.

"Who's that man at MX?" he asked
the chief.

IT S ON THE SHEET

The chief smiled and opened his lips
to reply. Then he seemed to change his
mind. He finished a message* he was
writing. McAllister repeated his ques-
tion with a frown.

" Oh, that's somebody the superin-

268

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

tenclent of telegraph sent over when I
asked for a man. I haven't seen him.
We were so rushed. We didn't even
give him the color examination."

" Well, he's a ham," said McAllister.
" I should think we might get a better
class of operators."

" How're they moving? " he asked the
second-trick man when he came on.

" Rotten," said the second-trick
man. " There's been a heavy rain
west, and there was a little washout at
Dascom. MX says it's sleeting there
to beat the band. I had
the general office set the
repeaters in here, but it's
pretty heavy yet."

He pulled up to show
how heavy the wire was.
McAllister slipped into a

He administered a smarting rebuke be-
cause the operator hadn't had sense
enough to pull up in heavy weather.
The operator offered an apology, and
McAllister snapped open his key.

" What are you working for? " he de-
manded. " Where's the night-man? "

He had recognized the sending of the

" YOD MAY COME TO SEE ME

WHEN YOU CAN ACT LIKE

A GENTLEMAN."

chair and began to make dots firmly,
even on that leaking line.

" I guess you can put it through," the
second-trick man said.

McAllister spent a few minutes get-
ting terminals to see how they were ad-
justed. As he was calling an office, MX
broke .and began calling him. McAllis-
ter tried to break, but MX was not ad-
justed.

He waited till "the operator closed his
key. Then he called the office nearest
MX, and told the operator there to get
MX adjusted. That operator did so,
and McAllister was soon able to make
MX understand.

man he had previously and politely des-
ignated as a " ham."

"He's sick," was the nervous. reply.
" I'll have to work to-night."

" Well, it's going to be bad," McAl-
lister said. " You want to keep on the
job."

It proved to be very bad, indeed. Fog
was reported all along the line, with
sleet and rain in spots. McAllister
never took his hand from the key, or his
eyes from the sheet.

Toward midnight what he had feared
happened. A train slipped between
spreading rails. Not much damage was
done, but another train jamming along

MCALLISTER'S GROUCH.

269

in the mist ran into the first one, and the
cars went all over the right-of-way.

A fireman had a broken leg, but none
other was injured. McAllister tele-
phoned the trainmaster, and in an hour
he was speeding west in a special.

McAllister called an office to give an
order to the special. That office an-
swered promptly, and McAllister called
the yard office. There was no reply.
A while before the operator at the yard
had said that the yardmaster thought
there would be no 49, but that train had
not yet been annulled. McAllister,
knowing the yard-man would report 49
ready, sent this order to the trainmaster's
special :

Number Forty-nine of this date is
annulled.

That sent the special speeding against
49, so far as technicalities were con-
cerned, without 49 having been an-
nulled.

A little later the operator nearest the
wreck sent a report from the conductor
of the train which had gone into the one
derailed. McAllister called MX, and
MX answered promptly.

" Msg for extra west," McAllister
said. " Sm fine."

Which meant that he had a message
for the special, and that the message was
"some fine," or long. Sending long
messages was McAllister's forte'. His
Morse was perfect, his spacing being as
if cut out with a knife.

MX did not break for the first hun-
dred words. The wire seemed to be
working better. McAllister's speed in-
creased till his sounder sang. " MX broke,
and then broke again. McAllister slowed
down, MX got started again, and Mc-
Allister once more speeded up.

MX broke nervously, and then again
more nervously. McAllister slowed
down again, but still MX broke. Once
the operator held open his key for twenty-
seconds, while McAllister fumed at the
vacant wire. When MX said, " Go
ahead," McAllister shot a short but ugly
word over the wire.

" Never mind," he said, " Til send it
to BX."

The man at BX was an old-timer, and
he had a typewriter, so that McAllister
could not put it up his back.

" There's some sense to you," McAl-
lister said at the finish, for he admired
good work as much as he loathed poor.

The operator at MX heard with burn-
ing cheeks. The pperator at MX was
well aware that the operator at BX was
a better telegrapher, but that was no rea-
son why McAllister should rub it in.

Then Fate's finger touched the proud
McAllister.

The yard operator reported 49 ready,
the yardmaster having scared up enough
loads for a train. The yard operator
asked for orders. McAllister said there
were none.

Forty-nine pulled out and glided away
through the mist. At the scene of the
wreck they let her through the siding,
and she sped merrily eastward, while the
trainmaster's special bore down upon her
from the east.

" Os's " came from offices along the
line, reporting 49 and the special by.
McAllister studied the sheet and kept
things moving well, considering the
weather and the fact that he had a bad
wreck on his hands.

Presently he wanted to put out an
order to 49 to meet a train at a siding
near MX. He called MX.

"Think you can copy an order?" he
asked.

" I'll try," the operator meekly said.

McAllister called a station ten miles
down the line. The station answered
promptly, and McAllister started his
order.

" To No. 49, MX," he began, and
then MX broke.

" Forty-nine's gone," was the laconic
report.

" Why didn't you report them com-
ing?" McAllister snapped.

" You didn't tell me to."

McAllister knew he had not done so,
but the fact of his omission only made
him more angry. He started a smart-
ing rebuke when the station east of MX
broke in.

" Os, os," the operator said slowly.
" Special west by 1.10 a.m. with one
coach."

McAllister shot his eye down the sheet.
Then he knew. For a moment, strange-
ly, he had no sense of shock or horror.
He was only filled with a great wonder
that he, the most careful of men, should

270

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

have made this colossal blunder. While
he had been sitting here in his chair in
a warm office, he had been letting men
go forth to their crashing death. It was
rank stupidity.

He leaned back in his chair and
closed his eyes. First, he disposed of
himself. He had a notion of flight — the

" It's pretty slippery and foggy," the
engineer said.

" Never mind, we've got to get over
there."

McAllister had so much on his mind
that he had no sense of fear. He sat
chewing his cigar, while his scowling
eyes sought to pierce the gray - black

inevitable swift emotion in such cases
— and then he decided to stay and face
the music. That was more his way.

Action followed swiftly. He called
the yard office and ordered an engine
got ready on the instant.

" Stick some box cars behind her,"
he said. " I want, to make time."

Then he called a couple of doctors
who lived near by and gave orders, put-
ting everything in to clear for his spe-
cial of an engine and two box cars.
Slipping into his heavy coat, he ran down
the stairs and hastened to the yard of-
fice. The doctors came presently.

"What's up?" the operator asked.

McAllister only scowled and went out
to the engine. With the two doctors, he
crowded into the engine-cab.

" You can let her out," he told the

I GUESS I M NOT GETTING
ALONG VERY WELL. THE DES-
PATCHER HASN'T SHOWN ME
MUCH CONSIDERATION."

bank ahead. It was characteristic of him
that he had no moment of despair. He
only wanted to get to the wrecked train,
to help those whom his carelessness had
injured. Then he would decide upon
the next move.

Through his plans shot a thought of
Anna. He wished that she had not been
so stubborn. They might have been hap-
pily married. If he had had her safely
in a little home of their own, he would
not be in his present predicament.
Worry had made him unstable. He

MCALLISTER'S GROUCH.

271

had had nothing to care for— nothing to
work for.

" We're near MX," he said. " Why ! "
He strained his eyes. " Why, that
chump has got the block against us.
Heaven, what a ham that fellow is !
Whistle him ! " he ordered the engineer.

The whistle screeched. McAllister
kept his eyes on a tiny point of light that
showed red through the fog-bank. He
wanted it to disappear. He knew MX
had no orders for this train, but there
might be something wrong somewhere.
That little flickering light could not be
ignored.

"You'll have to stop," he told the en-
gineer through his set teeth. " I'll go
in and murder that fellow."

They were a hundred yards beyond the
telegraph office when the engine slid to a
standstill. McAllister jumped down,
bidding the engineer to stay where he
was.

" I'll be back in a minute," he said.

He strode to the office, slipping now
and then on the soft clay. The sleet
and the mist had coated the windows, so
that he could not see inside the office.

With a touch of anger, he threw open the
door and stepped in.

" What have you got that block
against us for?" he cried as he sprang
to the door which separated the outer
room from the telegraph office. " Didn't
I put everything in to clear?"

He threw open the door, and as he
stopped on the threshold the operator
rose to face him, her back to the table.

McAllister gasped. The operator was
a slim, white-faced, tired-looking young
woman. Her brown eyes were wide now
with .astonishment, and her lips were
tremulous.

McAllister was sure she was about to
cry. She put up her hand and brushed
back her soft hair. It was a well-re-
membered gesture — one of her most
charming.,

" Anna ! " McAllister breathed.

" Well? " she whispered.

" What are you doing here?"

She laughed uncertainly.

" I'm working," she said. " That is,
I'm trying to work. I guess I'm not get-
ting along very well. The despatcher
hasn't shown me much consideration. I

YOU SAVED ME, LITTLE GIRL.

272

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

told him the night-man was sick, and I
thought he would bear in mind how long
I had worked."

It was inconsequential talk to cover
her confusion, but it was sweet to Mc-
Allister's ears.

"How do you happen to be here?"
he asked.

" I don't happen to be here," she said.
" I came here on purpose. I came to
see you. I meant to go straight to you,
but then I lost my nerve. I asked the
superintendent for a place, and for
father's sake he got me in here without
any of the usual red tape. I heard you
were half sick and irritable, and mother'
didn't need me any more. I don't know
whether you heard, but we found some-
insUrance papers of father's. Those
gave mother enough — "
• " Anna — Anna ! " McAllister broke in.
" You have come too late. I'm a ruined
man. I can't ever get on my feet again."

The despair was so unlike him that it
made the girl shudder. It was as if
some strong thing upon which she had
leaned had suddenly grown weak.

"Why is that?" she asked.

" I sent an extra against 49 to-night.
I expected to annul 49, but I forgot it.
I don't understand how I ever did it."

" I heard you send the order to the
extra," the girl said. " I knew you
hadn't annulled 49. I heard you let 49
out of the yards, too."

" Oh, Anna ! " the despatcher cried.
"Why didn't you tell me?"

" I tried," she replied, and he thought
her voice was cheerful under the circum-
stances ; " but you wouldn't let me.
Don't you remember I tried to break
three times when 49 was coming? "

" Yes,,, and I told you to stop," he
admitted reluctantly.

"Well, I mustn't sit here. any longer.
We've got to get over there and see how
bad it is."

The girl went close to him.

" Why don't you wait till the extra
comes? "

McAllister stared at her in amazement.

" The extra is probably in the ditch

by now," he said. " Don't you see that
it and 49 would meet head on?"

" Oh, no," she said. She picked up a
manifold - book that lay on the table.
" Read this."

McAllister read:

Number Forty-nine, engine 408, will
run as extra east from Main Crossing
to Edgerton. Extra east, engine 408,
and extra west, engine 37, will meet at
Harland siding.

" I grounded the wire and sent that to
the extra west," the girl said. " Then
I put the block red, so that I would hold
everything till the extra west got here.
That made it safe, didn't it?"

McAllister sat and stared at the sheet
of yellow tissue-paper in his hand. The
hand, for the first time within the girl's
recollection, trembled. When McAllis-
ter looked up and spoke his face was
white and his voice trembled.

" You saved me. little girl," he whis-
pered.

" All you've got to do now is to fix
your sheet, isn't it?" she asked.

" That's all," said McAllister. " Oh.
of course. I won't try to deceive them!
I'll tell the chief the whole truth. I
guess I can still hold my job. Des-
patches are scarce in these parts."

They fell silent. There was some-
thing more to say, but neither knew how
to say it. Outside, the engine which
had brought McAllister over whistled
sharply.

" They're getting impatient," McAl-
lister said.

He rose and went to a window, rub-
bing it with the palm of his hand. But
the mist on the outside still covered the
pane. He threw up the sash.

" The extra west is coming. Anna,"
he said. " I'll have to do a little des-
patching from here."

He moved toward the table and the
girl stepped back. He raised his eyes
and met hers. They looked at each
other a full minute. Then he held out
his arms and took a step toward her.

With a laugh that was half a cry she
stepped toward him.

A red light is bigger than a mogul. Respect the boss. — Old Eagle-
Eye.

HELP FOR MEN WHO HELP
THEM SELV ES — NUMBER 27.

SPEED AND POWER OF
THE LOCOMOTIVE.

BY G. F. CARTER.

7HETHER the electric locomotive will ever supplant the steam-engine

' as the chief railroad power, cannot be said to be an actual problem

of operation at the present moment. Nevertheless, the records of

both forms of motive power cannot help but bring up the suggestion that in

the very near future large districts will, either because of peculiarities of

traffic or of country, find it more economical to use electricity.

The purpose of the following article is to attempt to set forth some of
the statistics only of these records. Whether actual operation under identical
conditions would bring the same contrasts is a matter that can be dealt with
only when and where such operations have taken place. As yet, we fear,
comparisons can only be of a somewhat general and experimental nature.

There Are Some Signs of Discontent With the Steel Giant of the Tracks,

and Many Experiments Are Pointing

to Electricity.

SUALLY the volume and
vociferousness of a man's
own account of what he is
doing, has done, is going
to do, or could do if he
wanted to, may safely be
set down as bearing an inverse ratio to

around. A visitor from another planet
might . be pardoned for assuming, the
first time that fearful din assailed his
ears, that he had stumbled upon the
main power-plant which keeps the uni-
verse in motion.

Yet, as a matter of fact, the locomo-

his actual achievements. The same 'tive is, theoretically, the most wasteful

and most inefficient of. prime movers. It
has been found by observation that a lo-
comotive is engaged in useful work only
one-fourth of the time it is fired up and
under expense. Of the heat units in
the coal shoved into its furnace, but lit-
tle more than half as many as would be
rendered available by a stationary steam

Mag a tine. Single copies, 10 cents.

principle applies to machines.

Of all the machines ever invented,
doubtless the average dweller near a
railroad believes that the locomotive
makes the most noise about its perform-
ances. The act of hauling a few cars
across the country is made the occasion
of an uproar that can be heard for miles

Series began in the August, 1907, Railroad Man

6 R R 273

274

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

power-plant, notoriously inefficient as it
is, are utilized.

To be of any use at all, a locomotive
must have its steam pressure maintained
at the maximum. Under such conditions
it necessarily blows off frequently, and
while the safety-valve is open shovels-
ful of coal are passing out of it in the
form of wasted steam. Finally, the
amount of coddling and grooming that
a locomotive requires at the hands of its
engineer and fireman and hostlers and
wipers and coal-heavers and sand-men
and machinists and boiler - makers and
boiler-washers, and so forth and so on,
is beyond belief of any one but the
auditor, under whose eyes the number-
less rivulets assemble in an appalling
flood of expense.

Need of Close Figuring.

Of course, the locomotive is render-
ing a service of such inestimable value
that a grateful world dislikes to look
too closely into the manner in which
that service is performed ; but the trans-
portation business has grown to such co-
lossal proportions that all thinking con-
cerning it must be done in millions, and
that means millions outgoing as well as
incoming.

Organized competition has reduced
the margin of profits nearly to the van-
ishing point, and in some cases quite
beyond it ; and the true character of
the locomotive has become a matter of
transcendant importance. Research in
this subject has two distinct aims — first,
to find, if possible, a more economical
motive-power than the steam locomotive ;
second, to secure immediate economy by
improving it as much as possible while
its successor is being developed.

In September, 1891, Purdue Univer-
sity bought an old - fashioned eight-
wheeler of the Schenectady Locomotive
Works, installed it in a testing labora-
tory, and carried out with it a long se-
ries of experiments, in the course of
which fifty thousand facts were accu-
mulated. -Prior to this, each locomotive-
builder was apt to construct his engines
the way he thought they ought to be
built.

If they did not give satisfaction, he
built the next lot some other wav. If

that did not answer, he went into bank-
ruptcy. Such tests as had been made
were carried out in a desultory sort of
way; and while the results had consid-
erable individual value, no comparisons
could be made, and the data gathered
was practically worthless to .the industry
in general.

About the time the test locomotive
was installed at Purdue, the American
Railway Master Mechanics' Association
and the American Society of Mechanical
Engineers held a conference, at which
it was resolved to cooperate with the
university faculty in the experiments.
In 1895 the Chicago and Northwestern
Railroad established a locomotive - test-
ing plant, while a third was installed at
Columbia University in 1899.

The locomotive-testing appliances ex-
hibited by the Pennsylvania Railroad at
the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, in
1904, was transferred to Altoona, where
a force of sixteen experts are still en-
gaged in testing an average of three lo-
comotives a week. Under such general
scrutiny, the shortcomings of the loco-
motive have been made plain, and, con-
sequently, many of them have been
eliminated.

One of the first things done at Pur-
-due was to attach the locomotive to a
traction dynamometer so sensitive that a
man, by pressing against the pilot with
his extended fingers, could deflect the
dynamometer needle. It was soon ascer-
tained that, Avhile the engine had a
draw-bar pull of 12,000 pounds at ten
miles an hour, it had difficulty in attain-
ing a pull of 2,500 pounds when run-
ning at sixty miles an hour. In spite
of all the locomotive-builders can do, the
same ratio of speed to power holds good
to-day.

Fuel Through the Exhaust.

In endeavoring to find out what be-
came of the coal that went into the fire-
box, but did not come out at the drive-
wheels, the Purdue experimenters made
a discovery that throws a great deal of
light upon the frequent and disastrous
forest fires in the West and Northwest.
With apparatus to catch the sparks com-
ing out through a given area of the
smoke-stack, it was proved that fourteen

SPEED AND POWER OF THE LOCOMOTIVE.

271

to twenty-one per cent of the fuel dis-
appears in that form.

Another series of experiments under
service conditions on the road showed
that from one to five per cent of its
maximum capacity was lost by radiation
from a well-covered boiler when run-
ning at thirty miles an hour, and from
two to seven per cent at sixty miles.

One of the most interesting experi-
ments was in the matter of counter-
balances. A number of pieces of wire
a little longer than the circumference of
a driving-wheel were fed between the
driver, in the rim of which a small notch
was cut to mark the position of the wheel
as the wire passed under, and the sup-
porting wheel while the engine was run
at various speeds.

Impact of Drivers.

These pieces of wire were visible for
an instant as a streak of light as they
shot through the air and struck the end
wall of the laboratory with violence.

An examination of them showed that
the driving-wheels were lifted clear of
the rail for one-tenth of each revolution
when going at high speed, so that the
progress of the locomotive was marked
by a series of terrific hammer - blows.
This was not surprising in view of the
fact that the reciprocating parts on each
side often weigh a thousand pounds or
more, and the counterbalances, as the
heavy weights in the wheels are called,
three-fourths as much. The wheels often
make three hundred revolutions a minute.

• Up to 1895, it was thought that a
locomotive to haul heavy loads must have
small drivers, but it was learned by ex-
periments that the draw-bar pull at the
engine's best speed was not reduced by
increasing the diameter of the drivers,
while the cylinder action was more, effi-
cient. The larger-wheeled engines were
more economical in coal and water.

The proper size of the smoke-stack,
the size, shape, height, and position" of
the nozzle, and a thousand and one lit-
tle details which up to that time had
been executed by rule of thumb, pur-
suant to the untested theories of indi-
vidual builders, were accurately deter-
mined by scientific experiment.

The knowledge thus acquired has

made possible the development from the
passenger engine of fifteen years ago,
with a tractive force of 15,250 pounds,
and capable of hauling a light train be-
tween New York and Chicago in twenty-
eight to thirty-two hours, into a machine
weighing 266.000 pounds, with a trac-
tive power of 29,200, irf 1908, and to
haul a heavy private clubhouse on
wheels between the same points in eigh-
teen hours, winter and summer.

Freight engines have been developed
from a tractive power of 25,277 pounds
into the monster Mallett articulated
compounds, weighing 409,000 pounds,
with a tractive force of 98,000 pounds.
Such an engine can haul a train of
2,000 tons up a grade of 2.2 per cent
and around 10 degree curves. On level
track it would haul a train of 175 cars,
a mile and a fifth long, if the cars could
stand the strain.

Having reached this stage of develop-
ment, an entirely new set of problems is
presented, for the cry of the directors is
always for heavier, and, therefore, more
economical, motive-power. The limita-
tions imposed by the size of bridges and
tunnels have not quite been reached by
the locomotive-builders, but the extreme
limit of the fireman's muscle has.

The conditions on a locomotive are
such that only one fireman can work at
a time, and only an exceptionally strong
man is capable of keeping these steel
monsters hot. By the time he has done
this, he is too exhausted to study the
fine points of engine-running ; so that
when his turn to be " set up " comes,
he is not qualified to assume the duties
of an engineer. This introduces a com-
plication that is of great importance.

Developing Stokers.

Another complication arising from the
same conditions is the ever - growing
necessity of economizing in fuel and of
abating the smoke nuisance. Experts
agree that nine-tenths of this depends
upon good firing, but when a man is
working to the limit of his endurance
he cannot do his best work. Besides,
there is the other tenth of the problem,
for the solution of which some mechani-
cal device must be found.

This matter is becoming so pressing

276

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

that, at its last meeting, the Master
Mechanics' Association appointed a per-
manent committee to study the subject
of mechanical stokers. Up to the pres-
ent time, four of the machines for firing
a locomotive that have been introduced
are regarded as promising, but not as
entirely satisfactory yet.

Some of the problems that perplex
railroad officials may seem trifling to an
outsider who does not stop to reflect that
if they were really trifling they would
not worry any one. One of these is the
temperature of the water used in wash-
ing out locomotive boilers.

Saving a Score Engines.

Among the infinite attentions that a
steam locomotive constantly requires is
a thorough washing out once or twice
a week, or even oftener, depending upon
the quality of the water used in it. If
the boiler is cooled off rapidly, washed
out with cold water, and then fired up
hurriedly, the result is leaky flues and
broken stay-bolts, caused by too violent
shrinkage and expansion of the metal by
sudden extreme changes of temperature.

Leaky flues drown the fire so that the
locomotive cannot pull its load nor
make time, thus throwing the whole
train service into confusion, delaying
passengers, and perhaps causing the loss
of perishable freight and furnishing ex-
tra work for the boiler-maker.

At last it occurred to some unknown
genius to install a plant to heat the
water used in boiler-washing. It was
found that, while three to six hours were
required to wash a boiler properly with .
cold water, making the necessary allow-
ances for cooling off and warming up,
the job could be done much better in
fifty-five minutes to three hours with hot
Avater, and that the flues would not leak
afterward.

Now, a saving of two hours on each
washing for a ' thousand locomotives
amounts, to 96,000 hours in a year. It
would take twenty-two locomotives to
do that much work in a year, which, at
fifteen thousand dollars each, would re-
quire an investment of three hundred
and thirty' thousand dollars. When the
great Pennsylvania Company has to sell
bonds at ninety-six to raise money for

needed improvements, opportunities to
save little trifles of a third of a million
or more a year are very pleasing to the
perplexed officials.

But, in spite of all that can be done,
the task of handling the nation's com-
merce has grown almost beyond the
capacity of the locomotive. The earliest
practical recognition of this fact was
when the New York Central planned
the reconstruction of its Forty - Second
Street terminals in New York.

It was imperative that something bet-
ter than steam, if such a thing existed,
should be found to handle the swiftly
increasing traffic. In order to knoAv
definitely whether electricity would meet
the requirements, the railroad company
ordered a full-sized electric locomotive
of the best type that the General Elec-
tric Company's experts could devise,
built a six-mile experimental track at
Schenectady, and started the new motor
on an endurance" run of fifty thousand
miles.

No piece of machinery has ever been
subjected to so severe a test in the whole
history of invention, and no test ever
resulted in such a remarkable triumph.
LTp and down, to and fro, day after
day, in summer sun and winter storm,
the electric locomotive plied on its six-
mile beat like a shuttle in a monster
loom, at high speed, at low speed, and
all the speeds between, dragging behind
it a train weighing from two hundred
to four hundred tons, making service
stops and emergency stops, and under-
going every conceivable test that could
come up under service conditions.

A Grueling Test.

Every detail of performance was ob-
served and recorded by merciless critics,
and every legitimate item was charged
up against the locomotive. When the
last mile of the fifty thousand had been
run, it was found that the expense of
maintenance had been one and a fourth
cents a mile, as compared with an ex-
pense of ten to eighteen cents a mile for
steam locomotives. Besides, there had
been greater freedom from break-downs
and delays. Of course, in actual opera-
tion this record could not be sustained ;
but this, in connection with the other

SPEED AND POWER OF THE LOCOMOTIVE.

277

tests, has been accepted as an incon-
trovertible demonstration that the elec-
tric locomotive can haul heavier trains
at higher speeds than steam, and with
equal reliability and greater economy.

It takes a pretty big steam locomotive
to develop tAvo thousand horse-power,
while electric locomotives are built of
three thousand four hundred horse-
power, and even more. Besides, two
or more electric locomotives can be
coupled together and operated as a unit
by one man, to haul just as large a train
as the draft-irons will hold together.

An electric locomotive will develop
its full power at the maximum speed
for which it was designed, which means
that it canx haul a full train up grade
at the same speed as on the level, in-
stead of crawling up at five or six miles
an hour, and perhaps doubling the hill
at last, as a steam locomotive does.

In the New York Central tests, an
electric locomotive weighing ninety-five
tons, of which seventy tons were on the
drivers, was able to exert a draw - bar
pull- of 35,000 pounds up to thirty-five
miles an hour, the speed for which it
was designed ; while a Pacific type
steam locomotive weighing one hundred
and seventy-one tons, of which seventy
tons was on the drivers, could exert a
draw-bar pull of only 30,000 pounds at
twenty miles an hour, 19,000 pounds at
thirty miles an hour, and but a beggarly
16,000 pounds at thirty-five miles an
hour. Thus the adoption of- electric-
power would do away with the necessity
of spending millions to reduce grades, as
all the roads that could raise the mil-
lions have been doing for some time
past.

Buying Water-Power.

From thirty to fifty per cent more
traffic can be handled on a given road
by electricity than by steam. The cost
of electrical equipment is only a fraction
of the cost of the additional tracks
which would otherwise be necessary.

The problem of bad water, which is
making so much trouble for the steam
locomotives, and causing great expense
to the railroad companies, has no ter-
rors for the electric locomotive, for it
uses no water except at the generating

station beside some mountain torrent
hundreds of miles away. Finally the
increase of tractive-power makes pos-
sible an increase in traffic capacity, thus
reducing running expenses.

The significance of the showing made
by the electric locomotive under elabo-
rate tests may be better appreciated
when it is known that very soon after
the fifty - thousand - mile endurance run
was completed at Schenectady, the New
York Central secured, by purchase on
long-term lease, rights to 580,000 elec-
tric horse-power at Niagara Falls, part
of which is already developed. A
hydro-electric plant of 180,000 horse-
power is now being installed on the St.
Joe River, in Idaho, to operate trains
on the Pacific extension of the Chicago,
Milwaukee and St. Paul. A power-
plant of 140,000 horse-power is being
installed on the Feather River, in Cali-
fornia, to operate the mountain division
of the Western Pacific, while the Great
Northern is now operating its trains
through the noted Cascade tunnel by
electricity.

Millions of Horse-Power.

All these facts, taken together, would
seem to indicate that the great problem
of motive-power for the railroad of the
future is regarded, in some quarters at
least, and under certain conditions, as
pretty well settled.

Not all railroads are in reach of
Niagara Falls or the magnificent water-,
powers of the Cascade range, but there
will be no dearth of cheap power to
keep their electric locomotives going, for
all that. As the most effective and
economical and, indeed, the only effect-
ive way to control the flow of the Ohio
and Mississippi to prevent the millions
of dollars' damage those streams do
during their annual floods, and to pro-
vide the improved water-ways so widely
demanded, government engineers say
great storage reservoirs, must be built on
the headwaters of navigable streams and
their tributaries.

In doing this, untold millions of
horse-power will be developed — enough
to take care of any conceivable increase
in the manufacturing and transportation
of the future.

Full Speed Ahead.

East and West the Railroads Are On the Job of Laying Lines and

Increasing Facilities for Carrying the Nation's

Booming Commerce.

ANEW freight depot is contemplated by
the Pennsylvania at Allegheny City,
Pennsylvania. The company plans to lay
out approximately three and a half million
dollars on the work.

THE Chicago, Burlington and Quincy has
ordered five thousand tons of Besse-
mer rails from the Lackawanna Steel Com-
pany. This order is in addition to five thou-
sand tons which the road recently ordered
from the Indiana Steel Company.

THE Raleigh and Southport Railway has
purchased a tract of land at Raleigh,
North Carolina, on which the road plans to
build a freight yard, round house, repair
shop, and freight depot. The total expendi-
ture will amount to about forty thousand
dollars to fifty thousand dollars.

AUTHORITY has been granted for the
- construction of one hundred and fifty
miles of block signals by the Baltimore and
Ohio for the line between Hicksville, Ohio,
and South Chicago, Illinois. The work of
installation will commence at once. Three-
position upper quadrant signals will be used.

THE following signal and interlocking
installations are planned by the Santa
Fe for the coming year : At Joliet, Illinois,
two electric interlocking plants will be con-
structed, one at the north end and one at
the south end of the yard. Both of these
plants are joint with the Chicago and Alton.

THE Baltimore and Ohio has awarded
the contract for constructing a pump-
ing station at its Locust Point yards, Balti-
more, Maryland, to Edward Brady & Son,
1 109 Cathedral Street, Baltimore, The
structure will be one-story high, 42x55 feet,

and. of brick and steel construction, with a
slag roof and steel rolling doors.

f~\ N August 23 the Pennsylvania Railroad
^-^ asked for bids on improvements to be
made at Greensburg, Pennsylvania, which
will cost approximately one million dollars.
Two additional tracks will be built through
Greensburg, a new station will be con-
structed, a tunnel will be removed, and the
grade of one per cent will be cut down one-
half.

THE Oregon Railroad and Navigation
Company has placed an order with the
McKeen Motor Car Company, Omaha, Ne-
braska, for two 55-foot, all steel, 200-horse-
power, 75-passenger, gasoline motor-cars,
which makes a total of fotH McKeen motor-
cars on order for this line. Two motor cars
"for the Maricopa and Phoenix were shipped
some time ago to Tucson, Arizona. These
are of the 55-foot design also.

THE Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific
has ordered the following equipment:
Fifty consolidation locomotives from the
American Locomotive Company; 500 drop-
bottom coal-cars and 500 furniture-cars from
the Standard Steel Car Company; 400 flat-
cars, 600 box-cars, 500 furniture-cars, and
50 cabooses from the American Car and
Foundry Company; 1,000 forty-ton box-cars
from the Pressed Steel Car Company.

THE Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
has ordered one hundred and thirty
thousand' tons of rails for 1910 delivery.
The rails, it is said, will be used largely for
the completion of construction work in
Texas, and for renewals and replacements
on the main line. The Colorado Fuel and
Iron Company is reported to have secured
twenty-eight thousand tons, and the balance

278

FULL SPEED AHEAD.

279

is" said 'to have gone to the Illinois Steel
Company.

AN electric interlocking plant will shortly
■ be installed by the Elgin, Joliet and
Eastern Railway at Griffith, Indiana, to re-
. place the present mechanical plant. The
machine will be of the type manufactured
by the Federal Railway Signal Company, as
the contract for the installation has been
awarded to that company, and there will be
sixty-one working levers. Besides the Elgin,
Joliet and Eastern, the Michigan Central,
the Grand Trunk, the Erie, and the Chicago,
Cincinnati and Louisville are interested in
this plant.

THE Central of Georgia is having plans
prepared for erecting boiler and tank
shops at Macon, Georgia, and will let con-
tracts within the next couple of months for
the construction of these buildings. The
cost of the structures is estimated at about
five hundred thousand dollars. This road
recently let the contract for its woodwork-
ing and blacksmith shop to G. B. Swift &
Co., of Chicago, Illinois. These buildings
will be of brick, steel, and concrete construc-
tion. The woodworking shop will be 20ox
80 feet, and the blacksmith shop will be 350X
100 feet.

THE following work is authorized for
construction during the next year on
the Oregon Short Line : Single track auto-
matic signals on the Idaho division, from
Reverse, Idaho, to and including Nampa ■
Yard, Nampa, Idaho, a distance of 65.7
miles and from Pocatello, Idaho, to Ticeska,
Idaho, a distance of 142.5 miles, and single
track automatic signals on the Utah Division,
from Ogden, Utah, to Cache Junction, Utah,
a distance of 48.8 miles, and from Salt Lake
to Sandy, Utah, 12.5 miles. Of this work
about one and a half miles will be double
track " polarized " signals, and on all of the
new construction Union " style B " lower
right-hand quadrant signals and the Union
" 9-C " relays will be used.

THE Spokane and Inland Empire has just
completed the installation of a power
interlocking plant at the crossing of the Ore-
gon Railroad and Navigation Company at
Colfax, Washington. The interlocking ma-
chine is of sixteen levers capacity, and has
twelve working levers controlling six high
signals and six switches and derails. The
high signals are slotted. On the Spokane
and Inland Empire, which is electrically
operated through this section, alternating
current track circuit is used, while the

gravity battery track circuit is emploj
the Oregon Railroad and Navigation. The
gasoline charging outfit is located in the
lower story of the tower. This plant was
constructed by the General Railway Signal
Company.

"PQUIPMENT orders placed by the Chi-
•*- ' cago and Northwestern since January
1 aggregate 125 locomotives, 125 passenger-
cars, and 7,900 freight-cars. The passenger-
car order previously reported as placed with
the Pullman Company, amounting to 96
cars, has been increased under option, and
now consists of 40 coaches, 20 reclining-
chair cars, 15 smokers, 12 parlor-cars, 5
dining-cars, 16 postal-cars, and 17 baggage-
cars, all of which are to be of steel con-
struction. Of the freight equipment 4,000
box cars were awarded to the Haskell &
Barker Car Company, who also took the
orders for 600 refrigerator-cars, 500 ore-
cars, and 300 stock-cars ; 2,500 gondolas
were awarded to the American Car and
Foundry Company.

T^HE Northern Pacific announced recent-
A ly that its new equipment, upon which
the builders have been exerting every effort
toward quick delivery, will be received in
the near future. The first consignment of
cars started on Aug%st 24 from the Pullman
shops. There will be sixteen standard
sleeping cars delivered in the next few
days, and these will immediately be placed
in service on the North _ Coast Limited
trains. Of this equipment eight of the cars
will contain fourteen sections and one draw-
ing-room, and eight cars will contain ten
sections, two state-rooms, and one drawing-
room. Every device for the comfort and
convenience of passengers will be provided
in these sleeping-cars, including electric
lights, fans, patent ventilators, dental lava-
tories, and large and. commodious toilet-
rooms. The Northern Pacific recently re-
ceived thirteen new locomotives from the
Baldwin Locomotive Works, and seventeen
more are ordered. They are all of the Pa-
cific passenger type, and those received have
been assigned to passenger service on the
various divisions. The combined weight of
each engine, with its loaded tender, is three
hundred and seventy-six thousand nine hun-
dred pounds, the tenders having a capacity
of twelve tons of coal and 7,000 gallons of
water. The engines have a 22x26-inch
cylinder and 69-inch drivers, and they carry
two hundred pounds working pressure of
steam. They are equipped with the latest
improved Westinghouse high-speed brakes.
They are capable of an average speed of
sixty miles per hour with eight cars.

Riding the Rail from Coast

to Coast*

BY GILSON WILLETS,
Special Traveling Correspondent of "The Railroad Man's Magazine."

VER the sage-brush plains and fertile valleys of Nevada, Mr. Willets
goes, winding up in the rose-bordered slopes of that paradise of
America — southern California. There he rests for a few days before
taking up his interesting journey.

The stories that he gathered for this instalment . of his series contain
those elements of humor and pathos that make narrative breathe with truth
and human kindness. Don't you wish that you could have been with him,
boys? Wouldn't you like to have heard the Western trainmen and old
travelers spin these yarns? Well, we just guess — " Yes! "

No. 9.— ON THE LATEST DESERT RAILROAD.

Romances and Tragedies Gathered in a Trip Over Ex-Senator Clark's

Salt Lake Railroad from the Utah Capital to the -

Silver Sands of the Pacific Ocean.

'AS Vegas! Change for Rhyolite,
Goldfield, and Tonopah ! "
Having given voice to
this, Rear-Brakeman An-
drews finished his flight
through the observation-
car, went out on the rear platform,
yanked up the protection-door over the
steps, and jumped to the sands of the
Nevada desert.
I followed him.

" Humph ! " he grunted, in a tone that
bespoke actual delight in the indignation
that was animating his breast. " Look
at those shacks composing the burg of
Las Vegas. Every time I come through
here there seems to be two shacks where
only one stood before. And yet Gordon
True and Roland Peterson, of the Ne-
vada Experimental Station, say that noth-

Series began in March Railroad Man

ing will grow out here because of the
terrible heat.

-"I carried both those gents out of here
some weeks ago, and they declared that
after months of experimenting not a
darned thing would grow in this strip of
desert except just scrub mesquit.

" But look at those shacks. You can
fairly see 'em grow. I tell you, there's
an epidemic of _ fever hereabouts that's
going to make something besides shacks
grow irr a night. They'll tell you .there's
never been a strike on this Salt Lake
Route since Senator Clark opened the
show, but 1 hereby inform you that the
biggest strike in the history of railroad-
ing is on right in this vicinity right now.
And I'm one of the strikers."

No, reader, that brakeman was not
crazy. I had known him a whole hour.

's Magazine. Single copies, 10 cents.

280

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

281

and had found him to be perfectly sane.
Were it not that I had talked with him
ever since eight o'clock I might have
believed him a little " off " when he made
those remarks while the Los Angeles
Limited paused at the Las Vegas station.

Glad the Boys " Struck."

I pulled out of Salt Lake on that train
a little after ten the evening before, two
hours late. During the night we had
made up lost time, and at five in the
morning, at Caliente, had picked up
Brakeman Andrews and, I think, an en-
tire new crew. And now here we were

the line from Utah. While Caliente is
still the center of strike operations, more
and more railroad men are joining the
strikers down the line all the way here
to Las Vegas.

" The first man to strike was one of
our conductors, Rob Rives. The second
man to strike was another of our conduc-
tors, Dan Swayze. Then, in quick suc-
cession, a lot more of us struck, and me
anions; 'em.

"THERE WAS AN AMERICAN EAGLE, MEASURING SIX FEET FROM EAST TO WEST OF ITS WINGS."

at Las Vegas, on time, at nine-twenty in
the morning.

It is no difficult thing for the San
Pedro, Los Angeles, and Salt Lake Rail-
road to make up time, for it runs mostly
on the dead level. Passengers bound for
Goldfield said good-by, and at nine forty-
five, after a stop of twenty-five minutes,
our limited pulled away from the shack-
growing desert town, and we rolled on
over the rails toward California.

Andrews plumped into a big, com-
fortable chair next to mine in the " ob-
servation " and said :

" Yes, siree ! Biggest strike ever
known on the railroads of the world. It
began at Caliente, in this State, just over

"Queerest thing about this strike is
that when Senator Clark, president of the
road, heard of it he said : ' Bully for the
boys ! ' And when the Senator's brother,
J. Ross Clark, who runs this railroad,
learned of the strike he cried : ' Oi, oi !
It's great ! ' And when Douglas White,
our literary press man, and all the others
at headquarters at Los Angeles, were told
that we had struck thev chorused, ' Good
luck ! '

" Bet you never before heard of rail-
road officials talking just like that when
they got wind of a strike among the
employees.

" Well, I'll let you in. Conductor
Rives was taking a walk in the desert

282

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

up near Caliente, when suddenly — he
struck. I mean he struck gold. He and
his brother at once staked a claim. To-
day they are working gold eagles and
double-eagles out of an ore-body six feet
wide and a hundred feet long.

" Then Conductor Swayze got busy up
in that region, and they say he's got a
claim that'll run something like five hun-
dred dollars to the ton. ' The conductors
went right on railroadin' while others
worked their claims for 'em ; but the
later boys to strike in the same way quit
their jobs and went to workin' their
claims themselves. These new shacks
growing here at Las Vegas belong to
various strikers who've quit railroading.

" Now, as I say, I'm one of the strikers
myself — got a fine little claim of my own
staked out up by Caliente. There's some
forty of us strikers now who are spread-
ing that epidemic I spoke about — an
epidemic of gold-fever.

" We're all going to be John Mackays
and other kinds of millionaires pretty
soon. And what I say is, that for once
in the world the most remarkable strike
in the history of railroading is now on
on this railroad. And what I add is,
that it's the right kind of strike."

Andrews sat gazing at his gold-bearing
bonds that lay hidden in the sands of the
desert, and then continued :

" I ain't dreamin' all I'm tellin' you.
We had a sign from heaven only last
week that shows us all Ave' re going to
win the strike good and big. Know
what the sign was? Well, it was an
eagle captured by two of our telegraph
operators up at Crestline station, on this
road, almost plumb on the Utah- Nevada
line.

Caught a Real Eagle.

" I know those two operators well,
and I ain't fooling you. They are War-
ren Stains and Elbert Gilbert. They set
a trap for coyotes, and in the morning-
when they went to look at the trap,
there, caught fast, was an American
eagle, measuring six feet from east to
west of its wings.

" They put that eagle in a big cage
outside the Crestline station, and when
we strikers hit Crestline, Stains and Gil-
bert came out and said :

" ' Boys, you struck the gold, and we
coined the first eagle.'

" That's why I call that a sign from
heaven. We're all of us going to have
eagles galore around here pretty soon,
and we're going to clip their wings just
so it can't be said of us that our riches
had wings.

" That reminds me of George Travers,
a man who put in his railroadin' days on
the Southern- Pacific out of Ogden and
toward Sacramento, and who at last
struck just like we are striking now, and
struck it rich, too. He combined rail-
roadin' with prospectin', and when he
struck he chucked his job on the Espee
and went down to Kanab, hard by the
corner where Nevada and Utah and Ari-
zona meet.

Plain " Mary Darling."

" George went to Kanab because he
was sweet on a girl down there — the
adopted daughter of Oscar Powers,
ranchman. And in that sweetness- of
George on that girl — her name was
Mary Darling — there's a story for you
that's got fiction beaten to a frazzle. It's
a regular Shakespearian tragedy, I tell
you, with self-sacrifice and all that sort
of thing. .

" George Travers, ex-railroader, was
riding the desert near Kanab one -day,
when he came to a water-hole by which
lay a female in distress. She was in dis-
tress because her horse had stepped into
a hole and had thrown her and fallen on
her with pretty much all of his weight.

" Travers promptly picked the female
up, loaded her on his own horse, then led
both horses in a bee-line toward the ranch
of Oscar Powers. Before loading the
girl on the horse^ I forgot to say, Travers
tried to revive her by throwing water on
her face, but she persisted in remaining
unconscious.

"On the way to the Powers ranch,
however, the girl came to, and Travers
said: 'What's your address?'

" ' I'm Mary Darling, and you are
taking me to the right address,' replied
the girl.

" ' That sounds like a book - name,
Mary, darling,' says Travers, with a lit-
tle emphasis on the darling.

" Well, it weren't many weeks before

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

283

Mary Darling became to George Tra-
vers just ' Mary, darling.' You simply
couldn't keep him away from the Powers
ranch. And I allow ' Mary, darling,'
was glad he just couldn't stay off the
place.

" So Travers at last suggested to Oscar
Powers that he marry ' Mary, darling,'
and that the daughter cleave to him at
his own shack, just beyond Powers's
barbed wire.

Poor Mary Weeps.

" Acceptances and congratulations all
round, and George Travers rides off to
town to secure a license.

" The next afternoon Travers re-
turned. Instead of galloping up to the
corral with an ' Oi, oi ! ' and a ' Yi, yi ! '
from his lusty lungs, he rode up with all
the air of a rejected suitor and a dejected
man. A family conference followed, at
which Travers told the news that had
fairly taken the heart out of him. And
long before he could finish what he had
to say, ' Mary, darling,' hurried to her
own room to weep her heart out.

" What was the matter? Just this.
Mary had Indian blood in her veins, and
never knew it till that day. Her grand-
mother was a Piute. Oscar Powers knew
of the blood, but hever told Mary.

"He took her when she was a little
baby, called her just Mary instead of
using whatever her Indian name might
be, and finally ' Mary Darling ' ; and
that's how she came to have a name that
sounded to George Travers like a book-
name.

Obliged in Mexico.

" Well, what do you think Travers
did? Shoot himself like a lovesick
swain? No. Not just at that time. He
went to ' Mary, darling,' and to Powers,
and said something like this :

" ' Under the law of this State they
won't let a white marry an Indian. They
won't give me a license here. But I
know where they will let folks of differ-
ent races hitch up together — and that's
Mexico. I'll go to Mexico and prepare
a home for ' Mary, darling,' and then I'll
come and get her and take her there and
we'll marry. Why, look at her! Who'd

ever know she's a Piute? In face, form,
and manner she's a white. If she's good
enough to be your adopted daughter,
Powers^ she's good enough to be my
wife. I'm off to Mexico.'

"And southward rode George Travers.
He hadn't been gone a day, howTever,-
when a terrible thing happened. Mary
was missing. Powers and his ranch-
hands searched the desert roundabout till
they came to that water-hole where
' Mary, darling,' and George Travers
first met. That time Mary lay there in
distress.

" There they found Mary no longer
in distress — she would never know dis-
tress again. Around her throat, knotted
so tight that they had a hard time un-
doing it, was a red silk bandanna which
George had given her. Pinned to her
waist was a note in which she asked
George to forgive her, and saying that
she would not let him sacrifice himself
for her, adding that if she married him
all his friends for the rest of his life
would point to him and say ' squaw man.'

Thinks He Slept Too Much.

" And that note was all of ' Mary,
darling,' that George found when he re-
turned from Mexico to claim her as his
bride."

"And what became of Travers?" I
asked Andrews, for he had come to a
dead stop.

" They found him weeks later," an-
swered Andrews, with a nervous laugh,
" lying at that same water hole, with a
bullet-hole in the center of his forehead."
JBrakeman Andrews now reverted to
his pet subject, the " strike." And while
he was still discoursing on the achieve-
ments of his fellow " strikers," we were
joined by the queerest and most interest-
ing man on that particular limited.

He was Mr. Darius Darius, Mormon,
aged seventy-two, bound from Salt Lake
to Los Angeles on a pleasure trip. He
was tall, and leaner than any famine
victim. He had the baldest head I have
ever seen on a human being. His ears
stood out from his head like the handles
on a vase.

He helped build the Central Pacific
westward from the Salt Lake end of the
line, knew C. P. Huntington and Leland

284

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

HE WAS MR. DARIUS DARIUS, MORMON, AGED SEVENTY-TWO.

Stanford and Artemus Ward, witnessed
the driving of the last spike in the com-
pletion of the Union Pacific at Promon-
tory, Utah, where that line joined the
Central Pacific, and was present at a
similar celebration a few years ago. when
Senator Clark's new Salt Lake Railroad
was completed across the desert.

I had met Darius Darius the evening
before, at the Salt Lake station, when-
for two hours he regaled me with early-
day and latter-day stories of the railroads
of Utah, and even got off his little joke
on the Latter-Day Saints.

" Going to bed?" he asked, just as I
was about to make for my berth. " See
here, young man, we sleep too much.
I'm seventy-twro years old, and I've
passed twenty-four years of my life either
in my bed at home or lying asleep on
.round in a railroad construction

camp. Come outside and
smoke."

He hopped . off the car
with the sprightliness of
forty-two. We lighted up.
" I'm one of the Utahns,"
he 'said. He never referred
to himself as a Mormon, but
always as a Utahn. " I
knew Artemus Ward. Arte-
mus came to Salt Lake to
deliver a lecture. He issued
tickets to that lecture that
he thought read like a joke.
I've got one of those yellow
bits of paper' at home now.
It reads : ' Admit Bearer and
One Wife.' Howr old are
you? Thirty-nine? Well,
you've been asleep thirteen
years of your life. It's too
much.

" Why, do you know," he
added, " I was a passenger
on a train over this Salt
Lake Railroad last June
[1908], to Provo, Utah. ~ We
had thirteen hundred pas-
sengers aboard, average age
seventy-three, and a total
representation of over ninety
thousand years of life. And,
by George, those passengers
had been asleep thirty thou-
sand years! Think of the
wasted energy."
I asked Darius Darius how it hap-
pened that a train carried so many old
people.

First Old (Folks' Day.

" It was a free excursion given to the
old folks of Salt Lake — the pioneer
Utahns — to Provo. Senator Clark and
his brother, Ross Clark, ordered a train
of twenty coaches and two engines to be
placed at our disposal, free of charge.

" Then the old people were invited to
be at the station at 7.30 a.m., as the
train was to leave at eight. As the re-
sult of the efforts of a connnittee of rail-
road men of this line, the oldsters arrived
decked out in a fashion by which you
could spot a man's age the moment you
laid eyes on him.

" All persons between the age of

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

285

enty and eighty wore a reel rosette. Be-
tween eighty and ninety, a' blue rosette.
Between ninety and one hundred, a white
rosette. Over one hundred, a golden
star.. And if you were under seventy
no money could get you on board that
train. As I was only forty-eight years
old, I refused to wear any rosette."

" I don't understand forty-eight," I
said.

" Look here," he answered. " Didn't
I tell you I've been asleep twenty-four
years. Very well, then. I have been
awake only forty-eight years, and you
can put that down as my real age. But,
seriously, Old Folks' Day is an institu-
tion in Utah ; and, as it originated in the
brain and heart of a railroad man thirty-
three years ago, I want you to tell your
railroad audience about it.

'* A railroad man named John Young,
general manager of the Utah Western
Railroad, started this old folks' excur-
sion scheme. back in May, 1875. The
Utah Western ran only from Salt Lake
City to the shores of Great Salt Lake ;

but, all the same, John Young thought
his road a wonder.

" He wanted the pioneer Utahns to
see what a railroad was like. He insist-
ed upon giving them a free ride to the
lake, where he could entertain them all
day as the guests of his road. So he
invented the colored rosette and golden-
star idea, and got a train-load of two
hundred and fifty passengers, all over
seventy.

The Golden-Star Boy.

" I was on hand to see that first old
folks' train pull out. It consisted of a
baggage-car, seven open box cars, and
three flat cars. The only passenger wear-
ing the golden star was Pop Merrill,
aged one hundred and one, who lived to
dandle the fifth generation from him on
his knee, and whose posterity numbered
seven hundred human beings.

" From that spring to this one rail-
road or another out of Salt Lake has
furnished a train to carry the old pio-

£&

THE ONLY PASSENGER WEARING THE GOLDEN STAR WAS POP MERRILL, AGED
ONE HUNDRED AND ONE."

286

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

neers to some place near by for a free
day's outing. The excursion on the Salt
Lake route this year was the thirty-third
jaunt of the kind, and was the biggest
of all.

" When I was about thirty years old —
having passed about ten years of that
time in sleep — I worked as a railroad
construction man on the Central Pacific
under Huntington and Stanford. I told
the old Utahns how we had a couple of
rascals running a store in a rag-town
near our camp, and how those storekeep-
ers made money swapping cattle with
emigrants.

Kenyon's Cattle.

" I told 'em how those two men would
swap one pair of fresh cattle for three
pair of worn-out cattle, then fatten up
the worn-out cattle and sell them to the
railroad-construction outfit at a big profit.
But one day an emigrant got the best of
one of the storekeepers.

" The senior storekeeper's name was
Kenyon. In the absence of his partner,
one day, Kenyon was approached by a
tired emigrant, who said he had two old
steers down the road that were all in,
but that they could be fattened up, and
that he would sell them for ten dollars.
Then the emigrant pointed down the
desert to where the worn-out steers could"
be seen standing in the road.

" Kenyon cinched the bargain by im-
mediately handing the emigrant a twen-
ty-dollar gold piece and receiving a ten-
dollar piece in change. He said that he
would ride down and get his property
the next morning.

" Next morning, when Kenyon went
after the steers, he found that two dried-
up cajcases had been propped up in the
road to look, at a distance, like the real
thing. Was Kenyon mad? No. He
declared that emigrant' to be a mighty
smart man. But he swore he'd get his
ten dollars back, and so he rode west
like the wind till he finally overtook the
emigrant and demanded the return of his
money.

" The emigrant handed over a twenty-
dollar piece. Kenyon gave him ten dol-
lars change. A day or two later Kenyon
rode into our camp at the grading and
told the story.

" ' And to think,' he cried, with terri-
ble oaths, ' that I rode all that distance
after that confounded emigrant, just to
give him ten dollars -more ! '

"'How's that?' we asked.

" ' Why, both the supposed gold pieces
which that' emigrant gave me were coun-
terfeit.'

" That brakeman tells me," continued
Darius, getting on another lead, " he's
been giving you that story of Travers
and the Indian girl. Well, this country
is full of romances and tragedies of that
kind. These rails over which we are
rolling is the old Mormon Trail tcT Cali-
fornia. I've traveled this trail when
railroads weren't thought of as ever
being possible through this" long stretch
of desert.

" In those days there was a sheriff
known all over this country as ' Desert
Tan,' so named from the quantity of
whisky of that name which he imbibed.
One day ' Desert Tan ' captured a horse-
thief, and with some deputies -and other
desert rovers proceeded to string up the
thief. I don't remember the name of the
horse -thief, but I do remember that he
had a wife named Kate.

" Kate was a fine woman to look at,
but she had the wild, ungovernable dis-
position of the true desert woman. She
loved her thief of a husband, and when
he was dragged away to be hung Kate
followed close at the heels of the hanging
party.

Her Life for Love.

" When they came to a cluster of trees
where the ceremonies were to take place
it was night, and a dead hush settled on
the crowd. Suddenly out of that silence
came the soft, pleading voice of Kate,
begging ' Desert Tan ' to spare her hus-
band. ' Desert Tan ' merely shoved her
aside, with words that no Christian gen-
tleman would address to a ladv. The
result was that next moment ' Desert
Tan ' lay breathing his last under the
trees, shot through the heart by Kate.

" ' Desert Tan's ' pals forgot allabout
the horse-thief, and turned their atten-
tion to preparing Kate for her own end
by lynch law. Kate said never a word as
they began fastening the loop around
her throat, then suddenly she cried :

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

"'Wait a minute, boys. I'll help you.'

"You see, they had been having trouble
getting the rope into place, because of
the two heavy braids of very black hair
that hung down Kate's back. So, with
the words, she brought the braids around
her shoulders to the front, out of the way
of the men's clumsy hands, and added:

" ' Now, I reckon, you can work
quicker. I'm all ready.'

" Well, sir, that little act of Kate's
saved her life. The men were so im-
pressed by her bravery, pluck, coolness,
and lack of fear that they simply could
not go on.

"'Take that rope .off!' commanded
the one who had assumed leadership.
' Now, tie her on her mustang.'

" And when Katie was securely fas-
tened to the mustang they struck the
horse a smart clip on the flank, and away
he sped with the bravest little woman on
the Mormon Trail."

" And what of the husband — the
horse-thief?" I asked.

"That coward? Oh, he had escaped
— flown while the men were in the very

act of putting the loop around the throat
of the woman who had risked her life
and done murder to save him. She
joined him at a camp somewhere just
across the line in California, somewhere
about the place on this railroad now
called Leastalk, told the people there
what a low-down cur he was, and had
him driven out of camp."

Clark's Golden Spike.

During that twenty-five-minute stop
at Las Vegas, Nevada, I talked to two
or three " strikers," employees of the
Salt Lake Route, who had struck gold at
Caliente and thereabouts, though at the
time I did not know they were "strikers."

Las Vegas is, as I have intimated, the
junction at which passengers change cars
to take the new branch line built by
Senator Clark from the main line up to
Goldfield and Tonopah. It is called the
Las Vegas and Tonopah Railroad. It is
natural that the " strikers " should have
stories to tell of happenings on the
branch line.

" This branch was opened October,
1907, with a great celebration, in which
a golden spike figured as usual," said
one of the " strikers."

" Goldfield that day had one grand
holiday, with suspension of work at the
mines and a closing of business gen-

TWO DRIED-UP CAR-
CASES HAD [BEEN
PROPPED UP TO
LOOK LIKE THE
REAL THING.

288

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

erally. Senator Nixon, who was with
Senator Clark in the Senate, handled
the golden spike after the most approved
fashion — the spike itself being . made
from gold taken out of Senator Nixon's
own mine at Goldiield.

" Well, let me inform you that there
was revelry by night, participated in by
about all the railroad men of Nevada
who could get a lay-off for the occasion.
We just hit things up grand, rhostly at
the expense of owners and directors and
officials of the newly finished railroad. .

" During the blowout up comes ' Rec-
ord ' Brady, an engineer out of Gold-
field, and Conductor Alley, out of the
same place, and Chief Despatcher Nel-
son, of the same, all being men of the
Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad, which
line had traffic all to itself into those
mining towns till Senator Clark built
this branch into the camps.

" ' Record ' Brady and Conductor
Alley and Despatcher Nelson spoke up
for a hero on their line that nobody had
heard of. The hero was a switch-ten-
der near Tonopah named Peter 'A. Binger
— and he was hero because he was awake
at the switch, and then some more of a
hero because nis heroics never got into
print, nor were they ever noticed by any-
body save ' Record ' Brady and Alley and
Nelson.

"'That switch-tender, Peter A. Binger,
saved about two hundred 'lives and a heap
of property — all by being a man Avho.
could let his head direct his, hands at the
crucial moment.

Awake at the Switch.

" It -was this way. Ringer was on duty
at the switch. It was near eleven at
night, in December, 1906. The point of
duty for Binger was at one of the high-
est places on the railways of Nevada, just
outside of Tonopah. It's mountain rail-
roading at that point, all right, and when
you've got a double-header passenger-
train swooping down the mountain, and
a heavy freight coming up the mountain,
and both on the same track, you've got
to act mighty quick.

" All of a sudden Binger 'hears Extra
11, the freight, coming up the mountain,
calling for the switch. At the same time
he sees the headlight of the first .engine

of 14, the passenger, which was coming
down the mountain on a -marathon.

"It was up to Binger. Fourteen being
the nearest to hand, Binger knows that he
must set her off out of the way of Extra
11. At his switch was a Y, and what's
Binger do but throw the switch, then
frantically signal 14 with. his lantern to
stop, as ' Record ' Brady, engineer on the
,head engine of the passenger, swoops by
Binger and into the Y.

" And just as- 14 stops short on the
straight leg of the Y,' the freight dashes
by."

One Touch of Nature.

We pulled into Daggett, California,
about three in the afternoon, and were
held up there about half an hour. From
there to San Bernardino and a little be-
yond we would run over the tracks of the
Santa Fe. Consequently, any passengers
booked to finish the trip to Los Angeles
or San Francisco via the Santa Fe
changed trains at Daggett.

I made the acquaintance of one of the
depot men, who told me this story :

" I've seen it stated in print that rail-
road conductors are, as a rule, just ma-
chines performing their duty, without
ever showing that they possess the milk
of human kindness, so far as any extra
attentions to passengers are concerned,
especially when passengers are very poor.

" Let me call your notice to Conductor
Moore, of the Salt Lake Route. Only a
few weeks ago, when his train pulled in
here, his passengers in the Pullmans told
me of extra attention which Moore gave
to the poorest immigrant passenger — and
if that attention of Moore to that poor
woman did not indicate human kindness,
then there's, nothing in life. On the Los
Angeles Limited, of the Salt Lake Rail-
road, was a young mother and her baby.

" They were in one of the tourist cars.
Soon after the train left Salt Lake City
the baby began to cry most piteously. The
mother, seeming very weak, tried to com-
fort the baby as best she could. All
night the baby cried, and all the next
morning while the train was running
through Nevada.

" When Conductor Moore passed
through the train he spotted that mother
and babe, and. decided that here was trou-

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

289

=J?JS

Jim ki

"the tramp spoke to the woman and she answered at once."

ble of some sort that required human
kindness. He spoke to the young wom-
an, but she only shrugged her shoulders,
not understanding what he said. Moore
noticed that the woman gave the child a
tiny, hard crust of bread, that the child
gnawed the crust ravenously, and that the
mother glued her eyes on that crust with
a look that could spring only from one
who was hungry.

" Moore went among the passengers
and requested all who could speak a for-
eign language to come and talk to the
woman. One passenger spoke to her in
French, another in German, a third and
fourth- in Italian and Spanish. But to
none of these did the woman respond.

The Timely Tramp.

" At Kelso, California, where the
train stopped, Moore happened to see a
tramp stealing a ride. Instead of jump-
ing on the tramp with both feet, Moore
scrutinized him closely, then asked him
if he could speak any foreign language.
The man said he could speak Russian.

" Moore hustled him into the tourist-
car, and there led him to the woman and
the baby. The tramp spoke to the worn-
7 R R .

an, and' she answered at once. ' She's a
Russian Jewess,' said the tramp, inter-
preting the woman's words almost as fast
as she uttered them.

" ' She says she arrived in New York
a week ago with plenty of money to join
her husband in Los Angeles. She bought
her railroad ticket, but before the time
came for her to board the train some one
stole all her money and her trunk and
everything she possessed, except her
ticket.

1 ' She says she determined to start for
California and risk starving. She says
she has been without food, except one
stale loaf of bread, ever since she left
New York. She says she is now so weak
that she is hardly able to utter a loud
word, but that if only some one will give
food to her baby she won't mind dying.'

" Hearing these words, Conductor
Moore took off his cap and went among
the passengers in the Pullman, asking for
subscriptions for the poor woman in the
tourist car.

" Fifteen minutes later he came back
to the woman with twenty-two dollars,
and .put the money in her lap. Then he
took some of the money, went to the
diner and bought hot milk and other

290

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

things — bought more food than any
starving person could possibly eat and
survive.

" Told by the tramp interpreter where
the money had come from, the woman
broke doAvn completely, overcome by the
kindness of strangers in a strange land
whose language she could not speak.
When the train reached Daggett, there
was her husband, who had come to meet
her.

" The last thing Moore saw, and the
last thing the passengers saw, as the
limited pulled out of Daggett, was the
poor woman pointing to the train, ob-
viously telling her husband of kindness
that seemed little less than a .miracle.

" ' Where were you trying to get when
I overhauled you? ' asked Conductor
Moore of the tramp while the train wait-
ed at Daggett.

" ' Los Angeles,' was the reply.

" ' Well,' said Moore, ' that's one hun-
dred and fifty-eight miles, but hanged if
I don't let you ride plumb to the Pacific
Ocean at San Pedro. What kind of a
sandwich shall I bring you from the
lunch-room? ' "

San Berdoo is the railroad man's
short-language-line for San Bernardino.
This is one of the busiest railroad towns
in southern California. I had been there
on a previous trip, so when my train hit
the place some of the men at the station
came to me, saying :

" Back again? What? Not stopping
over? Going right on to Los Angeles?
Sorry ! You remember the district at-
torney here — Dickson? Well, we've
nabbed him, we trainmen have."

"Arrested him? What's he done?"

" Arrested nothin' ! We've corralled
him, and he's in the all-firedest fix you

Mr. Willets's next article will deal with the romances of the railways of the Golden State
and the men who made them.

ever heard of. You see, when he got
tired of being a good railroader he be-
came a good lawyer, and secured the job
of district attorney here. The , Brother-
hood of Railroad Trainmen elected him
to be our head counsel. Now .he's draw-
ing two salaries, holding down two jobs,
and as a result he's in an awful fix. He's
got to resign one or the other of his
jobs.

"Why? Well, our brotherhood held
a convention at Columbus, Ohio, not
long ago, and there passed a by-law ma-
king it imperative that our head counsel
live at Peoria, Illinois, if he wishes to
hold down his job with us.

" And there's Dickson's fix. He loves
this California climate — -same as all folks
who come here from the East. And he
hates the chill of the North. The citi-
zens here don't want him to go, because
if he does they will lose the best
district attorney they've ever had. And
our brotherhood doesn't want him to stay
here, because if he does we'll lose the
best head counsel we've ever had — and
there you are. Dickson can't make up his
mind what to do."

Just then another trainman joined
those to whom I was talking. " You're
telling our friend from New York about
that Dickson mix-up?" said the new-
comer. " But you aren't telling him the.
latest. The brotherhood has offered
Dickson a higher salary than he.'s getting
as the people's representative here — and
pleasanter work, too. I reckon San Ber-
doo won't look quite so good to him now
as Peoria, Illinois, does. You see, our
brotherhood comes to the Pacific, not
the Atlantic, coast for an honest lawyer,
and when we find him we bind him to us
with bands of gold. All — aa — board ! "

HORRIGAN'S MEDAL.

BY ROBERT FULKERSON HOFFMAN.

A Hero of the Throttle Wins the Plaudits of
a Grateful Public — but Knowing Ones Revolt.

H, he's not so bad, some-
times," contended a fireman
whose feet were dangling
from the idle baggage
truck on the Pelaya station
platform. " I can carry as
thin a fire, with Horrigan up, as with
any engineer on the division."

" He's a big wind, and no cyclone-
cellar handy!" declared Jim Allen,
" and I hope he don't pull me if I'm
drawn for one of the specials. He keeps
me feeling that things are going to hap-
pen soon."

Allen spoke with the 'fixed belief and
deep unction of an experienced conduc-
tor measuring up a comparatively new
engineer.

" Horrigan has too many things on
his mind, and he can't seem to keep
them there. He's always slopping over
into talk," Allen continued.

" If you were to ask him for a chew
of tobacco in the dark at a water-tank,
on short time, he'd very likely give it if
he had it on him. But, before you could
get him to pull out for the next siding,
he'd start a lecture on what tobacco does
to the solar plexus.

" And if you were to turn hot under
the collar and throw out your cud on
the strength of that talk while you're
trying to get him started, he'd turn in
at the next stop and give you facts and
figures, world without end, on what to-
bacco is costing the United States, and
what per cent of it's wasted through
rough handling.

" Horrigan knows too much, besides
running an engine ! When I break away
from him 1 always feel as if I'd been
grabbed by the neck and dipped in a
creel-:."

Red Jones, the brakeman broke in.
" He scares me 'way up into the rocks
when he gets talking in full release.

"But he knows engine — don't ever
doubt it — and if he pulls us on special,
we'll go where the rest of them go. You
can bet on it ! "

The engineer whom they had been dis-
cussing finished his walk across the
tracks after leaving the group of talkers,
and was humming a happy, nervous sort
of nothing in the way of a tune, as he
stooped and touched, here and there,
about his engine, which was waiting at
the coal chutes, just over the way.

'Horrigan did not rightly belong on the
Pelaya division. This was not so much
because he had not been brought up
there, although that fact operated as a
handicap against him just at first, as
it does against any man coming new to
the special requirements of the mountain
service.

He had been taken on probation, in
short, as all men are taken there, and
while he had succeeded in weathering
the test to the point where he had rights
on extra passenger runs, yet he somehow
did not seem to belong.

He was a free and somewhat able
talker, and seemed to have more than
the 'ordinary predilection for what is
commonly called a play to the grand-
stand. Even that might have passed
the broad tolerance of the men of the
division had he not possessed the un-
happy faculty of injecting into his ever-
ready speech a vitriolic tang that sent
the comfort of common speed glimmer-
ing from any conversation in which he
engaged and left his hearers with an
unreasonable sense of shame for which,
however, they never could quite account.

291

292

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

THEY SWARMED AROUND HORRIGAN'S ENGINE,

JUST BEFORE THE START, AND CHEERED

AND CHEERED AGAIN.

It was to them as though they had
been detected in the absurdity of trying
to fit a hex-headed bolt into a square
counter-sink, and perhaps that was really
the trouble. Horrigan had too many
angles. He did not fit there.

That was the way matters stood when
the Society for the Promotion of Peace
on Earth sent some thousands of its
members on a well-timed pilgrimage

across the continent, and when the re-
turn journey began, Pelaya division, like
the rest of the line, went into careful
and complete preparations for handling
the several heavily laden sections of the
special traffic which was scheduled to
run as Number 2.

Horrigan was drawn from the freight-
crews and assigned to the engine of third
Number 2. Among the others about the
roundhouse, when the great day for the
division arrived, there was a pregnant
silence, born of a deep sense of the re-
sponsibility of handling the living six
sections that were laboring on from the
coast.

Horrigan alone seemed to find it an
occasion for much speaking and, stimu-
lated to greater effort than usual by the
sense of his own responsibility, he
descanted loud and long on how the
thing should be done to redound with
proper glory to the division.

The others listened and, one by one,
slipped quietly away.

Duly Number 2 trailed doAvn off the
mountain-side and came safely to rest
in Pelaya. The happy, zealous occu-
pants of its ten coaches swarmed out
and cheered to the echo the crew that
had brought them safely thus far upon
their return.

They cheered as heartily the engine
and crew that backed down upon the
train to take up the journey afresh, and
Number 2 went strongly and gaily upon
its way.

When second Number 2 arrived all

HORRIGAN'S MEDAL.

293

this was done again and Pelaya was tak-
ing on a quiet exultation at the unwonted
celebrity, while Horrigan, with his
preparations made, was circulating free-
ly with the throng, shaking hands with
the pilgrims, telling them in awe-inspir-
ing periods how the thing was being
done and what he, too, was about to do.
■ The rest of Pelaya, of course, was
equally glad, but it was very quiet about
its gladness. Pelaya well knew that
while there are trains there are chances.

Second Number 2 was well, away when
third Number 2 came in and disgorged
its burden of enthusiasts. They swarmed
around Horrigan's engine, just before
the start, and cheered and cheered again,
yielding at last only to the polite but
urgent insistence of the conductor and
trainmen who were trying, with little
success, to gather them all quickly back
into the train. Horrigan's too effusive
greetings and responses from the cab-
Window were holding them/

Finally they reached the climax of
their enthusiasm, and as the tide set back
toward the coaches their long-sustained
excitement, their gratitude for safety
through many perils but dimly runder-
stood, and their longing for definite ex-
pression centered upon the well-meaning
but too demonstrative Horrigan at the
cab-window. The great volume of
voices trailed off from its cheering into
the dear old hymn of benediction: " God
be with you till we meet again."

With that appealing strain " death's
threatening wave " wafting to his ears
from the train, Horrigan pulled out with
third Number 2's ten coaches and with a
suspicion of more than usual moisture
in his eyes. Horrigan was very far from
being a hard man. He was a hard talker,
that was all.

Horrigan's present triumph was brief,
complete, and, to him, most satisfying
while it lasted. He wheeled them away
magnificently over the first rise that puts
up its resistance beyond Pelaya and be-
gan dropping down the long reaches of
the Eleven-Mile Hill with all of the as-
surance that careful preparation could
give.

His heart was beating high with the
warmth of the enthusiasm of which he
had unexpectedly become the central
object at Pelaya, and he saw himself

thenceforth a towering figure in the
division annals.

The run ahead held no special diffi-
culties and he let the train soar down in
wide, breathless sweeps that brought joy
to the hearts of the travelers and keyed
him to a keener gladness in his work.

With the throttle closed and the re-
verse lever latched well clown ahead for
drifting, he was sailing them, free as an.
eagle's flight, where he dared, fondling
the brake-valve handle and holding
them safely, where he must.

Back in the crowded coaches further
campaigns of " peace on earth, good-
will to men," were being planned. Song
relieved the weariness of the long jour-
ney.

Then, without warning and from no
fault of his, disaster fell upon Horrigan
and rudely disturbed the confidence of
his passengers in their engineer. Deep
down in a vital spot of Horrigan's
engine a little detailed fracture had been
growing for many months, where no out-
ward search could detect it and no fore-,
sight or care defeat its growth.

Close in behind the cellar of the main
pin, securely hidden within its fit in
the wheel, the little, threadlike frac-
ture had been gnawing into the circum-
ference of the pin.

Little by little, it had eaten toward
the heart of the pin until now, with the
rods fanning the air in a steely blur of
light and the wheels humming in dull
monotone in the rushing air, the pin was
quivering upon its remaining solid core.

Half way down the Eleven-Mile
grade, just when Horrigan had yielded
to the temptation of one proud, back-
ward look at the inner side of the flying
curve of the train, the overtaxed pin
let go.

There was only an instant's crashing
jumble of sounds from below, before the
roads wrenched themselves apart and
the swift stripping of his side of the
engine began.

In the next moment the forward work-
ing parts broke free with the shattered
cylinder and fell in the ditch. The
side rod, parted at the middle, began its
work of thrashing with swift rotary
sweeps the cab and after fittings.

First among these to go were the brake
pipes and reservoir, and when the seat-

294

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

box went shivering upward in a shower
of splinters and tools Horrigan stood
upon the deck where he had tumbled
without even a chance to touch the brake
valve or move it from the lap, where he
had set it previously.

With the train-line torn open and the
air gone from equilibrium, the brakes
went on with an emergency application
that set the coaches humping upon their
trucks and put in sudden motion* a series
of wild gymnastics among the passengers.

Before they were fairly untangled
from their catapult departures over the
tops of car-seats the train had ground
itself to an abrupt stop. Then they
shook themselves out of the tangle and
as hurriedly as Conductor Jim Allen had
moved to the front at the first jolt they
were nocking to the engine ahead of him.

There he found them, rapidly increas-
ing from a bevy to hundreds, close
around the damaged engine. Standing
erect in the ruins of the cab, the whole
side of which was torn off and gone, was
Horrigan with his hand clutching the
only projection that remained in reach—
the handle of the now useless brake-
valve.

Horrigan's cap was gone, his blouse
was ripped up the back, and there was
one bright spot of blood sending down a
trickle of crimson upon his cheek where
a splinter had grazed him.

He certainly looked the conventional
hero, and as the little human eddy of
passengers swirled into a constantly wi-
dening pool of frightened humanity about
the engine, a murmur of admiration rose
and grew until it broke forth into ring-
ing cheer after cheer, punctuated with
cries of "Speech! Speech! Speech!"

None but a man built upon Horrigan's
lines would have thought for a single
moment of responding to this hysterical
demand under the circumstances. Per-
haps not even Horrigan would have
done so had he not been frozen stiff with
fright and astonishment while the delight
of his ovation at Pelaya was still surging
in his mind.

The latter, apparently, was the first
clear idea to free itself in his shocked
senses and, with the entire train's com-
pany for audience — all save one lonely
figure that shot out from the rear of
the last coach and went running up the

grade — Horrigan clutched the useless
brake-valve handle spasmodically and
began upon a stammering speech.

Jim Allen, conductor, thrusting his
wiry body unceremoniously through the
closely packed crowd, Irad reached the
distorted gangway between engine and
tender. He had seized the hand-iron
and was thrusting his feet into the step
when Horrigan's first halting words
sounded.

Allen stopped as though stricken pow-
erless, Math his foot in the air, as the
monstrous folly of the thing made its
way to his quick senses, but only for a
single look upward into Horrigan's dis-
torted and painfully working face.

Then Allen's Avhite face went even
whiter with suppressed wrath, and he
sprang up the step and upon the littered
deck and stood tensely with the fireman,
close behind Horrigan's shoulder.

He permitted Horrigan to ramble
through a few sentences of rather point-
less platitudes and, at the first tangible
halt in Horrigan's now rapid utterances,
he stepped in front of him with a ghastly
smile, seized his free right hand in a
crushing grip and shook it ostentatiously
for the benefit of the intent audience
below.

With his back turned to the passen-
gers arid his eyes boring fiercely into
the eyes of the engineer, he was saying
while his grip tightened :

" Horrigan, you fool grand-stand
player, you haven't done a thing here
but roll in luck, and you know it ! If
you don't cut this out and get down
and clean up the pins, so fourth Number
2 can help us down the hill, I'll pound
you to a frazzle here on your own deck !
Get some tools and get down ! "

Then he released his fierce grip upon
Horrigan's hand, turned with a strained
smile to the cheering audience below and,
removing his cap, bowed to them most
suavely while Horrigan turned hastily
to the tool-box upon the tender.

A few moments later both of them,
with the fireman, were thrusting the
crowd back from below while the broken
rods Avere stripped off and the crippled
engine made ready for movement with
help from the coming fourth section.

In the few moments that this byplay
had occupied, the only man of all the

HORRIGAN'S MEDAL.

295

train's people who
had not rushed to-
ward the engine —
Red Bill Jones —
true to his great
trust, had caught up
his flag with its dan-
gling sack of torpe-
does and was run-
ning swiftly to the
rear.

Previously there
had been nothing to
distinguish ■ him in
road talk from Black
Bill Jones, except the
qualifying adjectives
of color which the
road parlance had
supplied. Thereafter,
however, he was to
be known as the flag-
man who saved third
and fourth Number
2. His opportunity
had come suddenly,
and he was equal to
its demand.

Two train lengths
up the wide, curving
grade the track was
lost from sight in
the deep and narrow
Spire Cut, and be-
yond that the swell
of the mountain hid
it for a mile, down
which its fourth
Number 2 would
soon be bowling.
Red Jones ran swiftly to the Spire Cut,
fumbling the while with the string of
the torpedo bag, meaning to make assu-
rance doubly sure by setting explosive
signals in the cut before running far-
ther in the concealing curve to meet the
oncoming section.

Thus absorbed in his double duty, a
vagrant wedge of rock caught his foot
and threw him heavily from the track
upon his shoulder into the ditch.

With a muttered imprecation he
scrambled hastily to his feet and, much
to his astonishment, fell over again quite
helplessly upon the spot from which he
had arisen.

A piercing stab of pain shot through

IF YOU DON T GET DOWN AND CLEAN UP THE PINS SO FOURTH
NUMBER 2 CAN HELP US, I'LL POUND YOU TO A FRAZZLE."

his ankle, and when a second effort to
rise resulted in a second fall, he exam-
ined the offending ankle to find it dislo-
cated and his foot badly awry.

He set his teeth grimly and tugged
at the anguished foot as at a boot. It
would not right, and he gave up the
effort quickly. He crawled back up the
ballasted bank of the track and bent a
signal-cap upon the rail.

He crept an engine-length and bent
another cap upon the rail. Then he
began the long crawl upon hands and
knees up the grade in the cut with the
flag.

The ragged rock-ballast riddled his
clothing and bit cruelly into his naked

296

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

knees, but he held to the middle of the
track with the flag wavering and upended
before him, even though he left a dull,
irregular trailing stain of blood upon
the ballast.

Once he fainted for a moment, with
the flag stretched out upon the rail be-
fore him and his face fallen among the
broken rock, then he came back to the
pulsing anguish of his disjointed ankle
and crept forward again until he heard
the distant whistle of fourth Number 2
at the approach to the Spire Cut.

He stood up then, leaning upon the
flagstaff for support, until the black muz-
zle of the coming engine shot into sight.
He raised the flag aloft, waved it in wide
and steady sweeps across the track until
the deep note of the whistle barked brief-
ly twice in acknowledgment, then he laid
the flag carefully upon the rail, spread it
to its full length, and rolled over into
the ditch, as senseless as the ties bedded
in the track.

He was game to the last conscious beat
of his heart.

They lifted him to the cab and quickly
brought him back to consciousness. They
dropped cautiously down through the
Spire Cut and coupled in at the rear of
third Number 2 and helped them down
the hill, while Red Jones lay quietly upon
a plank that slanted forward from the
fireman's box, in the engine of fourth
Number 2.

The kindly members of the Society
for the Promotion of Peace on Earth
knew nothing of Red Jones or his doings.
They were discussing, in subdued tones
of gratitude and admiration, Horrigan,
the brave engineer who had stood daunt-
lessly and alone in the wreck of his post
and saved them from a dreadful fate —
just what they were not so clear on. And
Horrigan was a brave man.

So, with this single interruption, the
splendid movement of the precious six
sections went smoothly on. The day
saw Pelaya division well and creditably
clear of its great responsibility, and in
the days immediately following the re-
spective parts played by Horrigan and
Red Jones in the Spire Cut affair be-
came a serious bone of contention.

The whole, bitterly fought, old ques-
tion of the comparative danger and
bravery of the several posts in train

service was reopened with a zest and
venom that it had not previously attained.

But the subject was wearing itself
out and bade fair to subside when a most
unfortunate event tore all lacerated feel-
ings open.

There was not a man in Pelaya who
did not fully understand that when Hor-
rigan was discovered clutching the brake-
valve handle he might as well have been
holding the empty casing of a burned-
out rocket, so far as the safety of the
train had been concerned, and that the
almost human action of the wonderful
brake mechanism had automatically
taken care of its priceless human freight,
at the first crash, without any possible
assistance from Horrigan.

Horrigan had, indeed, been a towering
figure in the discussion. He had found
himself strictly on the defensive for
once, and having made the best stand
he could against the none too gentle im-
peachment and innuendo which con-
stantly assailed him, there had been
times when he was driven almost to the
point of unobtrusively leaving Pelaya.

But the saving reaction had come at
length, and Pelaya was inclined to leave
him to extract whatever satisfaction he
might from the situation — and say no
more.

Then came the misfortune. Horrigan
was sitting on a baggage-truck at the
station, one day some six weeks after
the Spire Cut doings, talking with re-
turning confidence to a group of road
men. Down the narrow stairway that
ascended to the superintendent's office,
just back of them, a clerk came clatter-
ing into their midst.

" See Horrigan around here any-
where?" he asked briskly. "Oh!" he
added, as the group opened a little far-
ther and brought Horrigan into view
upon the truck.

" Say, Horrigan, the Old Man has a
letter up there from those Peace on Earth
people, asking him to give you this pack-
age and to read these resolutions to you,
and give them to you, too, ' In some suit-
able public place,' the letter says.

" The Old Man says he's too busy and
I'm It. Ready?" he asked, handing the
sealed package to Horrigan and opening
a richly bound and engrossed document.

Horrigan blankly accepted the pack-

HORRIGAN'S MEDAL.

297

"OUR BRAVE AND KINDLY FELLOW CITIZEN, JONAS FARWELL HORRIGAN, DID, ON THE
EIGHTH DAY OF AUGUST — "

age and, for the rest of it, never had an
opportunity to answer. A shout of wild
derision went up and men slapped each
other's backs, while they demanded that
the clerk proceed with the reading. Hor-
rigan sat and said nothing.

With due identification, dates and pre-
liminaries, the document was opened,
and the listeners granted the clerk the
courtesy of silence. The reading pro-
ceeded :

Whereas — In the course of this, our
human life, there are many deadly
perils in which men should stand firmly,
one with another ; and

Whereas — The qualities of human
courage and endurance are always to
be desired and commended, but more
especially in the times of stress and
danger, where only the utmost courage
will suffice ; and

Whereas — Our brave and kindly fel-

low citizen, Jonas Farwell Horrigan,
did, on the eighth day of August, in the
year of our Lord one thousand nine
hundred and blank, exhibit and em-
ploy these admirable qualities in acts of
conspicuous heroism and bravery, to
our lasting good and gratitude ; there-
fore, be it, and it is

Resolved — That we, a committee of
the Society for the Promotion of Peace
on Earth, duly appointed and assembled,
do herein, this day and date, extend to
Jonas Farwell Horrigan the sincere
thanks and the undying respect of this
association ; and it is

Resolved — That a medal of gold, ap-
propriately designed, shall be provided
and presented to Jonas Farwell Horri-
gan, with a suitably engrossed copy of
these resolutions ; and it is

Resolved — That a copy of these reso-
lutions be spread upon the minutes of
this association, in further loving re-
membrance of Jonas Farwell Horrigan.

298

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE,

The signatures followed in due order,
and when the voice of the clerk ceased
he handed the document to Horrigan in
a dead silence that contrasted sharply
with the earlier burst of derision.

Apparently nobody felt moved to
laughter. Who could laugh at such a
motive, whatever its objective might be?

Nobody laughed. They who listened
had almost come to believe in Horrigan's
heroism, against their own expert knowl-
edge of the event in question. Horrigan
had come, almost, to»believe in it him-
self. He had done what he could — he
was reasoning.

" Nothing! " prompted his inner con-
sciousness. He was sitting, pale-faced
and with downcast eyes, looking at the
unopened package in his hand.

" Open it, Horrigan," said some one
very quietly. " Let's see the medal."

> He removed the firm wrappings and
sprung the little clasp, exposing the
beautiful thing upon its cushion of
purple. Depending from its richly
chased cross-bar was a liberal circle of
the solid red gold of olden Rome, and
upon its polished face this inscription :

Jonas Farwell Horrigan

From

The S. P. P. E.

For Conspicuous Heroism.

August 8th. 190-.

GAVE AN ORDER AT THE HOTEL DESK AGAINST HIS
WAGES DUE.

The reverse side bore, in bas-relief, the
heroic figure of a man, warding off, with
bared and upraised arm, some unseen
danger, while a girlish figure cowered
at his feet. A trophy fit to commemorate
the best endeavor of any man when taken
with the earnest *nessage of its presenta-
tion. A worthy token, indeed.
That, until the time of his
going from Pelaya, was the one
occasion upon which Horrigan
said nothing. Having fully
complied with the request of
those who stood about him, he
folded his possessions away
and, rising, passed thoughtful-
ly up the street, alone.

When he had gone, one of
those who lingered, a fireman,
ventured the opinion that the
deal wasn't so far. off, anyhow.
Horrigan had stayed with the
engine. He was there, ready
to do what he could, and a
man who had gone through
what he had at Spire Cut and
come out of it with as good as
a whole skin was entitled to
all he could get.

But it wouldn't do. They
all knew the truth, and the
truth would not down. Red
Bill Jones was the only hero
of Pelaya. It wasn't right,
and they liked right first and
glory afterward.

Then it began all over again.
Somebody hooted from the ca-
boose-track when Horrigan
pulled out next day. Some-
body laughed when he signed
his report upon the work-book
at his return.

HORRIGAN'S MEDAL.

299

The following morning found a savage
screed of doggerel verse posted upon the
freight-house, in the unfolding of which
Horrigan was made to suffer by compari-
son, while Red Bill Jones was lauded.

It crept into the conversation at the
hotel tables when Horrigan could not
escape and was- not directly addressed.
He met it by implication at every street-
corner, and even saw the reflex of it in
the faces of the children in the street.

He bore it, sometimes in fiercely out-
spoken anger, sometimes in sullen silence,
until, looking from his cab-window one
evening when just about to pull down
into the yards for the start on a night run,
he found a four-foot placard staring at
him from the wooden face of the chutes.

Evidently produced with much labor
and the aid of a marking-brush, bor-
rowed from the freight-house, this is
what he saw :

The Eagle Eye stood on the deck,

The Flagman's hair was red,
That deck was busted, good and hard,

The brake valve sure was dead.
"Aw, what's the use?" the boys all said,

" The Flagman was the stuff ! "
But the people seen the Eagle Eye

And never called his bluff.

Nothing very serious, this, in tlie way
of an indictment, and yet it struck so
close to Horrigan' s own inner sense of
the situation that it was the one last
straw that he could not bear.

Looking at his watch in white-faced
anger, he found he had time to return
to the hotel across the tracks. Crossing
hastily, he packed into an- irregular
bundle his few possessions, gave an order
at the hotel desk against his wages due,
paid his bill and, making his way back
to- the engine without encountering any-
body, climbed aboard with his bundle.

In due time he departed on his run.
- When he reached the farther end of
the division late that night he silently
folded the tent of his tenure upon the
Pelaya division, and as silently stole
away.

It is likely that Pelaya, in time, might
have accustomed itself to the idea of the
medal, even though it had never become
entirely reconciled. But the engrossed
resolutions turned loose the muse of
every caboose poet on the line— and
every line has a large and prolific lot
of them, although they will not all con-
fess.

THE GROWING RECORD FOR SAFETY.

COMPETITION between railroads is a
good thing for the public, and it is
especially good in the matter of safety. The
Burlington road has made a record of which
it has much reason to , be proud, because
during the fiscal year, recently ended, not a
single passenger was killed of the many mil-
lions who traveled on its trains.

This is a record which equals that made
by the Pennsylvania Railroad in the year
1908, says the New Orleans State, and indi-
cates that the managers of the various rail-
way systems are giving considerable atten-
tion to the safety of the traveling public.

The Interstate Commerce Commission, in
its last report, showed a substantial gain
for safety in travel, for there had been a
great reduction in the number of accidents
of all classes; and, while this was admitted

to be due in part to diminished traffic on
the roads, yet, better discipline, more care-
ful attention to the operation of trains, and
the adoption of more safety devices were
undoubtedly factors that contributed to the
gratifying records made by the roads.

In the last year the activity in many in-
dustries has become almost as great as that
which marked the days preceding the panic
of 1907, for business has been increasing so
rapidly that a car shortage is predicted.

Therefore, ft is to the credit of the Penn-
sylvania and Burlington railroads that their
remarkable records for safety in the trans-
portation of millions of passengers were
made during a period of recovery from
panic stagnation, and, therefore, cannot be
attributed solely to " lessened pressure and
diminished traffic."

Being a Boomer Brakeman.

BY HORACE HERR

1IKE most members of the Grand Army of Shacks, Mr. Herr's hero is
j always good-natured. He takes his tips and downs in an optimistic,
cheerful way, and the world looks good to him even if he is rudely
awakened from a much-needed shut-eye, or has just got the worst of it in an
encounter with a tallow-pot. And in telling his experiences he can hand out
laughs by the dozen.

2. _ON THE SMOKY END.

Payment of Railroad Clerks Is Too Law, but When the Narrator of

These Papers Is President of the In and Out, He Will

Raise Them 100 Per Gent.

tERHAPS it sounds queer, but
all railroads are more or less
alike. The conditions which
exist on any one of them
are fairly characteristic of
all. The same book of
standard rules is the basis of examina-
tions on all ; and if you qualify on the
Rock Island, you could probably do the
trick on the New York Central or the
Mexican Central.

That's been my experience. I've
found out that the gaff on the Arizona
In and Out was a bit more of a grind
than the average road, owing to the fact
that it was a mountain road, and wher-
ever you go against the " hog-back "
track, you will not be long in getting
pretty well acquainted with the broke-in-
two sign.

My promotion from the chief des-
patcher's office came directly after Carl
Smith endeavored to break into the sting-
ers' ranks, and in doing so all but broke
his neck. Carl was just a common clerk
like myself, with a capacity for long
hours and hard work, but with a. con-
Began in the October Railroad Man

stitution that would have been a dis-
credit to an adult ant.

One evening, as we came out of the
office to make the usual trip to the
Chino's, I noticed that he was looking
more frail than usual ; and for a delicate
digestive organ there is nothing that will
do so much damage as three doses of
Chinaman's grub a day for a few months,
and Carl was certainly showing the ef-
fect.

Three Trips for a Pay-Check.

As we came out of that office, across
the track some fifty yards we noticed a
big boiler-maker carrying a large, gen-
erous jag. It was almost the largest
jag I ever viewed from the standpoint
of a disinterested spectator. We stood
and Avatched him make a crooked
straight line for the master mechanic's
office.

At the door he met one of the clerks
coming out, and, from the fussy conver-
sation which ensued, it developed that
he had made three previous trips to the

's Magajine. Single copies, 10 cents. x

300

BEING A BOOMER BRAKEMAN.

301

office that afternoon in quest of his pay-
check. The boiler-maker was a mighty
good sort of a fellow, but that jag he
was keeping company with covered him
from head to foot, and looked as if it
might be the most ferocious specimen
ever captured in that neck of the tim-
ber ; at least, it had a Jim Jeffries dis-
position ; and before Carl and I were
really wise to what was going on, a row
had started.

The clerk would have qualified in the
featherweight class, while the boiler-
maker would have tipped the scales at
all of two hundred pounds, not count-
ing his booze tonnage. Although the
little man gave away a lot of weight,
he made a great run for the money, and
I'm here to say that he would probably
have pulled in on the schedule had not
the crowd interfered.

The Arizona Appetite.

It wasn't ' strict rules, for the clerk
just kept beating ragtime on the boiler-
maker's head with a brass fire-hose
nozzle, till the cupola looked as if it had

been foul of a low bridge ; and when
peace was finally established, there was
one head around there that looked like
a raw beefsteak, and it didn't belong to
the clerk.

That fight got Carl to thinking about
what he would have been able to do un-
der the same circumstances. It took all
his strength to make a dent in a Chino's
bill of fare, and he shortly decided to
listen to the boys and try an outside job
for a few months, and see if he couldn't
cultivate one of those Arizona appetites
which makes it possible for a fellow to
eat scrap-iron without salt. He went,
and I took his place in the train-
master's office of the In and Out.

I was interested in his experiment, for
the stinger fever was on me, and I was
anxious to see how a tenderfoot would
get along when against the real goods.
Carl's first trip was his last one.

He caught up with Murphy on the
first division local — the fellow who said
" a local run is a good place, for a stu-
dent knows what he is without me tell-
ing him." The very first trip Carl made
after having carried a " dope " bucket

THE CLERK JUST KEPT BEATING RAGTIME ON THE BOILER-MAKER S HEAD.

302

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

until his hand was blistered, after hav-
ing jacked up cars until his back was
tied into a hard bow knot, after having
rustled freight for eighteen hours, he had
to take a high dive from the top of a
refer and land on his noodle, and, when
he came to he was in the hospital, look-
ing into the face of one of those beau-
tiful nurse-girls.

A Rough-Neck Again.

Going into the terminal, he was stand-
ing on the head-end of a refer when the

yardmaster, had said that I could have
a place on French's crew, and that same
evening, before I had had time to draw
a switch-key and a badge, French's crew
was called, and got out without me.
They went East on an orange special,
behind Bob Kelley.

I learned in later years just how fast
Bob could run thirty cars of oranges be-
hind a tandem compound engine ; and
if he was living up to his reputation that
night, he must have been traveling some
when the crash came.

A light extra — two engines coupled

HE SHOT OUT INTO THE COUNTRY, CLEARING EVERYTHING BUT THE BARBED-WIRE FENCE.

train broke in two right ahead of that
car, and off he went. By actual meas-
urement, he just lacked one and a half
inches of getting the big works.

As it was, his right arm was broken,
and the wheels missed his head by a
mighty small margin. When I heard
all about it, I suddenly became satisfied
to push a pencil for a few more months.

However, shortly after that, the am-
bition to be a rough-neck brakeman came
back again, and I asked the boss to put
me on the extra board. The day he said
he would, I changed my mind again.

It was just like this : Ike Roberts, the

together without a train — Avas coming
Avest against him, and Bob had a string
of Avaits over half the division. The
light engines Avere evidently trying to
make HoAvard for the orange extra, and
they Avould have been all to the good
and in the clear if some one hadn't gone
to sleep.

Bob Avas in the clear, all right, as he
had the right of track, and so long as
he stayed behind that string of Avaits
he could run them as fast as he Avanted.
I got the story from Bob's oAvn brother,
Avho Avas firing on the head engine of the
light extra, and Avho took to the tall

BEING A BOOMER BRAKEMAN.

303

timber when he stuck his head out of
the cab and saw a headlight poking
around the curve.

Bob's brother said that his crew on
the light engine had had about four
hours' sleep in forty-two. His engineer
was all in ; and just as they passed the
high switch at Howard, the fireman
asked him where he was going for the
orange train. He pulled out his watch
and didn't reply, but eased her off a bit,
and the fireman thought he was going to
run down to the west switch and back
into the clear.

When Three Hogs Meet.

He evidently went to sleep between
the switches, and they met about two
hundred yards beyond the yard limit
board, on a curve where the view was
obstructed by a deep cut in a sand-hill.
Something funny about these big hogs,
they never turn out to go around, so the
three big engines got all tangled up.
Smith, the engineer on the first engine
of the light extra, was sitting with his
feet in the cab-window when they hit,
and he shot out into the country, clear-
ing everything but the barbed-wire fence
along the right of way.

All he got to remember the accident
was a badly cut hand, where it scraped
the window glass in the cab-window, a
few jagged cuts from the wire fence,
and his discharge papers. The rest of
the crew on the light engine unloaded,
as did Bob and his fireman, and no one
was killed.

I went out and watched them pick up
that wreck. It was a great pile of splin-
tered box cars, twisted iron, and mer-
chandise mixed in. It took four days
to clean up the mess, although a shoo-
fly was built around it to open the main
line in less than ten hours after the acci-
dent happened. When I walked over
from the wrecking-train and looked at
that heap of wreckage, I decided again
that a clerk's job had its advantages-.

Getting Stinger Symptoms.

But this stinger fever keeps coming
back on a fellow with an awful regu-
larity, and it was only a few months
after that accident that I be<j;an to note

the symptoms again. Nothing proved a
cure ; so I bolted the pencil pushing,
drew a badge and key, and one night
found myself called for the smoky end
of Howard Grimshaw's crew, a coal
drag, for my first trip.

Ever take the smoky end on a coal,
drag? Ever eat the cinders from two
Baldwin hogs when they were burning
Gallup coal? Don't do it; there are
easier ways — over the Brooklyn Bridge,
or a leap into the Grand Canon, for in-
stance.

But I didn't realize what I was going
against, so I whistled my little- whistle,
proceeded to the coal-chute track to get
my engines and pilot them down to the
train, calmly split the first switch I came
to, as every student must, and finally
had them coupled onto the string, air
connected up, and ready for the sign.

A great trip that ! Twenty-eight cars
of coal, the dirtiest coal that ever blew
into the eyes of a student brakeman !
We were over on the mountain end o'f
the division, where it is nothing but drag
and drag, up and up, until you finally
reach the top of the mountain range,
and then it's nothing but hold them
while you drop down on the other side.

So little to do going up that you get
tired, and so much to do coming down
that you are half exhausted ! Every-
thing went along fine until we reached
the divide and started down that sixteen
miles of canon road.

The Tallow-Pot Did It.

If I had known more about railroad-
ing, I would probably have unloaded in
that old canon, for the train ran away,
got beyond control when we were eight
miles from the bottom of that grade,
and although the hoghead was squealing
for brakes, and I noticed that we were
running pretty fast around the corners —
the curves are corners on that piece of
track — still, I didn't have sense enough
to know Ave were in trouble.

Finally they stopped. The lead-en-
gine went onto the ties and plowed up
quite a stretch of track ; the second en-
gine had every tire slipped ; and when
the crew came over ahead and began to
talk about the narrow escape, I got real
frightened.

304

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

But it was on the return trip that I
pulled off the real patent - applied - for
stunt. Braking on the smoky end is no
soft snap ; and after you have been out
over twenty hours, and are unused to
the grind, it's only natural that you long
• for a little shut-eye in the hay.

I remember we had a positive meet
order with a train at Bubbard, and go-
ing into that station — it was nothing
more than a blind siding — I made my
way over to the head engine, so that I
should be " Johnny at the rat-hole "
when we neared the switch.

I climbed down and took up my posi-
tion in the gangway. It was night, and
I was sleepy. The next thing I knew
I was experiencing a falling sensation,
which ended in a dull, sickening thud
and a fierce pain in my left shoulder.
From where I lay on the ground, I
looked up, expecting to see fire and
steam descending on" me and box cars
coming my way in droves ; but, instead,
there was the engineer sitting calmly in
the cab, with his head against the win-
dow-casing, sound asleep.

I picked myself up, hunted around in
the dark until I found my lantern, and,
anxious to be sure that no one saw me
fall out of the gangway on my head
and shoulder, started to climb back.
Then I realized that I was hurt, for I
had no use of my left arm.

I have thought about that little high-
dive feature several times since then,
and the only thing I can make out of
it is that I went to sleep standing there
in the gangway while the train was run-
ning. I never opened that switch, but
it must have been opened, for the train
was in on the siding ; I suppose the tal-
low-pot opened it for me.

Better Be Tied On.

Then they pulled in on the siding;
and after they had stopped, and there
was little danger of me falling off, I
just went and did it anyhow. I always
thought it was mighty considerate of me
to wait until they stopped to fall off,
for they didn't have to make a special
stop and lose time picking me up. Then,
too, I've thought it was considerate of
the train, for had I fallen when it was
running at high speed, there probably

wouldn't have been enough of me left
to pick up.

It was about four o'clock in the
morning ; and as the engineer . and fire-
man were taking a little shut-eye, they
didn't see the acrobatic stunt, and I
wasn't going to pipe it off to them. But
when I dropped off to open the switch
at the terminal, I couldn't deliver the
goods, as my left arm was useless.

The engineer had to stop, and the
fireman climbed down and unlocked her
and threw her over, and then I had to
tell the truth, and I got mine, all right,
all right. After that, John McKenna
would always suggest, every time the
train stopped, that I had better tie my-
self on.

Kind to a Youngster.

I took a two-weeks' lay-off with that
bad shoulder, and in that time the brake-
man fever had a chance to recover all
that it had yielded to the heroic treat-
ment of rough experience ; but when I
was again ready to report for work, I
had learned that there is some slight
danger in sleeping while on duty. I
might add that the lesson cost me a
great deal less than it has cost other
people I have known.

Aside from the fact that the" smoky
end is always a hard school, my break-
ing in Avas easy for me — the men made
it so. I had always endeavored to play
fair with every one when I was a clerk.
I had no favorites, and every time I got
a chance to do -a rough-neck a favor, I
was glad to do it ; and I want to say
that those favors were the best invest-
ment I ever made.

When I got out on the road, taking
the ups and downs with the rest of them,
the little things I had done for the boys
kept coming back to me with interest
added, until now I am firmly convinced
that railroad men are the most appre-
ciative in the world. When the bunch
saw me out to make good, firemen, en-
gineers, conductors, and brakemen would
give me suggestions, and often climb
down and help me do my work until I
had learned the ropes and could tell the
difference between a spot sign and a
wash-out signal.

I am firmly convinced that railroad

BEING A BOOMER BRAKEMAN.

305

men, as a rule, never forget a favor, an
opinion which is substantiated by a
thousand and one little incidents which
came to my notice while following the
game up and down the pikes in various
parts of the United States and Mexico.
I first began to notice it when Engineer
Walcott escaped the wreck on 34. The
section foreman who pre-
vented that accident went
down on Riley's friendship
tablet in letters of gold.

After that day, Riley
never passed that .section
but he whistled a welcome ;
and it was through the engi-
neer that the section foreman
was finally given a little trip
East — a month's vacation on
full pay and transportation
over half the continent. I
am reminded of a more per-
sonal case which illustrates
the point.

When I was still a train-
master's clerk, one morning
a fellow came drifting into
the office and asked for a
job braking. He looked as
if he needed a job, and he
talked as if he wanted one ;
and although the extra board
was full at that time, I
stretched it a point and put
him on.

He had a stinger's card
and good service letters ; and
when 1 put him on the board,
I didn't think of it as a
favor to him at all. He was
called that very night for a x WAS

local turn - around, and less
than twenty-four hours- later
I helped the boys take him off of
Thomas's caboose and carry him into the
emergency ward of the local hospital. -

In putting a couple of cars of coal
on the chutes at a little station up the
line, he had fallen between the cars, and
one foot was so badly smashed that am-
putation was necessary. Almost four
years later, I — broke, hungry, and out
of a job — met him again in El Paso,
Texas.

I was running awful light, making
slow time, with no provision in the
schedule for meal stops. Sam — we'll
8 R R

call him Sam for short — had just
been before a Texas court to let twelve
men decide what that leg wras worth, and
he had cashed the member for a little
over five thousand dollars. I was standi
ing in a cafe, making eyes at the free
lunch, when in walked Sam, his wooden
leg beating a lamentable tune and re-

STANDING IN A CAFE, MAKING EYES AT THE
FREE LUNCH.

minding me of that night when I last
saw him.

He knew me in a minute. I was
standing there looking like a caboose
after a rear-end collision and feeling
Avorse; I was all to the rip track. He
saw me and flagged me ; asked me how
I was running ; and when I told him
that I wasn't pulling tonnage, that my
flue-sheet was leaking, that I hadn't been
able to meet myself at the meal table
for two weeks, he gave me the spot sign,
and we went over in a corner and sat
down.

306

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

To make the story short, Sam re-
marked that he would like the oppor-
tunity to break even with me on that
little favor I once did him out on the
Arizona In and Out, when I gave him
a job, and with no further remarks
handed me five of the biggest five-dol-
lar bills I ever saw. They looked like
circus posters/ That little favor I did
him had cost him a leg, but he didn't
figure it that way.

After I got out on the road, braking,
a full-fledged stinger, I never allowed
myself to forget the grind which the
railroad clerk is up against when he goes
down on the salary-list. I ground away

there for about fourteen hours a day for
my monthly insult, kept all kinds of
hours, and about every month I would
decide that it was the call of the stock-
car or the empty refer for me, and away.
The railroad clerk of to-day is the
hardest worked, poorest paid man in the
employment of a great system, and in
more offices than one there are sixty-
dollar clerks with six - thousand - dollar
responsibility. I've long since decided
that when I am made general manager
of the In and Out, the first official move
I make will be to raise the pay of every
office-man on the system at least one
hundred per cent.

In the December issue, Mr. Herr's hero will tell why he decided to "break out" of
the game.

INVENTING AS AN OCCUPATION.

FROM time to "time our mail brings a
woful tale from a disappointed inven-
tor who has devoted a number of years and
considerable money to the perfecting of
some device which the world has not duly
appreciated, says Machinery. Many inven-
tors spend years on the development of an
idea which to them appears to be of great
value. Often, too, they sacrifice the employ-
ment by which they earn their daily bread.

It is but natural that the inventor who has
thus devoted his time and perhaps all of his
savings to the development of a new idea,
should be discouraged when he finds that
he can realize little or no returns from his
invention. As a rule, he thinks that he has
been unjustly treated by those to whom he
has submitted his idea, and often regards
the manufacturer as an enemy because the
compensation offered is, from his point of
view, inadequate.

In many cases the inventor sees from one
view-point only. He has not the advantage
of wide experience-, and knows little or noth-
ing of the costly organization necessary for
marketing goods.

Inventing should seldom be considered as
an occupation to which a man can profitably
devote all his time, except in cases where the
inventor's genius is of an extraordinary
degree.

The inventors who succeed as a rule re-
tain emplo3'ment in regular occupations
while they perfect their inventions during
spare time, the inventions being incidents
in their regular occupations, or by-products,
a? it were.

When an inventor works under such con-
ditions he is more likely to correctly esti-
mate the value of his inventions, and not
be bitterly disappointed because his inventive
genius is not highly appreciated.

A man who has true inventive genius can-
not help being an inventor, but he should
avoid living in expectation that one brilliant
idea will make his fortune and enable him
to live ever after free from all pecuniary
cares.

The hope of " striking it rich " is a com-
mon fault of many inventors. If they must
invent, let them content themselves with
moderate returns for their ideas, placing
each in the best market possible, but not
feeling disappointed if a large fortune is
not realized from an idea that to the in-
ventor seems very valuable.
- Advice is cheap, and is generally disre-
garded bj- those who could best profit by it.
But, notwithstanding, we cannot help sug-
gesting that inventors of ordinary* ability
should retain their regular occupations while
developing their ideas. They will be happier
and their chances for success will be greater
than if they give up profitable occupations,
hoping to produce something which will
make a large fortune.

The trouble is that inventors, as a class,
are a somewhat irresponsible lot, to whom
a steady job is distasteful. Steadiness of
character and genius are rarely found com-
bined in the same individual, and, doubtless
much that has been said here will be of
little value to the class most in need of
advice.

Roll-Gall of Veterans.

Some Are Still on the Main Line, Some Are Resting on Sidings, and

Some Have Passed the Home Signal and Got

Their Clearance.

OLD EMPIRE STATE DRIVER.

Canfield Pulled the Noted Flier Over Her

First Run and Many Runs

Afterward.

A FAMOUS New York Central" veteran
was William Augustus Canfield. He
ran the first Empire State Express out of"
New York, and he hela the run until his.
retirement, ten years ago.

Mr. Canfield ran an engine on the Central
for thirty-five years. He was chief engineer
of the Vanderbilt Division of the Brother-
hood of Locomotive Engineers. Since his
retirement he has been employed in the
Bronx Park, New York City.

At the age of sixty-two, some months
ago, a stroke of apoplexy took the old
veteran out over the Long Division.

CONSTRUCTION VETERAN.

Brown, a Maker of Ways, in East and West,

Has Hit Out on the Unsurveyed

Trail.

A PIONEER railroad builder, both in
Eastern and Western States, Joseph
I'". Brown, passed away at Atchison some
months ago. Mr. Brown was a native of
Ireland. He was a member of a surveying

party on the Pennsylvania between Pitts-
burgh and Greensburg.

He was also one of the contractors in
some of the Baltimore and Ohio construc-
tion of later, times, having, in 1853, a grad-
ing contract on that line..

He was prominent in building the St.
Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern be-
tween St. Louis and Pilot Knob, Missouri,
and he also helped to build the Central
Branch of the Missouri Pacific in 1858. He
was eighty years of age when he died.

A PROMINENT AGENT.

Carelton, of the New Haven, Is High in the
Councils of His Order and the Con-
fidence of His Road.

WILLIAM D. CARELTON, agent of the
New York, New Plaven and Hartford
at North Plymouth, Massachusetts, has
crowded a wide railroad experience into
half a century of life. Besides other dis-
tinctions, Mr. Carelton is the grand secre-
tary of organization of the Order of Rail-
road Station Agents, as well as being one
of the charter members.

His first railroad experience was as an
operator at Norway, Maine, on the Grand
Trunk, and afterwards for the same com-
pany at Milan, New Plampshire. About
that time the young men of New England
were more or less subject to the "Western"

307

308

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

fever, and young Carelton drifted out with
the westward tide.

His first position was on the Peoria, De-
catur and Evansville Railroad, at West
Salem, Illinois. Going farther west, he
next landed at Venita, Indian Territory, and
worked there as an operator, migrating
from there to Versailles, Missouri, where
he became station-agent for the Missouri
Pacific.

About three years later he returned East,
bringing with him something he did not
take out, namely, a family. He joined the
Old Colony road, now a part of the New
Haven, and has been with the company ever
since.

JUST MISSED PENSION.

Turner, of Illinois Central, Passed Away a

Few Days Before Reaching

Retiring Age.

A VETERAN of the Illinois Central,
Ezra Turner, of Galena, Illinois,
died a few weeks ago, practically within a
few days of achieving the age for retire-
ment, and after being with the company for
over forty-five years. Mr. Turner was born
in Maine, but his parents settled at Nora,
Illinois, when he was seventeen years old.

He entered the employ of the Illinois
Central in 1863, and with the exception of
a short period during the Civil War, he had
been with the road ever since. Preparations
were just being made for his retirement and
the celebration of his golden wedding, and a
new house was being built for the celebra-
tion of the double event. He was suddenly
taken ill after doing his usual day's work
and died in a few minutes.

OLDEST WOMAN OPERATOR

Mrs. Harriet C. Williams Retires After Over
Half a Century of Memorable Serv-
ice on the Wire.

THE oldest woman telegrapher in the
United States, perhaps in the world,
Mrs. Harriet C. Williams, resigned last July,
after forty-two years of continuous service,
and a total service of over fifty years. Mrs.
Williams has held down the post of man-
ager, operator, and messenger at Norwich,
New York, on and off, since 1854.

One of her earliest recollections is of
sending the returns in the election of James
Buchanan, also the news of the firing on
Fort Sumter, and the battle of Bull Run.

She also telegraphed for lumber to build
barracks for troops quartered at Hamilton.
Mrs. Williams is now seventy-three years
old. She has suffered for some time with
rheumatism in the hands, and this, with her
advanced age, has necessitated her retire-
ment.

C. E. BROWN RESIGNS.

Veteran Accountant of the Pennsylvania is

Placed on Retired List Because of

Failing Sight.

AN event of considerable importance in
- the accounting department of the
Pennsylvania, at Philadelphia, was the resig-
nation of Charles E- Brown, a few months
ago. Mr. Brown has been successively with
the engineering, transportation, and account-
ing departments of the Pennsylvania for
over forty-two years. He was taken from
the active list at his own request owing to
his failing sight.

Mr. Brown is a brother of W. H. Brown,
formerly chief engineer of the road, and of
Theodore F. Brown, assistant auditor of the
Union Line in Pittsburgh. He is a veteran
of the Civil War. Prior to his removal to
Philadelphia Mr. Brown was stationed at
Pittsburgh, and his name is known all over
the Pennsylvania Railroad system.

OLDEST SUPERVISOR.

Cullen Was the Dean of His Grade on the

Pennsylvania Among Employees and

Past Employees.

JAMES CULLEN, who was reported to
be the oldest past or present supervisor
on the Pennsylvania system, died a few
weeks ago at the age of ninety years. Ac-
cording to the Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
Patriot, Mr. Cullen was not only the oldest
supervisor, but was the oldest railroad man
of any grade between Harrisburg and Al-
toona, and the oldest member of the Veteran
Employees' Association of the Middle Di-
vision.

Mr. Cullen was born in Ireland in 1819.
He came to this country in the early forties
and began railroading on the Philadelphia
and Reading.

He stayed in this employment until 1856,
when he took service with a construction
contractor on the Pennsylvania. Soon after
he was. taken into the force of the railroad
as an assistant foreman of subdivision. He
held his last position of supervisor from
i860 until 1899, when he retired.

TREASURE OF THE WORLD

BY STEPHEN CHALMERS,

Author of "The Cataclysm," "A Daughter of the Armada," etc.

Pigs Inhabit a Treasure-Chamber and
a Queen Comes to a House of Gold.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

PHILIP SAND, being informed that he has a year before tuberculosis will claim him
as a victim, -prepares to get the best out of the time. Being financially ruined, he
raises ten thousand dollars on his life-insurance policy of fifty thousand from a money-
lender named Merton Scraggs, who opens up on the comfortable promise that Sand will
not be living that day a year. He charters a yacht to go treasure-hunting, sends the
yacht ahead, and himself goes down on the regular liner for Panama. On board he meets
Miss Verina Harding. They are wrecked.

CHAPTER V.

The Irony of Fate.

UEER it is to think of a
man down under the
sea, laughing! Yet that
is what Philip Sand
was doing as the great
waters closed in around
him and he felt himself being drawn
deeper and deeper in the booming dark-
ness. He was smiling broadly at his
own thoughts.

The main thing that occurred to him
in an amusing way was the luck of Mer-
ton Scraggs. At the very outset of af-
fairs the old skinflint was likely to reap
his one hundred and fifty per cent.

Dr. Lauriston also flashed before
Philip's alert faculties. Another proph-
ecy gone wrong — at Least, the spirit of
it. He wondered, as he whirled about in
the breathless undertow, how many doc-
tors' prophecies went wrong in similar
fashion?

It proved to Philip that he was quite
right not to have taken Lauriston's ear-
nest advice that he go to a sanatorium
and " take the cure " in a reclining chair
for a year. Life had seemed such a
chancy thing to Philip just then. What

Began in the October Railroad Man'

was the use of going to a sanatorium to
be cured when, the cure effected, the
patient might meet a speeding automo-
bile, or be killed in the very train that
was taking him back to life and useful-
ness.

Fate, however, was on the side of
Lauriston this time. Fate was not going
to upset this particular prophecy of the
gloomy doctor. Philip was to be re-
served for his just deserts at the ap-
pointed time. For the present, Fate
merely whirled the young man around
in the sea for a prolonged half minute,
then brought him to the surface.

Philip could swim. The first thing
he became cognizant of was the cold air
blowing upon his wet face. Then his
opened eyes were attracted by a streak
of light which flashed up occasionally
between the waves. Dawn was breaking
in the east.

Either the steamer had foundered or
her lights had gone out, for around the
swimmer darkness was upon the face of
the waters. He could see nothing ; but
he could hear a great deal — the roaring
of the sea breaking over rocks with a
broad snarling — " A-a-a-ah ! " And once
he thought he heard a long, gurgling cry.

At intervals he collided with floating
objects in the water. One of these Philip

Magazine. Single Copies, 10 cents.

309

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

cized, hoping to find a spar or a life-
buoy; but it proved to be a man, who
attempted to seize him.

Philip wriggled free. He was willing
to help, but not to sacrifice his life use-
lessly.

" Lay one of your hands on my shoul-
der ! " he shouted above the storm.

There was no answer. He swam for-
ward a few strokes,- to right and left,
hoping to find the drowning man again;
but, apparently, he had gone down.

Once again Philip thought he heard
a cry, and a second later he heard voices
raised in loud talk.

" They must be in a boat," he reflect-
ed, and next moment he hailed as loudly
as his almost exhausted lungs would let
him.

No response came, although Philip
still heard the voices. They were pres-
ently lost, and silence reigned upon the
ocean save for the snarling of the break-
ers and the melancholy dirge of the wind.

Then a feeling of desperation seized
him. He was alone on the sea. It was
still too dark for him to see any dis-
tance around him. He might be near
land, or he might be twenty miles from
it. Twenty miles ! Even the possibility
of five staggered his brain.

He struck out in the direction of the
dawn, keeping the reef to his right.
Perhaps the island was behind the reef.
It was his only chance. He could have
swam to the reef easily enough, but that
would be courting death.

All at once Philip Sand had forgotten
his deep - sea amusement, and life was
the most precious thing in the world.
His whole faculties were centered on that
one thing — life — and he meant to give it
up hard.

His arms were aching, and his breath
was jerky and short. It flashed into his
mind that he had a poor pair of lungs
for such a strenuous battle, but still he
was not discouraged. He would fight
for life to the last heart-flutter ; and
there in the roaring sea, as he struggled
against terrific odds, it seemed to him
that Merton Scraggs was whispering in
his ear :

" Life is sweet,
me."

Slowly the light
A little to the riarht

Mr. Sand — even to

in the east spread,
ahead of the swim-

mer, arose a low cloud. Was it a cloud?
It might be land, but it was as yet too
dim and shapeless for the .eye to deter-
mine.

Like a man clutching at a straw, he
swam toward it, wildly at first ; but
presently he steadied his stroke, for there
might be a chance, and he must conserve
his forces.

It seemed fully an hour before the
light convinced him that it was land.
In reality it was about ten minutes be-
fore the cloud took the shape of a soft
round hill, whose base was clustered with
trees and palms. It was like some dim
oasis in a desert of water, and across it
lay fine strata of mist.

By this time Philip was in the last
stages of exhaustion. He was seized
with an irresistible desire to cough. He
did, and swallowed a mouthful of salt
water that irritated his throat and lungs
still more.

• He raised himself in the sea and trod
water until the paroxysm had passed.
Then he swam again, a hard smile on
his face. That was the fatal cough.
Below were the fatal waters. Yet he
would fight.

" Life is sweet, Mr. Sand^ — even to
me."

The shore came nearer. Presently the
tumbling sea became quieter and seemed
to breathe mightily but steadily. If he
could only last five minutes longer, he
would be safe.

But his arms refused to obey his will.
His strokes became feebler, shorter, and
slower. He felt his body sinking lower
in the water. Several times he lifted
himself in an effort to keep his nostrils
above the surface. No longer were his
limbs moving in accord. They were
feebly swaying, independently of brain
control.

A mist began to gather before his eyes.
He fought it off and struggled forward.
Again the mist, and now a fog in his
throat. Then he was choking, with his
lungs full of salt water. He felt his
brain reel and his whole being sink into
red blankness.

The last thing he knew was being lift-
ed, as it seemed, on the wings of the
wind, carried up to a great height, and
flung down — down — down ! Then his
body struck against something. Again

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

311

he was being lifted up, and again he was
flung violently to earth.

" I've been washed ashore," he reflect-,
ed semiconsciously. "I'll be all right
if I don't die of exhaustion. "-

Then he fell asleep.

Philip next felt very uncomfortable.
His nostrils were filled with the stench
of sun - baked seaweed. His back was
very hot, and his feet very cold. Also,
there was a continuous rustling around
him, and things ran across his face.

He opened his eyes and promptly shut
them again. The sunlight hurt. In a
little while he became used to the strong
light. Then he sat up, stiffly, and looked
around.

He was lying on a beach, with the sea
lapping around his feet, and sometimes
driving foam right up to his waist.
About fifty yards up the white beach
there was a long fringe of coco-palms,
ending in a pile of rocks to the east, and
another pile to the west. That was all
he could see of the land to which he had
been washed.

He looked out to the sea, and then his
memory returned in full force. The
Revuelan had apparently gone down, for
there was not a sign of her. He looked
over the face of the ocean, then his eyes
jroved the length of the beach. There
was a quantity of wreckage at the tide-
mark, but not a sign of a human being.

Was he the sole survivor? It looked
so. All at once Philip's heart and mind
were clouded by a great sorrow. All at
once the ship's company seemed to pa-
rade before his inner sight. They were
all drowned — the complacent Captain
Rodgers, the asthmatic planter who
would no longer worry over the tariff ;
the voluble " Cattle Prince," and the
quiet Englishman who found his ideas
" most interesting." The pitiful Higgs
was drowned, too ; and poor little, old
Miss Sharpe, who would never ' again
Utter her prim, reproachful — " Verina!"
Yes, and Verina was drowned, too.
It seemed impossible that that beautiful
creation of God should be as — should be
as dead as Higgs. It did not seem fair,
Somehow, that they should suffer a com-
mon fate. Yet it seemed true enough
that drowning had been the common fate
of all but Philip Sand.

" The ways of God are inscrutable,"

said Philip to himself, with a queer
laugh.

He was thinking of all that ship's
company gone to death, and he alone —
Philip of the mortgaged life — the sur-
vivor.

' By and by he arose and staggered,
rather than walked, to the fringe of,
trees. Again he sat down, this time with
his head and shoulders in the shade of
a coco-palm and his legs in the sun-
light, that they might dry.

Where was he, anyway? It was all
so new to him. The sand of the beach
was unlike anything he had ever seen.
There were brilliantly colored lizards
and queer-looking crabs running about.
The inshore waters were a beautiful
opal shade. Farther out, the sea was
green ; then indigo-blue, and close to the
shore it curled its lips and showed start-
lingly white teeth.

He looked up at the tree above him.
Its slender stem arose and curved out-
ward without a break or a branch until
the crest was reached. There it burst
out in a great rosette, in the heart of
which were clusters of big, shiny, green
globes.

" Coconuts," thought Philip.
The breeze rustled through the palms,
and presently a big, dried nut fell at his
feet with a startling thud. He drew a
penknife from his pocket and tried to
cut the husk off, but it was too hard.

" Perhaps I could get a green one,"
said Philip to himself.

He got up and walked with difficulty
along the fringe of" palms. Presently
he found, as he had expected, a green
nut which had yielded to the previous
night's storm. This nut he pared at one
end with his penknife. Presently the
nut gave a hiss, and a little spurt of
fluid came from it. The knife had
reached the soft, half-formed inner shell
and pierced it.

He put the little hole to his lips and
drank. The milk was sweet and fresh,
and almost as if it had been carbonated.
It -contained an amazing amount of fluid.
The first thing to do was to find out,
if possible, where he was. He remem-
bered the captain's chart of the day be-
fore, and tried to trace the probable
course of the vessel. The gale had been
from the northwest.

312

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Castle Island light had not been sight-
ed on the port side. Probably the Re-
vuelan had gone out of her course to the
southeast before the northwest blast. In
that case, Castle Island light might have
been lost to starboard.

If that surmise were correct; then this
island was probably one of the Inaguas,
which had appeared to the southeast of
Castle Island. It might even be one of
the Turks Islands, if by chance the Re-
vuelan had escaped grounding on one of
the greater islands.

Philip remembered the soft, rounded
hill in the center of the island, as he had
seen it in that terrible dawn when every-
thing had been indelibly stamped on his
senses. He entered the fringe of vege-
tation and struck inward and upward at
right angles from the beach.

In about half an hour he came out of
the belt of jungle and found himself
upon a gentle decline. It was the Kill,
It was bare of vegetation, save for a
hardy form of wiry grass. Rocks were
numerous, and sometimes he had to
clamber up a steep bluff; but the hill
was low, and in a short time he stood on
the summit and looked around him.

He could see the ocean on all sides.
The first thing that attracted his atten-
tion was a brown, sandy-looking island
about five miles to the east of the one he
was on. Presently he descried other is-
lands -farther off. In fact, the entire
horizon was broken by the crooked out-
lines of barren, sandy islets.

His own island differed from all the
others in that it had a belt of luxuriant
foliage all around it. Through this, at
intervals, he caught a glimpse of the
white beach and the breakers. So far as
he could make out from the hilltop,
there were no houses, no sign of human
beings or human habitation.

His expedition had cheered him.
That his island was not remote, and was
one of a group not a hundred miles from
the regular track of West Indian and
South American steamers, was a consola-
tion.

It even was possible, too, that the Re-
vuelan's company was scattered over
these islands. He remembered that
there had been at least one boat launched
before the steamer foundered, for he
had heard the voices in the darkness.

People struggling for life in the sea
would hardly* have carried on a lengthy
conversation.

" The next thing," said "Philip, ad-
dressing himself, "is to find a shelter
for the night."

He descended the hill by the way that
be had come. Passing through the belt
of jungle, he curiously examined many
strange trees. There were many bril-
liantly colored but oddly shaped fruits,
none of which he cared to sample.

If he had only known that the big,
green cannon-balls which he turned over
so curiously were breadfruit ; had he
known that the sticky, turpentine smell-
ing, oval apples which strewed the
ground were mangoes, or that the yellow,
cheesy - odored things were exquisite
cashews, he might have worried less
about starvation.

As it was, he decided to confine him-
self to coconuts, of which there were
plenty.

Philip, in his meanderings, was sud-
denly startled by a grunt, followed by
a tremendous scurrying in the under-
growth. Next moment a number of
small - sized black animals dashed past
him, scattering in all directions.

" Pigs ! " said Philip, tempted to
laugh. " I wonder where they came
from? "

It did not occur to him to reason the
presence of pigs on the island. He was
only wondering whe/e so many of them
had suddenly appeared from. He
pushed his way into the brush whence the
pigs had rushed, and presently came to
a face of rock with a large hole in it.

" Looks like a cave," said Philip.
" Good J There won't be any room for
the pigs to-night."

He walked into the cave. For a min-
ute his eyes, now grown used to the
light, could see nothing in the dimness ;
but gradually he made out that it was
quite a comfortable place, only it smelt
abominably of pigs. It was perfectly
dry and —

Philip stumbled over an obstacle. He
caught himself up and bent to examine
it with his hands. It was square. He
tried to move it. He succeeded toler-
ably, but it was as heavy as lead.

" That's funny. Pigs don't have
trunks ! " he exclaimed.

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

313

He looked around the cave again. His
'eyes, becoming more used to the dimness,
made out other queer things about the
cave. At the further end there was what
seemed to be a wall built of bricks.
He went forward and examined the wall.
Then he stood perfectly still. Absolute
silence reigned.

Presently he made a queer, cackling
sound in his throat. He turned on his
heel and walked out into the open. He
staggered slightly, then fell on the grass.

A moment later that part of the is-
land was ringing with shrieks of almost
insane laughter. The circumstance —
the irony of the circumstance— was too
much for the son of Philander Sand.

Philip Sand, who had hired a steam-
yacht to" hunt for treasure, had been
wrecked on the Caicos Islands, and
about the first thing he had stumbled
upon was the pirate's 'cache.

CHAPTER VI.

Treasure and Pork.

A INHERE was something more than
-*- mirth in Philip Sand's laughter.
There was a bitterness — a regret over
the absolute futility of human achieve-
ment. His treasure - story, too, had
fallen to pieces ; or, rather, it had
reached an anticlimax. Anticipation
was gone, and the realization had fallen
flat. He had found the treasure at the
first move, instead of after divers ad-
ventures and hairbreadth escapes, as is
right and proper in a treasure-hunt.

But his sense of the ridiculous saved
the situation ; and the situation was ex-
tremely ridiculous. He was staggered
by its funny side. Pigs sleeping on sil-
ver plate and golden ingots ; reveling,
perhaps, among pearl necklaces and
other baubles of worldly worth ; scratch-
ing their backs against golden images.

" The husks that the swine did eat,"
quoth Philip, humorously, and then he
rolled over and laughed again. -

He had only taken a cursory glance
at the store of wealth, but he had dis-
covered enough treasure to suggest that
the boxes contained twice the visible
value.

True, he could pay off the mortgage
on his life. But if Lauriston's predic-

tion had been right — and it did seem as
if Philip were reserved for some partic-
ular fate, he would be a dead man in a
year, and the Spanish treasure would be
as useful to him as it was to — to Gibby's
father or to the pigs.

" I can scratch my back on it, any-
way," chuckled Philip, almost hysteri-
cally. " Gibby's father can't do that."

For about two hours he sat before the
mouth of the cave,' gradually recovering
his sober senses and marveling over the
business. Here he was on a desert is-
land— a beautiful little island — and ap-
parently it was all his.

He had enough to drink, and the
problem of eatables would probably
solve itself on the morrow ; and he was
also sole owner, by right of discovery,
of a treasure which, on its face, was
worth at least a million dollars. What
a funny thing life was !

As he thought it over — the coconuts,
the queer fruits, the pigs, and the treas-
ure— it became clear to him that the is-
land had been a favorite resort of certain
persons at some time or other. Probably
it was the pirates who brought the fruit-
tree plants and the original pair of pigs,
just as they had brought the treasure.

Philip was wrong in this theory. There
were no mangoes or breadfruit in the
West Indies in the days of the pirates'.

But, even if he were rescued, what
good would this treasure be to him if
he could not live a year? At present he
had his yacht and sufficient funds to
keep him through the year. To a man
who loved fast and high living, the treas-
ure might be a handy asset ; but to Philip
Sand it meant nothing, worse than noth-
ing.

He might await the rescuing steamer
and present the treasure to the rescuer,
or to charity, but the commercial in-
stinct of the late Philander Sand arose in
arms at the thought. And in Philip
Sand, too, although he did not admit it
to himself, there was still a great deal of
red blood and human instinct.

It was the problem of the fifty thou-
sand dollars over again. He hated to
leave an unearned fortune to an unde-
serving heir, or to some one for whom
he had not the slightest affection. It
was his treasure, yet what was" he to do
with it?

314

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" That coconut water is refreshing,"
reflected Philip,- apropos of nothing,
" but I would like a steak at this par-
ticular juncture."

Captain Pearce, in the meantime,
would be waiting and waiting at Colon
for the Latin-American steamship Re-
vuelan, which never arrived. What
would Pearce do with the yacht when it
was reported that the Revuelan went
down? Pearce himself had caught the
treasure fever. He had shown most de-'
cided symptoms of it when he could not
keep his own counsel.

Perhaps Pearce would set sail for the
Cocos Islands, not knowing that the
" differing information " which Philip
had in his breast-pocket placed the treas-
ure in a diagonally opposite direction.

It amused Philip Sand, in an ironic
way, to think of Pearce sailing off on
the long voyage through the Strait of
Magellan and northward to the Cocos,
when the treasure lay only a few hun-
dred miles from Colon, and Mr. Philip
Sand was at that moment sitting on
guard over that treasure, shooing pigs
off it.

Laughing inwardly, Philip drew the
damp log-book leaf from his pocket,
ripped off the oilskin covering, and dis-
covered that the sea-water had utterly
obliterated the legibility of the ancient
mariner's entry.

" And I alone know," said Philip,
suddenly solemn.

He pitched away the worthless paper.
It had been all that remained of that
old captain and Gibby's father and
Gibby himself. Now, they were dead — ■
and buried. Their identity had been ob-
literated by the sea, and no man wc"-:Ld
ever know that they had lived, or know
that the treasure was on the Caicos, and
not on the Cocos.

There came a grunting from the un-
derbrush.

"Get away, you brute!" shouted
Philip. Again there was a hasty flight
of pigs.

Philip listened until the sound died
away, then he cackled softly to himself.

" The pigs want to sleep," he reflected
with the inconsequentiality of exhaustion.
" I wonder did they ever realize what
they were sleeping on?"

The suggestion of disturbed repose

made Philip aware that he himself had
had a hard day, that it was quite dark,
and that he might as well rest. He en-
tered the cave again. It was utterly
black inside ; but the air, despite its
farmyard odor, was warm.

Philip felt quite grateful to the pigs.
even, for the homelike atmosphere of
the place. He managed to make a bed
out of two boxes, and presently he
stretched himself out for repose.

He did not sleep much for several
hours'. - The pigs had to be shooed away
every half-hour, and in the intervals
Philip composed himself by dreaming.
This is one way of going to sleep — to
imagine grotesque dream things.

Philip imagined that he would keep
the secret of the treasure. Before his
year was up he would make a regular
chart, leaving out names. And he would
make a document full of crosses, mys-
terious marks, and directions for pacing,
etc., so that some other adventure-loving
party would have more joy out of the
search for and discovery of that treas-
ure than he had had himself.

He finally grew tired of being dis-
turbed by the oncoming pigs just as he
•was about to dream himself into uncon-
sciousness. After one more frantic rout-
ing of the swine, he settled down for the
night and fell asleep just at the point
where a man with knives stuck in his belt
was making a line with his hand from
the shadow of the point of rocks at pre-
cisely 4 P.M.

Philip was awakened about sunrise by
stertorous snoring all around him. He
sat up, dazed. Opposite him was a wall
of bricks, the lower part of which was
deeply scored and of a glittering yellow.
Then he remembered the treasure and
where he was.

But the snoring ! The light was dim
in the cave, but he could make out long,
black bodies stretched in -slumber all
about him. The .air, too, breathed of an
overfilled lodging-house that has not been
aired for a month- or two.

He shot out his foot at one adjacent
lodger who was sonorously offending.
The lodger gave a wild squeal. Next
moment the cave was filled with snort-
ing, squealing, and rushing. Two pigs
■had got in, after all, and had slumbered
peacefully all night by his side.

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

315

The incident amused the castaway,
and so his day began with lightheaded-
ness ; but it was only after the noise of
the retreating pigs had died into the dis-
tance that a very practical thought oc-
curred. He suddenly felt the gnawing
hunger of a man who has slept soundly
upon an empty stomach.

All at once he realized what a fool he
had been to let the pigs get away so
easily. He might have knocked one of
them over the head while it slept beside
him. Yet the thought had not occurred
while the pigs were still snoring, for
there had been the feeling that, after all,
'they were fellow lodgers, and it would
have been unnatural for Philip to think
of assassinating a bedfellow for the sake
of a loin chop.

But he had to eat. His hunger was
of the kind that is not particular as to
the viands, so long as they are eatable,
but it was powerful enough to demand
that the meal be solid and substantial.

" Now, if the pigs would just come
back," said Philip to himself, half un-
consciously picking up a golden ingot.
" I believe I could hit one at close, quar-
ters. A pork chop would taste fine this
morning."

"Just my luck!" laughed Philip.
" If I had been more sociable last night,
one of the pigs might have sacrificed
himself on the altar of man's necessity.
However — "

He drank the contents of two green
coconuts. They filled him, but did not
remove the aching sensation. Before
risking the queer fruits which he had
seen, he sat down to think, while he alle-
viated his pangs with the slimy meat
from the inside of the young_coconut.

There was plenty of pork on the is-
land. In time he might be able to kill
a pig ; but, even if he had one ready to
'hand, it would take him some time to
cut it up and cook a chop. Was there
nothing else that he could get quickly?

In imagination he glanced over a
menu-card. Olives? Yes, olives might
be growing here, only Philip was not
quite sure that he could tell an olive-
tree if he saw one, and he was not sure
that olives were the washed-out green
on the tree that they are in the bottle.
Clams — oysters? Yes, there should be
shell-fish ; but then they might be out of

season, and Philip had no very clear
idea as to where oysters were to be
found.

There was the ocean, and it was full
of fish. Why not catch a fish? Fish
for breakfast !

It was a brilliant idea, but it was like
pork chops for breakfast. How was he
to catch a fish any more than kill an
elusive pig? He had no line, no hook.
He might catch one in the shallows with
his hands, but it was now an hour past
breakfast-time, and he was very hungry.

" Surely, I can find something to
make a hook and line," he said to him-
self. " Among all this truck " — and his
eyes turned to the boxes — " there is
something that might be made use of."

He got a large stone and began to
batter the top of one of the boxes. The
wood was quite rotten, and in a moment
he had the lid off, breaking the hinges
as if they had been soft putty.

Inside the box he found a miscella-
neous^ collection of valuables. There
were strings of coral and strings of
pearls, many elaborate necklaces of vari-
colored stones, and quantities of jeweled
•brooches. The bulk of the stuff in the
first box was made up of little golden
images — crude things with queer heads
and cross-legs.

They reminded Philip of little Indian
gods he had seen in the Metropolitan
Museum. He decided that that was
what they were — Indian gods, probably
stolen by the Spaniards from Incas of
Peru and brought across the isthmus
with the other ill-gotten store, only to
fall into the hands of the first high-sea
marauder.

But he gave little time to dreaming
just then. His hunger was extremely
practical in its demands. He was look-
ing for a hook and line with which to
•catch a fish for breakfast.

He picked up a brooch in which was
set an uncut ruby. It had a stiff pin,
and for a few minutes the hungry man
was busy with a stone, beating the pin
into the semblance of a hook. Succeed-
ing in this, he made a cut near the point
with his knife, so as to give the hook a
clutch should it lodge in the mouth of a
fish. Then he turned in search of a line.

There was a lengthy string of red.
coral which seemed strong enough. To

316

THE RAILROAD MANS MAGAZINE.

this he tied a bit of fine gold link-chain,
and added to the length a kind of hair
rope, which was decorated with strung
pearls.

" That should make a fairly good
fishing - line," said Philip to himself,
holding up the outfit for his own inspec-
tion.

Next he prepared to attach the hook.
He was going to break the brooch off
the bent pin, when he suddenly remem-
bered the love of fish for a bit of color.
He had never fished with a ruby before;
but, if he knew anything about* fishing,
a ruby set in gold should make a pretty
good troll. As he could hardly troll, in
the strict sense, he could try a cast or
two and draw in his brilliant bait slowly.

A few minutes later he had climbed
to the point of the pile of barren rocks.
He cast out his rich line as far as its
weight and length would take it, and
then began slowly to draw it in.

The result was nil. He tried again,
and with the same result.

" There aren't any fish hereabouts," he
said to himself ; and then he laughed,
for it was so like a fisherman at the end
of the first vain five minutes.

At the end of half an hour he was
growing quite disheartened. Also, his
hunger was lowering his optimism.

"I'll try again," said he, as he drew
in the mocking jewel without a catch.
"If there is any virtue in an old saying,
I will catch a whale presently, pickle the
meat, use the blubber-oil for illumina-
tion, make a bow to shoot pigs with out
of the whalebone, convert the — "

He stopped. He had thrown the line;
and as he started to draw it in he felt a
slight jerk, followed by the thick, wavy
motion that thrills the soul of the angler.

"Hear me, ye gods!" cried Philip
jubilantly. " I have caught a fish! "

CHAPTER VII.

The House of Gold.

T^EN minutes later Philip Sand sat in
-*- front of his cave. A fine, whole-
some-looking fish lay on the grass before
him. but the angler was scratching his
head.

" I've caught a fish," said he, as if to
assure himself that that difficulty at least

was solved, " but how the dickens am I
to cook it? "

By this time he was in .a desperate
condition from hunger.

Philip was doing very well as 'an ama-
teur Robinson Crusoe, but the trouble
was that most of his knowledge of pro-
cedure on a desert island was based on
Defoe and Marryat. For five minutes
he had tried in vain to produce fire by
rubbing two sticks together. For ten
minutes he had exercised his penknife
with a piece of stone that looked like
flint, and very likely was not. Then he
cast his mind back to stories of ship-
wrecked mariners.

There was one story in which he re-
called that the castaway made a fire by
gathering some dry leaves together and
setting fire to them with the aid of the
sun and the small end of the telescope.
Philip hadn't a telescope. He hadn't
even a pair of eye-glasses. He had a
box of matches in his pocket, but the
water had touched than and the heads
had come off.

Just at that moment he would willing-
ly have parted with that million-dollar
treasure for just one dry match with
which to make a fire to cook that fish.
He would not have considered the price
a bit too dear, even without a guarantee
that the match wouldn't go out.

He got to thinking of a certain fable,
in which a traveler was dying on the
desert and all he had was a bag of
pearls. The fable told of the man's aw-
ful sufferings and of his feelings ; how
he had gone down on his knees on the
desert and promised the saints that he
would build temples with his precious
pearls, if only a miracle could be
wrought and he could have a teaspoonful
of water and a crust of bread. But the
miracle wasn't wrought, and the traveler
died in fearful agony.

It was a fine story, Philip thought —
a fine parallel. Only the story was a
lie. It had always worried Philip, that
story, because if the man died, how did
the truthful scribe know about that
prayer and the traveler's soulful emo-
tions ?

Anyhow, what had that to do with this
fish.? Philip could not quite recall just
what had started him on that story. Oh,
•yes — It was the uselessness of treasure

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

317

as compared with a little match. But
was that fabulously valuable, man-sought
stuff so useless? Wasn't there a spark of
flame in it — just a spark?

Then Philip smiled — a • broad, satis-
fied smile. He went to the box which
he had opened and turned over its con-
tents until he found what looked like a
very fine white topaz. Presently he
gathered some dry leaves and sticks into
a little pile. Then he sat down and
proceeded to concentrate the sunlight
through the topaz upon the leaves.

The little spot of fire hurt his eyes.
He looked at it so intently that it made
his brain reel, and when he. looked away
for a moment he saw a big black spot
elsewhere.

For fifteen minutes he tried in vain
to make the leaves take fire. The spot
beneath the concentrated ray would
blacken and singe, but would not burst
into flame. Finally, he arose in disgust
and pitched the topaz into the brush.

" The only way to cook that fish," he
said bitterly, " is to lay it out in the
sunshine."

Rendered desperate by hunger and
disappointment, he went off in search of
a coconut. He found one, cut the end
open, and drank the milk. When he
returned to the mouth of the cave he
found the pile of leaves and dry sticks
blazing merrily.

" A watched pot never boils," quoth
Philip, laughing joyously. The ray had
left a spark of fire singeing in the leaves,
and then the breeze had done the rest.

In a short time he was hungrily eating
his fish, which proved to be as delicate a
thing as he had ever tasted.

" And . now," he reflected when his
hunger was partially app.eased, " what
next?"

His first idea was to hunt a pig, but
he reckoned that luncheon would be
about due before he had procured one.
Having proven to himself that the treas-
ure was at least good for catching fish,
he finally decided to spend a few hours
on the rocks. The result was that he
caught another fish ; but, as he felt able
to dispense with a midday meal, he de-
cided to fish on all afternoon.

Toward sunset he caught another, and
with his two fish he spent the rest of the
hours of daylight in making a fire and

cooking. His dinner that night, supple-
mented as it was with coconut milk and
coconut meat for dessert, was a great suc-
cess.

After dinner, Philip was just think-
ing about the joys of the pipe which was
not in his possession, when he noticed the
moon overhead. Previously he had ob-
served that the dusk was rather long.
The knowledge that his evenings — for a
week, at least — would be gladdened by
light, cheered him greatly. He em-
ployed the evening in the construction of
a club, the nature and purpose of which
amused him immensely.

" I wonder," he mused, " if a pig ever
died the glorious death of being hit on
the head with a heathen image of gold
tied on the end of a stick? "

This, indeed, was the form and pur-
pose of the club. Having taken one of
the heaviest of the little Inca gods from
the box, he had tied it to the end of a
stick with a strip of silk which he had
found among the miscellaneous treasure.

" Now, for the pigs ! " laughed Philip,
swinging the club.

He did. not feel any great need of
sleep that night, so he decided to lay in
wait for the pigs, which, he felt sure,
would come back to their lair as soon
as all was quiet.

Philip ensconced himself on a little
platform of ingots and waited expectant-
ly. An hour went past, then another
hour. The moon was shining across the
mouth of the cave, and he could not fail
to see any pig that tried to enter.

It was not until the third hour of his
watch that he heard a grunting in the
brush. The sound came nearer. Pres-
ently there were numerous grunts.

" They're holding a council of war ! "
chuckled the castaway, fingering his
gold-mounted club expectantly.

Whatever the pigs might have been
doing, they seemed very wary of entering
the cave, remembering, no doubt — if a
pig has a memory — that certain strange
things had happened therein during the
last twenty-four hours.

Philip was sitting on the ingots,
fuming over the stupidity of pigs in gen-
eral, when a shadow fell athwart the
cave mouth. He waited for a moment,
and presently a hog stood at the entrance
and grunted a challenge.

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Philip rashly accepted it. He flung
the golden club with all his strength at
the pig, which uttered a defiant squeal
and fled. The club hit the rock buttress
at the left side of the cave, and the
golden image came off the end.

"Now, I've spoiled everything!"
groaned the castaway. " They were just
coming in, and now they won't come
back for a week. What a fool I am !

" I was too eager," he said to himself,
and, sure that there would be no pigs to
disturb his rest, he made the most of that
consolation and went to sleep.

He was right. He had no fellow
lodgers when he awoke in the morning.
Angry at the fulfilment of his own
prophecy, he mended the club' and
widened the breach between himself and
the pigs by a vain pursuit of the whole
drove.

That third day on the island he spent
fishing and cooking. It was the same
on the fourth day and the fifth. Final-
ly, Philip hated the taste, even the
thought, of fish.

"I no sooner catch a fish and cook it
than it is time for me to go catch an-
other and cook it for the next meal."

Thus he summed up his semihumor-
ous situation, and decided that he needed
a change of diet. The fifth night on
the island he heard the pigs grunting
about the mouth of the cave. His first
impulse was to give chase. The call of
a pork chop was strong upon him, but
he remembered the grave consequence of
his earlier rashness and resolutely went
to sleep.

He awoke in the morning with an
idea. It was this. What was keeping
the pigs out of the only place where he
could hope to trap and kill one? Him-
self ! Then he must vacate the prem-
ises in favor of the pigs.

" They are well-bred pigs," said Philip
to himself. " They are used to the par-
lor and resent intrusion. I'll get out
and — call again."

That morning he was lucky with his
jeweled hook and line, and got enough
fish to last him through the day. The
afternoon of that sixth day he spent con-
structing a lean-to of branches in a shel-
tered corner of a rocky bluff. The rock
afforded two walls of his house, and the
rest was merely a matter of one side of

branches ; so that, when finished, his new
residence was a triangular thing, with a
hole at the left, where he. could crawl
in and out.

Philip was 'mightily pleased with him-
self when he went to sleep in his new
house; but in the middle of the night it
began to rain, and, as the lean-to was not
thatched, he was very soon drenched.

" And that's wet, too," said the philo-
sophic castaway as he stumbled through
the darkness in search of the pigs' par-
lor, as he had dubbed the treasure-cave.

" That's one night lost in the cam-
paign against the pigs," he reflected next
morning. "It won't do. It might be
dry for four or five nights, and then I
might be forced back to the cave just as
the pigs were getting over their bashful-
ness." t

That morning, as he was doing his
first fishing for breakfast, a great idea
occurred to him.

" I knew that treasure was good for
something," he said to the sea. " If
Gibby's father et al were able to build a
wall with the gold-bricks, why can't I? "

After he had cooked his "morning's
catch and eaten part of it, he put up the
rest for luncheon and began the execu-
tion of his great scheme. He hoped
that the pigs would not resent the shift-
ing of their parlor decorations, but the
ingots were necessary to the scheme. He
carried them, two at a time, to the cor-
ner of the rocky bluff where the lean-to
was. He took down such of the con-
struction as the rain had not beaten
down. Then he drew two lines, one out
from each face of rock, so that the lines
met.

Next, he laid a foundation of big sil-
ver ingots and built upon them. When
the silver ingots were finished he piled
on the golden ingots until he had a wall
about seven feet high. He had left a
gap for the door and topped it with a
board and two rows of gold-bricks to
bring the top of the erection flush.

The next thing he did was to roof the
top with the branches he had used for
the lean-to. Then he climbed, in a
roundabout way, to the top of the bluff
and dropped down more branches. The
roof he finished off with bits of turf,
which lodged in the crevices as he
dropped them from above.

TREASURE UF THE WORLD.

315

When he had thrown down as much
as the roof of branches could stand,
Philip returned to the beach and came
around to his brick house. He looked
inside at the roof. It was sagging a
little from the weight upon it, but it
seemed solid enough.

" Of course it'll leak," thought Philip ;
" and if it gets soaked with rain, the
whole business might come down on my
head some night ; but a man whose house
is built of golden ingots shouldn't com-
plain about little inconveniences like
that."

He looked at the solid walls of metal,
and for some strange reason he could
not help grinning extensively.

" Behold ! " chuckled Philip. " Solo-
mon in all his glory ! All I need now is
a visit from the Queen of Sheba."

A shadow fell across- the doorway.
The castaway started and spun around
on his heel. Looking in upon him, her
eyes wide with amazement, relief, and
unconcealed joy, was Miss Verina
Harding.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Adventures of Miss Verina.

jy/TISS HARDING and Philip Sand
*-*■*■ stared at one another for a few
seconds. The lady was the first to re-
cover.

" Oh, Mr. Sand," she exclaimed, " I
was never so glad to see any one in my
life!"

" I'll go farther than that. Miss
Harding," said Philip. " I was never
so glad to see a particular any one.
How d'-do! "

Then they stared at one another with
a kind of growing confusion.

"What do you think of my house?"
asked Philip, at loss for a subject. " I
built it myself. It's made of gold, ex-
cept for the interior decorations — arbo-
real, you might say."

She turned her eyes full upon his face,
and into them came a look of sudden
alarm and pity. He laughed.

" No, it's all right, Miss Harding.
Being castaway hasn't robbed me of my
sanity. I mean what I say. These
bricks are made of solid gold. See ! "
And he jabbed on the wall with his pen-

knife, turning up a gleam of yellow.
" It's a treasure some gentlemen left
here about two hundred years ago."

Miss Harding's stare became fixed on
the golden wall. Things were coming
a bit too fast for her. First, she had
seen what looked like a human habita-
tion. She had crept toward it and heard
a man emoting — Scripture, it sounded.

She had looked in and faced the man
whose fate had occupied her thoughts of
late. And now Philip Sand was ex-
plaining that he was not dead, and that
his house was built of gold-bricks with
arboreal interior decorations. If he had
not taken leave of his senses, it seemed
certain to her that she had taken leave of
hers.

Philip suddenly became aware of her
distressed condition. He realized that
all this was news to Miss Harding.

" Oh, pardon me! " he said hurriedly;
" but I am afraid I have forgotten how
to be hospitable. But the pigs, you see,
are bashful — "

He stopped again. Miss Harding's
eyes were filling with tears.

" Upon my word, Miss Harding, I
don't seem able to say anything that will
make you understand. You see, it is
such a queer story; but do let me assure
you that I am quite well — and — and I
hope you are, too. You look wTell."

" It is all~so sudden — and strange,"
she said doubtfully, drawing back
against the wall, which was real enough.

" Of course it is," said Philip. " It's
the oddest thing I ever heard of — or
read. Let me tell you . in a word. I
was washed ashore. I thought all the
rest were drowned. I found this treas-
ure first thing in a cave a little way
from here.

" The cave was full of pigs — that's
what I meant by the pigs — - and they
slept in that cave. Fancy pigs sleeping
on treasure, Miss Harding.

"They bothered me so that I had to
move out and build a house of branches.
The rain came through, so I finally hit
upon the idea of using the gold ingots
of the treasure for bricks. I have just
finished building this house. It isn't
bad, is it?" he concluded lamely.

She continued to regard him with a
confused, puzzled stare. And she had
thought that he was dead. It was over-

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powering to see him standing there in his
golden hut with the irresistible smile
playing about his quiet, refine*d face.
She wanted to do something to express
her feelings. She had a suspicion that
if she did anything she would cry, and
she did not want him to see her crying.

" That's my story," said he. " Now,
you must tell me yours — how you got
ashore, how long you have been here,
how it is I haven't seen you before, and
if there are any others on this island."

" Mine is a queer story, too," said she.
" Yes, there are others on the island."

"Oh!" said Philip. And,, somehow,
he was disappointed. "Tell me?"

She, opened her mouth as if to con-
tinue, but suddenly a strange expression
came over her face. Her lips trembled,
and a lively motion started in her fea-
tures.

" Oh, Heavens ! '\ thought Philip.
" She's going to cry." l

And that was just what Miss Harding
was going to do — and did. She sudden-
ly turned to the wall and laid her face
in her arms. Next moment her shoul-
ders were heaving and shaking, and
Philip could hear her vainly suppressed
sobs.

For an instant he was paralyzed with
embarrassment. He had never had much
to do with women, and was completely
at a loss as to the steps required in the
emergency. His .first impulse was to
put his arms around her and comfort
her, as he had seen grown-up people do
with children. But, then, Miss Harding
was not a child, and at that moment
Philip did not feel particularly grown
up.

Instinct finally took the reins. Philip
stepped up to Miss Harding and laid
his right hand upon her shoulder very
gently.

" Don't mind me, Miss Harding," he
said. " If it does you good, have it out.
You've been through a* lot, I'm sure.
But now you're in good hands — that is
to say, I'll save you all the worry and
discomfort I can. If you think you'd
rather be alone, I'll — I'll go and fish."

She lifted her head quickly and turned
a tear-stained face to him.

" No — don't ! " she managed to say.
" I'll — be all — right — in a minute."

He smiled and stepped out into the

sunlight, feeling instinctively for the
pipe and tobacco which he did not pos-
sess. The circumstances — of the miss-
ing pipe — upset him more than anything
else had done since his arrival on the
island.

He stared at the sea. He had stared
at it a good deal in the -past week, but
now it seemed different. He was trying
to connect that lonely waste with the
idea that Miss Harding was alive — and
was with him. He had connected it so
with Miss Harding's death and absence.

It seemed unreal that she was with
him again. He realized for the first time
— he had refused to consider it before —
how much the girl's actual existence
meant to him. But he was not going to
consider it now in any other way than
that she was alive, and that he was glad
she was alive.

She was the same Miss Harding, only
circumstances were altered. She was as
handsome as ever, as attractive, both
a la Higgs and as she had appealed to
Philip. She was wearing the same
clothes that she had had on that night
when he told the white lie about the
captain on the bridge.

Her gown was soiled and a bit shabby,
but it still set off her wonderful figure.
She was just as beautiful in face, too ;
and, a shade of suffering around her eyes,
a little pallor of the cheeks, and a trem-
ulsusness of her lips did not detract
from that beauty. In fact, these were
hardly blemishes, for they heightened
her feminine appeal, mainly because she
strove hard to hide the appeal.

He wondered Avhere Miss Sharpe was,
and who the others on the island were,
and —

" Mr. Sand," said a voice from the
golden hut.

He turned to the door. She came out
to meet him. Her face bore traces of
recent tears ; but she had downed them,
and she was smiling bravely. She held
out her hand.

" Let us begin over again," she said.
" How do you do, Mr. Sand. I am
very glad that you are alive. Now, tell
me your story over again." s*~

They sat down on the sand together,
and Philip repeated his story — this .time
in detail. He had a way of interpreting
things — the way that his philosophic,

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

321

humorous temperament saw them. Be-
fore he was done she was laughing heart-
ily over his adventures with the pigs and
his trials with the fish and the culinary
department.

" I'm so glad I can cook," said she.
" I would hate to be dependent on your
makeshift cookery."

" Ye-es," said Philip, day-dreaming for
the moment. " You may consider your-
self engaged. Of course, you couldn't
cook much without me to do the fishing.
I have a great ambition to kill a pig ;
but before we make plans for laying up
a store of pickled pork against emer-
gency, I would like to hear your story."

" I am afraidT can't convey a definite
idea of what happened," she said; "but
after I called to you — I meant to warn
you that the ship was aground — I went
on deck. They were lowering the boats,
and in the excitement Miss Sharpe and
I got separated. "-

Philip glanced sideways at Miss Hard-
ing. She had paused, and he could see
that she was mastering her emotion.
Philip concluded at once that it would
be better not to press inquiries after Miss
Sharpe.

" I was the only woman in the boat
they put me into. There were five sai-
lors, and another man who kept very
quiet. I thought it was another of the
crew until he came to the. stern of the
boat and told me that he had come to
take care of me, and that he had had to
slip into the boat unnoticed. It was that
creature Higgs."

" Humph ! " grunted Philip.

" We, hadn't the faintest idea where
we were— at least, I hadn't. The ship
went down and — oh, it was awful ! We
could hear them crying out in the black
sea and — there was a man called out to
us quite near the boat, but they paid no
attention to him."

" I got ashore, though ! " Philip
chuckled to himself.

" The crew rowed away into the storm. -
I don't think they knew where they were
going, but they said they must get clear
of the reef and stand by till morning.
While they were rowing this way and
that, a pair of arms came over the side
of the boat and a man commanded them
to take him in.

" ' I stood by my ship till she went

9 R R

down,' he said in a queer way, ' and
that's as far as a master's duty goes.'

" They pulled him into the boat. I
expected to find that it was Captain
Rodgers, but it was a strange man whom
I had never seen before. He — he had
been drinking, too ; and he swore fright-
fully and paid not the least attention to
me. I made out that he was the cap-
tain, but I could not understand this
until afterward. You need not look so
guilty, Mr. Sand. You did the right
thing."

" That was what / thought," said
Philip readily.

" The man who said he was captain — •
his name was Howells, and he had been
the mate before Captain Rodgers went
overboard — he ordered the men to row
to the east. He said there were lots of
islands about, and they could land on
one as soon as it was daylight.

" When it got light, there were a num-
ber of islands sure enough. We could
see this one, but the boat had traveled
nearer to another island, which is east
of this one. We landed there."

Miss Harding paused. Philip under-
stood that the next part of her story was
not pleasant narrative.

" It is an awful place, that island,"
she said. " It is. all sand and rock. At
one end there is a patch of tangled grass,
which barely covers the sand, and there
are some coconut-palms. We camped
there, and I slept, while most of the men
went off in search of food and water."

Again she paused.

" Yes? " said Philip.

" Only two of them remained — the
captain and the man Higgs. I can't tell ,
you what an obnoxious creature that man
Higgs is. The captain is not a very
pleasant person; but when he sobered
up he kept to himself, and ever since he
has hardly spoken a word. I think he
feels guilty of negligence.

" Higgs told me that it was Mr.
Howell's first ship, and he had lost her
within twelve hours of his taking com-
mand. I can understand how the man
felt when he became sober — and realized.

"And Higgs?" said Philip gently.

" Higgs ! When I awoke he was sit-
ting beside me. He told me that he was
never going to leave me ; that he was
going to protect me. Oh, you cannot

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imagine how odious an unwelcome pro-
tector is to a woman. I would rather
have had the meanest of the sailors —
and they were a poor, ignorant, inoffen-
sive lot — than that man ; but I had to
appear grateful, while I just sickened at
his presence."

" Never mind Mr. Higgs," said Philip
quietly- " He did not offer you any —
that is, he gave his very best imitation
of a gentleman? "

„" Oh, yes; "he— he was very attentive,
but I kept him at a distance. Once —
only once — I told him that I would
rather be left alone, and that the sailors
would do all that I wished."

" All right," said Philip quickly. " So
much for Higgs. You found the ^sailors
— not so bad? "

" Poor fellows," she said. " They
worked hard all day trying to find water
and food. When they didn't, things
looked so black that I do not think they
were even aware of my presence. They
tried to devise a hook and line to fish
with, but they failed.

" We had nothing but rancid coconuts
to eat, and there were a few fresh ones.
The second day they found water, but .
it had a taste of the sea in it and was
not much good, except for cooking. They
cooked shellfish and things, and one of
the men made coconut-oil, which took
away the awful taste of some of the
things we ate. ■ But we managed.

" Things went on like this for several
days. The men were waiting for the
mate to give orders, but he kept to him-
self and walked about the beach like a
crazy man. Finally the men went to him
in a body and said that they ought to
launch the boat and come to this island,
which was quite clear to us. We could
see that it had plenty of trees, and they
said that meant good water. And per-
haps there might be somebody living on
it."

" There was," said Philip, with a
smile.

" The captain agreed. I think he
would have agreed to anything, he was
so dazed. Yesterday the boat was
launched, and we put to sea again. It
was only about five miles ; but it took
us nearly five hours to get here, the cur-
rents were so queer and the sea was

(To be co

heavy. We finally landed about sunset
— last night — and had plenty to eat."

" Eh ! " said Philip. Then he laughed,
and inwardly estimated his Own intelli-
gence.

" Last night," Miss Harding said, " the
man Higgs made me promise that I
would go for a walk this morning. He
told me it was a beautifttL island, and I
must come and see the lovely . woods.
His idea was that_ I should walk with
him. I promised that I would ' go for
a walk,' to get rid of him ; and this
morning, before the others were stirring,
I stole away. And here I am."

" And now that you are here," said
Philip, after a long silence, " I think
you had better remain. You need not
be afraid that I shall be as attentive as
the willing Higgs, but I can assure you
fish for breakfast and a house to live in.
Maybe, in time, we will have pork
chops."

" But — " she said.

" It's all right," said Philip, with
studied indifference. " I'll go back to
my country residence with the pigs.
You can have this summer palace ; but,
if you don't mind, I'll take my meals
here. I am not particular about the
husks, but I draw the line at eating with
the swine."

" Very well," she said. " It is very
kind of you."

" It's the least I can do in return for
my good fortune," said Philip seriously.
" I need not hide from you, Miss Hard-
ing, that your comirfg has brightened the
outlook tremendously. It has been hard
work laughing by myself. Now, we will
try and laugh through things together."

He was standing, bareheaded, before
her as he made this little speech. She
looked up at him at first with the grav-
ity of one who perceived sincerity over-
topping gallantry ; then, with a smile of
gratitude, she held out her hand.

" I won't hide from you, Mr. Sand,
that I am very glad it is you."

Five minutes later Philip Sand was
walking alone toward the camp of the
shipwrecked men, wondering just what
he would do to Mr. Higgs when he
found him, and what effect the treasure
would have upon those "poor, ignorant,
inoffensive " sailors.

ntinued.)

HE HAD A GLIMPSE OF WHAT

LOOKED VERY MUCH

LIKE A MAN.

WHO'S GOT THE TURKEY?

BY PERCY WILSON.

The Eagle Eye and the Head Shack Discover
the Difference Between Lark and Larceny.

'0. 65, the through freight,
west ; Engineer Howland
and Conductor Gillip, lay
in the siding at Welsh
Creek, waiting, for the
Chesapeake Despatch, the
fast freight, to pass east. It was a raw,
drizzly afternoon in late November, and
Skeeter Cook, the front shack, having
dutifully ridden out on the train for the
last fifteen miles, had come ahead to
join the little company in the engine-
cab ; not that he had any particular de-
sire for comradeship, but merely that he
might dry some of the moisture from his
garments and warm his chilled person.

Skeeter was not in a companionable
mood. That morning he notified his
wife that he had secured permission to
be off duty on Thanksgiving Day, that
he might enjoy one of her incomparable
turkey dinners. Mrs. Cook ■ — treasurer
of the Skeeter household, and chairman
of the board as well — had tartly remind-
ed him that he had been bringing her
home very skimpy pay-envelopes for the
past several months, and that, if he ex-
pected the national fowl to grace his
table, he would have to provide it him-
self— or else eat pork.

Being short of funds, and knowing no
kind friend who would donate a bird,

323

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THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Skeeter was the allegory of depression.
His condition was trebly aggravated by
the continued melody from a neighboring
farm building — the angry " gobble, gob-
ble, gobble! " of a disturbed turkey-cock.

" Shut up ! " muttered Skeeter acidly.

"What's the matter, Skeet?" in-
quired the engineer, taking smiling note
of the circumstance. " Don't you like to
hear that turkey's call? It sounds to
me like he was inviting us to dinner,
with Thanksgiving only three days off.
Um-m-m-m ! " The engineer rolled his
eyes and patted himself comfortably in
j^leasant anticipation.

" You shut up, too ! " retorted Skeeter,
scowling. " I reckon I know Thanks-
givin's only three days yet, and Patchen
promised to let me off. But what's the
use? My old woman says- it's hog meat
for me — turkeys is too high. Hog meat
on Thanksgivin' ! "

Howland chuckled. "Too high?" he
repeated, Avinking across at Gillip, who
sat on the fireman's side. " They musi
be roosting on balloons then, Skeet, if
that's your trouble. I swear you'd climb
to the top of a California redwood to
steal one."

"Oh! would I?" retorted Skeeter.
" Would I? If I did, I'd more'n likely
meet you comin' down with it."

This referred to an incident in How-
land's firing days, when, on a marauding
expedition with several others, he was
coming down a tree with a fine bird and
unexpectedly met the legitimate owner,
whom he was compelled to reimburse at
a fancy price. It was a body blow, and
Skeeter permitted himself a grim smile.

" That's right ; tell him about it,
Skeet," urged Gillip. " Ha, ha! That's
one on you, Howland. You'd better at-
tend to your bright-works and let Skeeter
alone. I'd sooner trust him than you,
anyhow, for you've been caught at it, and
I've never heard that Skeeter was."

" I never done it," declared" Skeeter
piously.

" All that I ever did myself," said
Howland, " I did just for the fun of it."

" If I can't buy what I want to eat,"
went on Skeeter, taking a high moral
stand, " I can go hungry. That's me."

" Good' boy ! " said the engineer with
laughing approval. " Never steal be-
cause you're hungry, Skeet. When you

go after the birds just for the fun of it,
it's only a lark; but when you take them
because you need them, it's larceny.
That's the difference."

" I believe you," declared Skeeter.

"Guff!" broke in Gillip. "Neither
of you are any too good to rob a roost.
If I was old man Wentzel back there "
— pointing toward the farm buildings —
" I'd be patrolling that flock with a shot-
gun every night from now till New
Year's."

Skeeter and Howland turned their eyes
in the direction. ".By George!" ex-
claimed Howland, " they're a nice bunch,
aren't they? Does he let them roost there
under the barn bridge?"

" Ah, ha ! " cried Gillip. " You're fig-
uring how to get one, are you? "

Skeeter, who had been eying the fas-
cinating sight greedily, started guiltily at
the question and was about to retort in-
dignantly. Seeing that it was the en-
gineer who had been addressed, he wisely
held his peace.

" No, Gillip," Howland replied, sha-
king his head. " No. My days for such
tricks are over. I'm getting too heavy
to handle myself like I used to. I'm a
down-and-outer, I reckon. Those were
good old days, though," he added regret-
fully.

" There comes the ' Peake," put in the
heretofore silent fireman. Thus remind-
ing them of their duties, he got-- down to
take a look at his fire. Howland gave a
light burnish to the throttle and the lever
with a handful of waste and tried his
sand.

Gillip pulled out his time-table and
watch and made a mental calculation,
while -Skeeter, buttoning his coat and
turning up the collar against the
.weather, swung down and started toward
the switch.

When he reached the front of the en-
gine he stepped between the rails, where
he could not be observed from the cab,
and looked longingly toward the barn.
How he did hunger for a Thanksgiving
turkey ! Old man Wentzel could easily
spare him one out of that bunch, and
scarcely miss it. But old man Wentzel
didn't know of Skeeter's wants, and the
Despatch rolled by, and Skeeter let his
own train out at the switch and went on
with it.

WHO'S GOT THE TURKEY?

325

Gillip and his crew should have made
their return trip by daylight the follow-
ing day ; but having been held at their
western terminal for freight delayed be-
hind a wreck on the connecting division,
it was almost ten o'clock at night when
they were nearing Bonita,' the passing
siding first west of Welsh Creek.

If the longing of Skeeter for a festal
bird to adorn his Thanksgiving board
suffered any diminution when he realized
how hopeless a prospect it Avas, it became
intensified when he saw that they would
pass through Welsh Creek eastward in
the still hours of the night. The rain
of the previous day had ceased and given
way to colder weather without entirely
clearing ; and when night came on, heavy
clouds obscured the moon.

This, of course, was greatly in Skeeter's
favor ; but what was almost insuperably

against him was the general avoidance
at Welsh Creek siding by east - bound
freights on account of the difficulty in
starting from that point with a heavy
train. If the passing siding next east,
that at Markley, could not be reached, it
was policy to go in at Bonita rather than
run the risk of having to seesaw out of
Welsh Creek hole.

But even this difficulty Skeeter finally
planned to overcome. From the time
they were making, he figured that they
could not reach Markley to clear the
night express, No. 11, and would have
to go in at Bonita. While they were in
there, he designed to arrange a little
" brake trouble " that would act as a
drag when they tried to go up the hill
east of Welsh Creek, and thus compel
them to back to the siding and lie there
for time freight No. 87.

WHEN HOWLAND CAME LUMBERING OVER THE EDGE OF THE CUT, HALF ROLLING AND HALF
SLIDING TO THE BOTTOM, SKEETER WAS WAITING FOR HIM.

526

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

This would give him all the time he
needed; and as a salve to his conscience
for abstracting a turkey from Farmer
Wentzel's flock without- mutual arrange-
ment, he persuaded himself that he would
forward the value of it anonymously
from his next pay — and sincerely hoped
he might succeed.

With everything thus planned, he came
confidently ahead on nearing Bonita to
be ready to open 1he switch. " We can
hardly make Markley, I reckon, How-
land," he heard the conductor say. " Bet-
ter go in here, hadn't we?"

Howland looked at his watch. Skeeter
looked at his. Noting once more that the
time was scant, and knowing the engi-
neer's usual aversion to taking risks, he
was dumfounded to hear Howland re-
ply: "We ought to be able to do it.
We can, if the old boat hangs together.
Let's try."

The lights of Bonita were far to the
rear before Skeeter began to recover
from the effects of this death-blow. Life
seemed a vale of gloom until, turning a
baleful look on Howland, whom he held
to be the cause of all his griefs, he no-
ticed that the engineer was beginning to
act strangely.

Easing his bar ; hanging out the win-
dow ; trying the throttle at various
notches ; listening with sharp ear to
every click of the machinery, all the
while muttering to himself, Howland's
actions indicated that the " old boat "
was not hanging together.

When, turning to the conductor, he
said, " We'll have to go in at Welsh
Creek, Gillip. That right crosshead
key's working loose," Skeeter could
scarcely restrain himself. " Hang it ! I
told Corcoran, when he was putting the
stud-bolt in, that he was stripping the
thread," the engineer went on. " I'm
afraid to hit the hill with it the way it
knocks. Don't you hear it?"

Gillip hadn't heard. The unmention-
able old kettle knocked so unmentionably
all over that he couldn't tell one knock
from another. He supposed he'd have To
take Howland's word. All he knew was
that, at this rate, they wouldn't get home
for a week.

Skeeter, however, came to, the engi-
neer's support with the declaration that
he had been hearing it very distinctly,

and had been on the point of mentioning
it when he saw that Howland heard it,
too. " Pretty bad, ain't it? " asked Skee-
ter.

Howland made no reply. His look
even intimated that he didn't believe
Skeeter knew what he was talking about.
Rut Skeeter did, for he was talking to
get twenty minutes or more in Welsh
Creek siding, regardless of how "It was
brought into effect.

Stopping the train, as soon as the rear
end was well into clear, - Howland
dropped off with hammer and wrench ;
and he was tapping the head of the key,
when Skeeter and Gillip appeared to
learn how long it would take to make
the repair. They could follow No. 1 1
close, Howland said, if Gillip would go
to the telegraph office and get the block
held for them immediately after the ex-
press had passed.

By backing out of the siding and ta-
king that much of a run at the hill, he
thought they should be able to get over
it without having to double. " And you
had better look over your brakes care-
fully, Skeet," he suggested, " for we
don't want to hang up."

At any other time Skeeter would have
retorted that the brakes were all right,
that that was his business, and he at-
tended to it ; that if the air Avas handled
the way it should be, there wouldn't be
any trouble with the brakes. In the pres-
ent instance, however, he merely waited
until the conductor had gone ahead
toward the office, and then started duti-
fully back along the train.

With some concern he noticed that the
sky was growing lighter. With the wind
beginning to sweep the lower, heavier
clouds before it, there was need of haste.
Moreover, as the engine was standing
nearly opposite the barn, every step took
him farther from his point of attack.

When he had gone about seven car-
lengths, he glanced over his shoulder
and, seeing nothing of Howland or his
torch, stepped between two cars and
jerked out his light. Then, looking out,
and still seeing no sign of the engineer,
he hung his lamp on an uncoupling-
lever and stepped down the low bank.

With the sound of his footsteps
drowned by the rustle of the wind
through the dried leaves of the corn, he

WHO'S GOT THE TURKEY?

327

made his way in safety across the field.
Just as he reached the fence separating
the field from the barn enclosure, an edge
of the moon shone out. Quickly he
dropped down.

He was not certain if it were the
passing shadow of a cloud, or, perhaps,
merely his imagination — but he had a
glimpse of what looked very much like a
man crouching close against the side of
the barn bridge.

For nearly a minute, Skeeter remained
there undetermined what to do. Being
loth to give up, now that he was close
to his goal, and the moon being obscured
behind a very large and heavy cloud, he
crept along the fence, and crawling be-
tween the bars, made his 'way cautiously
to the farther side of the bridge.

A glance toward the house showed no
light. A moment's intense listening re-
vealed no distinguishable sound but his
own breathing. Taking fresh courage
he lowered his head and stepped softly
into the pitch-black darkness beneath the
incline.

The pungent aroma that attacked his
nostrils left him in no doubt of having
come to the right place. A fence rail
stretching from wall to wall met his
hand, but as he felt cautiously along it
he experienced something of dismay at
finding it unoccupied. He reached anx-
iously forward and touched another.

His hand was scarcely oar this one
when something like flesh struck his
little finger and immediately another
hand made a sweep at his own. It
brushed his knuckles as he snatched them
away.

It needed nothing more to convince
Skeeter that the form revealeoL crouch-
ing alongside the barn bridge must have
been the farmer, who having seen him
as he came across the field had thus en-
couraged him to ~ walk into the trap and
be caught.

But he was not caught yet, and back-
ing hurriedly into the open as he heard
the other scrambling toward the farther
end, he circled around a wagon-shed,
made a detour to get behind the house,
and raced from there toward the field.

The moon came out before he reached
the fence, and as he crawled beside it,
scarcely daring to breathe and listening
sharply for sounds of pursuit, he saw

that the sky was clearing rapidly. From
the absence of any sound of footsteps
he feared that the farmer, instead of fol-
lowing him, was watching to cut him off.
His safest plan was to follow a -shallow
gully leading eastward of the engine, and
to move only when the moon was ob-
scured.

Three times he Avas compelled to stop
in the shadow of a corn-shock. He was
about to make his last dash for the rail-
road and, crossing it, come around the
farther side to avoid his mates, when he
saw in the beams from the head-light
that Gillip was coming up from the of-
fice.

Changing his course, he ran up the
hill and, as the moon came out once
more, took refuge against a shock al-
most opposite the engine-cab, and about
five yards from the edge of the cut in
which it stood, just in time to see a burly
form stagger out of the moonlight into
the shock next ahead. It was Howland.

It required several seconds for Skeeter
to grasp the situation. When he did, it
was with an outraged feeling of chagrin
and disgust. After all his planning and
trouble, to have no turkey, and all on ac-
count of Howland, was too much.

He'd like to — By cricky ! He won-
dered if Howland had seen him. After
a moment's reflection, he felt assured that
he hadn't ; and the instant there came a
shadow, he darted toward the engine-cab
and slid down the bank.

When Howland came lumbering over
the edge of the cut, half rolling and half
sliding to the bottom, Skeeter was wait-
ing for him.

" You're a nice Christian, you are ! "
he began sarcastically. " You make be-
lieve your engine's broke down, don't
you? But what you're after is turkeys.
I know. Didn't I see you? It's a pity
that farmer didn't—"

"Sh-h-h-h!" warned Howland, puf-
fing and blowing. " Here comes — Gil-
lip. Sh-h-h-h!"

"O-ho!" said Skeeter. "You don't
want him to know, do you? Well, I'm
going to tell him, and — "

" No," urged the engineer. " Don't.
Leave him to me. I'll fix it right with
you."

" I thought I saw you fellows in a
mix-up," said ih? conductor as he came

328

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

closer. " And you're all covered with
dirt, Howland. What have you been
scrapping about now? "

Howland nudged the brakeman to
keep silence. " Just a little friendly
wrestle," he panted. " But say ! " — star-
ing at the article in the conductor's right
hand — "where did you get that?"

"This?" said Gillip, holding up a
young hen turkey. " Old man Wentzel

Skeeter nudged Howland and mo-
tioned to the turkey very significantly.
In fact, it was a threat.

Howland took the hint. ■ " Say, Gil-
lip ! " he asked, " how much will you
take for that? You've got one at home
now. You don't need another."

" Two-fifty," said Gillip.

" Done," said Howland, and the ex-
change was made. Gillip started to
climb up on the engine.

" Here, Skeet," said the engineer loud-
ly ; " here's your bird. You won the bet.
You threw me fair." And, dropping his

"his whole flock!" skeeter was on the point of exclaiming.

gave me this. A fellow from Baltimore's
been around here the last two days buy-
ing every turkey he. could find. Old
Wentzel sold his whole flock — "

"His whole flock!"1 Skeeter was on
the point of exclaiming, when he checked
himself. Howland's eyes Avere as big as
switch-lights.

" And he's down at the station loading
them into a car with the rest for No. 81
to pick up. I helped him rack up his
coops, and he opened his heart."

voice to a whisper: " Don't you ever
say anything — or I'll never" hear the last
of it."

In giving the fowl into Skeeter's
hands, his own hand brushed the brake-
man's little finger, and he straightened
back with a jerk. " Look here! " he ex-
claimed in a husky whisper, " you Avere
the felloAv on the other side of that — "

Skeeter grinned. " Mebbe I Avas," he
Tetorted, starting off with his prize ;
" but you can't prove it."

How Railroad Men Balked a
Plot to Assassinate Lincoln.

BY BERTRAM ADLER

JUST after the close of the Civil War, plots to assassinate Abraham
Lincoln were hatched thick and fast. One carefully prepared scheme
to take the life of the Great Emancipator was nipped in the bud by
the railroad men in charge of the train on which he was traveling to Wash-
ington. They worked in conjunction with the Pinkerton forces, and they
did their work faithfully and loyally, as the following chronicle of that
historical happening will show.

The Members of a Band of Baltimore Conspirators Awake to Find

Themselves Cheated in Their Attempt to Prevent

the Inauguration.

NE morning early in the year
1861, Samuel H. Felton,
president of the Philadel-
phia, Wilmington and Bal-
timore Railroad, rushed to
his private desk in the ex-
ecutive offices at Philadelphia and scrib-
bled a letter which he directed his clerk
to get into the first mail West. The
clerk noticed that the letter was ad-
dressed to Allan Pinkerton at Chicago.

" Gee ! " he exclaimed, " another rob-
bery ! "

The " boss's " letter dealt with more
important matters than mere theft of
money. It dealt with rumors of an at-
tempt on the part of Southern sympa-
thizers in Maryland to isolate the capital
of the loyal States by preventing ap-
proach to it by train. The last link in
the route to Washington was President
Felton's road, and its tracks were to be
demolished and its bridges destroyed.
Whatever information Mr. Felton had
of the great plot, the letter to Pinkerton
contained.

Several days later, the head of the

house of Pinkerton was closeted with
the railroad president. In a nearby hotel
were four picked aides whom the detec-
tive had brought East with him. With
the president, in the railroad council
chamber, was one other official, Henry
F. Kenney, Mr. Felton's superintendent.
When the conference ended, Pinkerton
summoned his aides and sent them forth
to find -the truth or untruth in the plot
rumors.

They returned with a complete cor-
roboration of the rumors. Washington
was to be made isolated by the Maryland
secessionists. __ Furthermore, the isola-
tion was to become effective quickly —
and Lincoln, the President-elect, was
never to reach Washington for his in-
auguration. When Mr. Felton had heard
the reports through, he turned to Pinker-
ton.

" Allan," he said, " can you change
your headquarters to the East?"

" I can," answered Pinkerton.

" Can you bring every one of your
detectives here? "

" I can."

329

330

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

PLUNGING THROUGH THE POLICE RANKS TO THE SIDE

OF THE CARRIAGE, HE HANDED MR. JUDD

A SLIP OF PAPER.

Can you guarantee to stay here your

" I can," answered Pinkerton — " but
why do you ask this?"

" Your men will guard my road," said
Felton. " You and I will ride Mr. Lin-
coln over it."

At every danger-point a detective was
stationed. Every bridge and ferry tra-
versed by the road was kept under the
surveillance of Pinkerton men in the
guise of laborers. Ostensible trackmen
watched every inch of rail and telegraph
wire through the disloyal parts of Mary-
land.

Pinkerton himself spent much of his
time in Baltimore, where he soon un-
earthed the chief plans of the Southern
sympathizers. Then he hastened to
Philadelphia and Mr. Felton with his in-
formation.

" The assassination," he stated, " is
to take place at the Calver* Street depot
of your road. A vast crowd of secession-
ists are to assemble there and await the
arrival of Mr. Lincoln's train. They
are to appear early and to fill the narrow
streets and passages immediately sur-
rounding the depot.

" The marshal of police is a Southern
sympathizer and is conversant with the
assassination plans. He will detail but
a small force of- police to attend the ar-
rival and nominally clear and protect a
passage for Mr. Lincoln and his suite.
<■" When the train enters the depot, and

Mr. Lincoln attempts to go through the
narrow passage leading to the streets, a
party, already delegated, is to engage in
a conflict on the outside. The police are
to rush away to quell the disturbance.

" At this moment, the police being
entirely withdrawn, Mr. Lincoln will
find himself surrounded by a dense and
excited crowd hustling and jamming
against him. Then the fatal blow is to be
struck. A boat waiting on the Chesa-
peake shore is ready to take the assassin
on board a swift steamer which will con-
vey him to a Southern, port."

The situation was really alarming and
heroic measures were in order. It was
decided to obtain a speedy interview with
Mr. Lincoln, submit the facts squarely to
him, and abide by his suggestions.

This meeting between the detective and
the railroad officer took place on Feb-
ruary 20. The President-elect was ex-
pected to arrive in Philadelphia en route
for his inaugural on the following day.
All Philadelphia had prepared to wel-
come him. The entire militia of the city
was to act as escort from the railroad
depot to the Continental Hotel, where
he was to receive the congratulations of
the people.

Just before the Presidential party left
New York for the Quaker City, one of

A PLOT TO ASSASSINATE LINCOLN.

331

Mr. Pinkerton's assistants met Mr. Nor-
man B. Judd, of the official escort, and
arranged for an interview between Fel-
ton, Pinkerton, and Judd at Philadelphia.

When Mr. Lincoln arrived the en-
thusiasm of the populace was unbound-
ed. The great military and civic pro-
cession escorted the new chief magistrate -
through streets black with people. On
each side of the carriage in which were
Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Judd, marched a
file of police, whose duty it was to pre-
vent the multitude from pressing too
closely to the vehicle.

As the procession reached the corner
of Broad and Chestnut Streets, a young
man in the crowd tried to attract the at-
tention of the occupants of the carriage.
He found this impossible. Plunging
through the police ranks
to the side of the car-
riage, he handed Mr.
Judd a slip of paper on
which was written:

St. Louis Hotel, ask
for J. H. Hutchinson.

The young man was a
messenger from Felton
and Pinkerton, and
" J. H. Hutchinson "
was the name under
which Pinkerton had reg-
istered at the hotel to
avoid the curiosity of
any emissary of the
Baltimore conspirators
who might 'have chanced
that way.

Shortly after the ar-
rival of the President-
elect at the Continental
Hotel, Mr. Judd was an-
nounced to Felton and
P i n k e r t o n at the St.
Louis. All proofs rela-
ting to the conspiracy
were submitted to Mr.
Judd, and, when he had
satisfied himself about
them, it was suggested
that Mr. Lincoln should
proceed on the eleven
o'clock night train to
Washington, where Gen-
eral Scott could guar-
antee him safety.

Mr. Judd agreed to gu with Felton
and Pinkerton to the President-elect and
place the facts before him.

At Mr. Judd's request, Lincoln ex-
cused himself to the throngs in the hotel
parlors, and received the party in private.

" But, gentlemen," he said, while they
were discussing the matter, " while I
can stand anything that is necessary,
I cannot -go to Washington to-night. I
have promised to raise the flag over
Independence Hall to-morrow morning
and to visit the Legislature at Harris-
burg in the afternoon. Beyond these I
have no engagements. Any plan that
may be adopted that will enable me to
fulfil these promises I will accede to,
and you can inform me what is settled
upon to-morrow."

'M§S>

I CANNOT GO TO WASHINGTON
TO-NIGHT."

332

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Lincoln's firm tone indicated the use- Stars and Stripes to the top of Inde-
lessness of attempting, to have him alter pendence Hall flagstaff, and delivered
his opinion, and a second conference was a speech that is historical. The ceremo-

held in Mr. Judd's room, to which
Thomas A. Scott, vice-president of the
Pennsylvania Central Railroad, was
summoned. Mr. Scott, however, could
not be found ; but
George C. Franciscus,
the general manager of
the Pennsylvania Cen-
tral, was reached ; so
was E. S. Sanford,
president of the Amer-
ican Telegraph Com-
pany. At this meeting
the railroad officials,
the telegraph official,
and the detective went
over the situation
carefully, and the fol-
lowing program was
decided upon :

After the formal re-
ception at Harrisburg,
a special train, consist-
ing of a baggage - car
and one passenger-
coach, should leave
there at six o'clock
p.m. to carry Mr. Lin-
coln and one compan-
ion back to Philadel-
phia. This train was
to be under the imme-
diate control of Mr.
Franciscus and Enoch
Lewis, the general
superintendent.

In order to avoid the
possibility of accident,
the track was to be
cleared of everything
between Harrisburg
and Philadelphia from
5.30 o'clock until after
the passage of the spe-
cial train. Mr. Felton
was to detail the eleven
o'clock p.m. Baltimore
precaution was secretly taken.

Mrs. Warne, a woman detective, en-
gaged a berth in the sleeping-car bound
for Baltimore. Mr. Judd was to man-
age affairs at Harrisburg, and Pinkerton
at Philadelphia.

The next morning Lincoln drew the

HE WENT IMMEDIATELY TO HIS
BERTH.

train. Every

nies over, he was driven back to the
Continental Hotel, where he . found
awaiting him Frederick Seward, the son
of William H. Seward. Seward told
Lincoln that he had
just arrived from
Washington, that his
father and General
Scott had sent him
to warn the President-
elect of the danger of
passing through Baltic
more, and to urge him
to start immediately
for the capital.

The advices which
actuated the message
came as substantiation
to the information
which Pinkerton had
obtained for Mr. Fel-
ton. Mr. Lincoln
evinced no further hes-
itancy in the matter,
and signified his im-
mediate willingness to
do whatever was re-
quired of him. Mr.
Judd, who was at Lin-
coln's side, then direct-
ed Mr. Seward to in-
form his father and
General S-cott that
everything had been
arranged to place the
President - elect safely
in Washington before
the evening of the fol-
lowing day.

Lincoln started for
Harrisburg, and Judd
and Pinkerton busied
themselves carrying out
the program. Pinker-
ton had received re-
ports from Baltimore,
stating that the excitement there had
grown intense, and that the arrival of
the President-elect was eagerly awaited.
The common belief was that Lincoln
would journey from Harrisburg to Bal-
timore over the Northern Central Rail-
road, and the plans of the conspirators
were laid accordingly.

A PLOT TO ASSASSINATE LINCOLN.

333

it was important that no hint of the
contemplated movement of the Presiden-
tial party should reach the Monument
City. Agents of the conspirators were
found to be following, and it appeared
Certain that they would apprise their
leaders by telegraph of Lincoln's ab-
sence as soon as they discovered it.

To prevent this, the American Tele-
graph Company detailed a trustworthy
lineman to render useless for the time
every wire leading from Harrisburg.

This the lineman easily accomplished
by placing fine copper - ground wires
among the regular lines, and Harrisburg
was entirely cut off from the rest of the
world. . President Sanford, of the Amer-
ican Telegraph Company, directed his
manager to remain in the office during
the night and intercept any despatches
that might be sent from any point be-
tween Harrisburg and Baltimore.

■ On the way to Harrisburg, Mr. Judd
acquainted Lincoln with the final plans.
Judd suggested that Lincoln take the
other members of the Presidential party
into his confidence. Lincoln accepted
the suggestion, and at the Jones House
in Harrisburg he informed the escort of
the proposed night ride to Baltimore.

The gentlemen comprising the escort
were : Judge David Davis, afterward
of the United States Supreme Court ;
Major-General Sumner, Major-General
David Hunter, Major - General John
Pope, and Ward H. Lamon, afterward
United States marshal for the District
of Columbia. Having thoroughly en-
lightened them as to his plans, Lincoln
accompanied them to the dining-room.

It was late afternoon, and the special
train was on a side track just outside of
Harrisburg, Waiting, supposedly, to take
the officers of the railroad company back
to Philadelphia. At Philadelphia the
rear half of a sleeping-car of the Balti-
more train had been retained for Lin-
coln, and a curtain separated it from
the rest of the coach.

In order to detain the train until the
arrival of the Lincoln special from Har-
risburg, Conductor John Litzenburg was
directed not to start until he received
his orders personally from Superin-
tendent Kenney, who was to give him
an important package which President
Felton wished delivered in Washington.

At 5.40 o'clock a carriage drove up
to the side entrance of the Jones House.
Two minutes later a message was hand-
ed the President-elect by Secretary John
Nicolay. Lincoln looked at it, and
straightaway went to his room.

He summoned Governor Curtin of
Pennsylvania to his side, and proceeded
with him to the carriage at the side en-
trance. Seeing Lincoln in company with
their Governor, the crowds in and about
the hotel decided that the distinguished
pair were going to the executive man-
sion, where a reception was announced
for the evening.

With Mr. Lamon, of the escort, the
President-elect and the Governor entered
the carriage, and a little later they were
speeding to Philadelphia on the special.

They arrived at Philadelphia at 10
p.m., and found Allan Pinkerton and
Superintendent Kenney waiting with a
carriage. Lincoln, Lamon, and Pinker-
ton entered. Kenney seated himself on
the box with the driver, and the carriage
whirled off to the depot of the Phila-
delphia, Wilmington and Baltimore
Railroad.

There the carriage stopped in the
shadow of a fence, and the transfer of
its distinguished occupant to the Balti-
more train was quietly effected. Super-
intendent Kenney gave Conductor Lit-
zenburg the Washington package and the
order to start, and the night ride to
Baltimore began. How safe Lincoln
felt in the hands of the railroad men
was evidenced by the fact that he went
immediately to his berth, Avhere he fell
into a calm sleep.

The change to the Washington train
at Baltimore was made without accident,
and at six o'clock in the morning Lin-
coln arrived at the capital.

The Baltimore conspirators awoke to
find themselves cheated of their prey,
and vented their rage on the Massachu-
setts Sixth, two months later, in the his-
torical mob attack wherein the first blood
of the Civil War was spilt.

That Lincoln did live to be inaugu-
rated is history — but the work of sev-
eral railroad men toward that end is
not. You will find no mention of Fel-
ton, Franciscus, Lewis, Kenney, Felton's
detective, or Sanford in the text-books.

It was all in their day's work!

RAILROAD IN YOUR BACK GARDEN.

How Some of Our Rich English Cousins Manage to Move About

Their Ancestral Acres Without the Trouble

of Walking.

AILROADING as a private hobby, or
as a private convenience, would not,
on the- face of it, seem to have a very ex-
tensive appeal. Nevertheless, there are
several private railroads, notably in England,
which have been constructed for the pleasure
or private convenience of certain rich men.
Some of these roads are not by any means
toys, and the Lilliputian dimensions of their
track and rolling stock only add to their
interest.

Some time ago the Scientific American
published an excellent article, with photo-
graphs, dealing with several of these private
English railroads, and from this article we
have taken the liberty to draw for our in-
.formation. The English correspondent of
the Scientific American says :

" The most notable of these private diminu-
tive railroads are those at Eaton Hall, in
Cheshire, the country seat of the Duke of
Westminster ; Duffield Bank, the home of
Sir Percival Heywood, Bart., and Blakesley
Hall, where resides Mr. C. H. Bartholomew,
a retired civil engineer and contemporary of
the Stephensons.

" These railroads are not mere toys, but
exact replicas upon a reduced scale of the
ordinary standard systems of the country,
correct in every particular, including track,
signaling equipment, rolling stock, etc.

" The miniature railroad at Dufheld Bank
was designed and constructed by its owner,
Sir Percival Heywood, who is a recognized
authority in such work, and is an enthusias-
tic advocate of light railroads. This par-
ticular line is one mile in length, exclusive
of side-tracks, extending through the estate.
The gage is fifteen inches. The track alone
cost four thousand five hundred dollars. In
its course the line passes through three tun-
nels, traverses two bridges of the wooden

trestle type, and a timber viaduct of ninety
feet in length by twenty feet in height.
There are six stations along the route which
convey guests to the various parts of the
estate.

" The private railroad of the Duke of
Westminster is of a more ambitious charac-
ter. It runs through the Eaton Hall estate,
and links the residence with the trunk
railroad system at Balderton, three and a
half miles distant. This line was also de-
signed and constructed by Sir Percival Hey-
wood, and is also of fifteen-inch gage. The
whole system comprises four and one-half
miles of track, including the direct through
line, three and one-half miles long, and ap-
proximately one mile of side-tracks.

" The track is built upon the latest ap-
proved style, with Vignole rails, averaging
twelve pounds per yard, laid on longitudinal
wooden cross-ties, and cost, exclusive of
buildings and rolling stock, six thousand five
hundred and forty-five dollars per mile, rep-
resenting an outlay of over twenty-nine
thousand four hundred and fifty dollars in
track alone. The gradients vary from one
in one" hundred to a maximum of one in
sixty-five.

" This railroad is essentially employed for
the transportation of freight to and from the
house, though members of the family and
their .guests travel between the main-line
station and the mansion, there being for
such purpose a number of open vehicles and
a bogie parlor-car capable of seating sixteen
persons.

" The utility of such a railroad as this in
connection with such a country seat, and
the heavy work it has to fulfil, may be
gathered from the fact that the trains cover
five thousand miles, and transport over six
thousand tons of freight a year.

334

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

BY BANNISTER MERWIN,
Author of "The Girl and the Bill," "The Sword of Tarroloys," "The Corner."

Light Amusement Proves Instructive
and a Walking Delegate Falls Down.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

LARRY SMITH and Jack Marley, being in possession of some valuable water-rights,
j are building a dam, Smith being the engineer and Marley supplying half the
capital. The other half of the capital is supplied by a Denver capitalist named Briggs
and another man named Garth. Briggs comes to view the work, and while there he drops
half of a broken shilling, which Marley picks up. The capitalist is interested as a
money-lender, and not as a partner, and he _ holds a mortgage on the dam and all the
rights, subject to a time-limit for the completion of the work.

CHAPTER IV.

Moving Pictures.

ARLY the next morning, Lar-
ry walked up to Murdock,
who was watching a group
of men fit the gate into
one of the sluices that had
just been completed,
you to stop the masonry-

" I want
work above there," he said, " and put
the men at work on the pipe, down by
Klingerman Pass."

"What's that?" Murdock stared at
the engineer in surprise.

Larry repeated the instructions.

" Well, I don't know about it," said
Murdock slowly. "What's the reason?"

" Simply that I wish to get the pipe
done quickly and turn a little water into
it," replied Larry coolly.

" You haven't enough inspectors there
to keep up with such a rush."

" That's my lookout. As a matter of
fact, Jones and Armsby have worked out
the formulae for all the pipe that re-
mains to be built, and they are ready to
give you the spacings."

It may be explained that a stave-pi ixj
is built on the principle of a virtually
endless barrel, without a bulge, the stave
being of different lengths. At intervals,
which vary in accordance with the head

Began in the October Railroad Man's Magazine

of water to be carried — in its undulations
up and down over a surface that is only
partially graded — steel rods must be
bolted around the pipe.

The distance between the rods may be
several inches at places where the level
of the pipe is nearly as high as the level
of the source of the water - supply.
Where the head of water is great, the
rods must be placed much closer to-
gether.

As the rods are a considerable item of
expense, the contractor would be glad to
space them as far apart as possible ; but
the engineers, working from formulae, de-
termine the correct spacing for every
level of pipe. This was the work which
Jones and Armsby were doing for
Larry.

Murdock may have realized that, if
the pipe was crowded to completion, any
effort to make delays on the remaining
courses of masonry would be palpable.
At least, he was reluctant to concentrate
his forces on the pipe.

He could not well refuse to obey
Larry's order, however, and, in the end.
he agreed ; and after the noon meal
sixty men were sent down to Klinger-
man Pass, with their outfits; for, like
the others who were already at work on
the pipe, they would eat and sleep near
their job.

Single copies, 10 cents.

335

336

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" I wish I had told him not to start
them off until after hours this evening,"
muttered Larry to Jack, as he watched
the procession wind dustily down the
canon behind its wagons. " Those sixty
men won't be ready for business until
to-morrow."

" They couldn't well move their out-
fits after dark."

" It might have been managed."

""Let me see," said Jack. " Murdock
has twenty men still at work here on the
sluices. Then, there are those twelve
machinery - installers from Pittsburgh.
Ives is directing the work on the sluices
for you, and Jones and Armsby are down
on the pipe."

"Well?" Larry looked at him in
surprise. He had yielded as far as he
felt that he safely could to the man who
was both his friend and his partner, but
Jack's insistence on protective measures
was beginning to make him uneasy.

" Well," Jack continued speculatively,
"there are five of us — and we might
count on those twelve machinists in a
pinch."

" Jack, you're getting melodramatic,"
laughed Larry.

" Perhaps I am," said Jack. " Any-
how, I'm going for a ride. Murdock
kept Madden at the corral here with a
few ponies, didn't he?"

" Yes."

" Well, good luck to you, then,
Larry. I'm off for a time."

Jack rode up the canon with an ex-
pectant heart. As for the situation at
the camp, there was little to do during
the next few days except to await de-
velopments. Murdock would not show
his hand yet, and meantime, here was
this wonderful Norse goddess to wor-
ship. He found that he craved to see
her again, that he might the better re-
member her loveliness.

But when he reached the little bridge
from which he had first seen her the
afternoon before, she was nowhere in
view. The stream rushed over its rap-
ids and into its quiet pools, and there
was no one to lure the wary trout from
their hiding-places. Jack looked in vain
for a glint of golden hair.

From the low houses that raised their
roofs here and there through the valley,
the smoke rose as. on yesterday. From

some distant field came the rattle of a
mowing machine, but near at hand
there was no sign of human life ; and
as he looked, the scene became to him
strangely empty.

""" He almost wondered whether he had
not dreamed Thekla — whether she were
not merely an ideal of his imagination
that had flowered in these fields to a
seeming but temporary reality.

For a moment he considered riding on
to the house and asking for her. Per-
haps, after all, she had suffered some ill
effects from her injury. It would be the
polite, the correct, thing to go and in-
quire how she was.

But there was her father's hostility to
the project in the canon ; perhaps it
would be extended to Jack himself.
Thekla had not invited him into the
house when he took her home. There
had been no reason for her doing so ;
but now he fancied that she might have
feared an inhospitable reception fqr him.

As to the possibility that she had been
more seriously injured than she thought,
he refused to entertain it. Her mere
failure to appear at the same time in the
same place where he had first seen her
was no evidence that she was ill.

Sitting his pony there, at the little
bridge, he might have been a scout,
scanning an untried country. Peter
Wist, or any of his fellow farmers,
would think as much, should they see
him, and their suspicions of the Bend-
water scheme would increase. He real-
ized this. It would be inadvisable for
him to remain where he was.

But first he must satisfy his fancy to
leave some token. Dismounting, he
gathered a handful of roadside flowers
and carried them up the stream to the
place where he had found her.

He' untied the silk handkerchief that
was about his throat, and, spreading it
flat, laid the flowers upon it and weight-
ed them down with a flat stone upon
their stems. Then he tore a blank leaf
from his memorandum-book, and scrib-
bled upon it with his pencil : -

" Hope you are all right. — J. M.

He thrust the paper under the flow-
ers. She might again pass this way and
find his token.

When he eot back to the road, a child

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

337

was standing near his pony — a flaxen-
haired, snub-nosed little girl about
eight years old. Where she had come
from he could not at first imagine, for
the road was straight all the way to
Peter Wist's house, and there had been
no one in sight "when he dismounted.
" Hallo ! " said Jack.
The girl had thrust a finger into her
mouth, and, at the sound of his voice,
she looked at him shyly.

" Do you understand English, little
one? "

An embarrassed nod; finger still in
mouth. .

"Do you know Miss Wist — Thekla
Wist?"

Again the nod.

" Have you seen her to-day? Is she
well?"

The girl nodded more vigorously.
"What's your name, little one?"
She hung her head, and her body
swayed with embarrassment, but he
caught the word, " Christine " — hardly
•more than a breath.

" Where were you playing when I
came? "

His smile was anything but ogreish,
and the child pointed to the field at the
roadside. She had lain hidden, it ap-
peared, amid the alfalfa.

"Well, good-by, Christine!" He
climbed into the saddle and, with a pro-
found salute, went galloping away.

It was now that the whim struck him
not to return at once to the camp, but
to ride by way of Willow Canon to Lar-
kin City, eat supper at a hotel, and, dur-
ing the evening, go back to the dam
through Bendwater Canon.

It was a long ride — the eight miles
already covered from the dam to- "Swe-
den " ; nearly twenty miles from " Sw«-
clen " to Larkin City by Willow Canon,
and eight miles up the Bendwater to
the dam. But the pony was in good
condition, and, if necessary, he could
exchange it for a fresh mount at a stable
in Larkin City.

A mile to his left, he could see the
gap in the surrounding mountains that
marked the entrance to Willow Canon.
The regular road thither began some-
where back in the settlement, but he
continued toward the Bendwater until he
had passed the limit of cultivated fields,
10 R R

and then turned in upon the sage-brush
slopes at his left, skirting the shoulder
that divided the two canons.

His course took him high enough to
give him a better view of " Sweden,"
and he was surprised to observe the ex-
tent of cultivated fields and the inge-
nious "way in which the little streams
had been turned to irrigation purposes.
At length he came down to the Willow
Canon road, where it rose over the low
barrier that shut the head of the canon
off from Sweden, and, giving the pony
the rein, let the sure-footed animal
plunge forward at an easy lope.

Willow Canon was not so picturesque
as the Bendwater. Its walls were rela-
tively low, and its stream, though aug-
mented as it proceeded by brooks from
the mountainsides, was small. He rode
many miles before he came to a house,
for here there were no bottom-lands that
could be cultivated.

Half-way down, he met a wagon
coming up, and halted his pony at a
widening of the narrow road to let it
pass. The driver was a stolid Scandi-
navian giant, who nodded in indifferent
greeting, but showed no surprise at see-
ing a stranger in this out-of-the-way
place. One of the farmers of " Swe-
den," no doubt, returning from Larkin
City with supplies.

At last the canon broke through the
' range and debouched upon the low table-
land, or " bench," which lay at the back
of Larkin City.

Looking to the right, Jack could see
where Bendwater Canon had its opening
■ — a mile away — and, as he looked, a horse-
man emerged and went galloping on to-
ward the city.

At that distance, of course, it was im-
possible to make out who the rider was,
but there was every reason to think that
it was somebody from the dam, for the
men of the outfit were virtually the only
ones to go up and down the Bendwater
«ince the construction-work had been in
progress. ,

The two roads converged farther on ;
thus, as Jack proceeded, the rider from
the Bendwater was closer. Something
familiar in the way that rider sat in his
saddle led Jack to slow clown. He
thought it wise not to be recognized un-
til he had himself recognized the other.

338

THE -RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

A screen of poplars which bordered the
road for a way helped him to keep fair-
ly well out of sight, while at the same
time he could look through the trees and
across the fields to the other road.

The distant rider was not sparing his
horse. Jack, meantime, had slowed
down. Indeed, he stopped altogether
just before he reached the end of the row
of poplars, and waited.

The other man came nearer and near-
er, on his angle, and when he passed the
point nearest to Jack he was not more
than a quarter of a mile away. He sat
well back, his neck thrust forward be-
tween his broad, bent shoulders.

His long legs, even with the stirrup-
straps let out as far as could be, were
so bent that his knees almost came up to
the pommel of the saddle. It was Bill
Murdock, bent on an errand which ap-
peared to be hasty.

The presence of the contractor in
Larkin City added to the interest of
Jack's visit. The natural supposition
was that Murdock had ridden down on
^business — and business that was not
necessarily important or significant. He
might be planning to hire more men, or
to arrange for a consignment of sup-
plies.

Jack, nevertheless, determined to play
the detective. Such a course could do
no harm, and he might learn something.
Therefore, he ambled slowly into the
city by an -indirect route, and put his
pony up at a stable which was not ordi-
narily patronized by the Bendwater out-
fit.

Larkin City was a type of those West-
ern communities which have lived
through the youthful period of danger-
ous overgrowth. Originally a placer
camp in the Karamak Valley, the later
discovery of quartz ledges in the vicin-
ity had led to the establishment of
stamping-mills.

The mines were all in the mountains
to the west of the city, for no pros-
pector had ever found color worth while
•in Bendwater and Willow Canons. A
transcontinental railroad had forced its
way through the Karamak Valley — add-
ing to the permanent importance of
Larkin City.

Agriculture had taken hold wherever
the soil proved suitable and water could

be obtained. So that Larkin City now
had a population of about fifteen thou-
sand people, two banks, a good hotel,
many saloons, and a few churches.

Jack strolled slowly down, the main
street. Dusk was just coming on, and
the arc-lamps were flashing out at the
corners, whitening the wide macadam
road-bed and enfeebling the incandescent
bulbs that shone" in the various shop-
windows.

Many people were abroad, most of
them lounging idly — laborers from the
stamping-mills, farmers in from outlying
districts, a sprinkling of better-dressed
citizens. At the garish entrances of two
moving - picture shows, phonographs
squawked loudly.

Avoiding the hotel, since Murdock
would be likely to be there, Jack en-
tered a cheap restaurant and ate a hasty
meal. On the street again, he set out
to find Murdock.

First he went to the hotel. The con-
tractor was not in the lobby, nor did
a glance into the cafe and the dining-
room reveal him. Jack looked into
three or four saloons without discovering
the man he sought.

He had about made up his mind that
Murdock's errand had taken' him to the
residence district — and very likely to
Garth's — when he saw the man strolling
along, fifty feet ahead. He checked his
own pace.

Murdock glanced at his watch. He
appeared to be in no great hurry. His
manner was that of one who has a little
time to kill, and he glanced into shop-
windows, and once or twice nodded care-
lessly to passing acquaintances.

At last he turned in at the entrance
to one of the moving-picture shows,
bought a ticket, and disappeared through
the curtains. Jack promptly followed
into the stuffy little theater.

The dim light reflected from the pic-
tures on the screen enabled him to make
out Murdock's big form, seated several
rows forward. He himself remained
standing at the back, ready to get quick-
ly away if the contractor should show
signs of leaving.

The pictures projected on the screen
at the time Jack entered were a varia-
tion on the familiar series illustrating the
attempts of a thief to escape from the

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

339

police. The pursuit began" on foot, and
the thief then took possession of a cab,
the police following in a delivery-wagon.
Pursuers and pursued then impressed
motor-cars into service ; and the little
drama ended with a fight on a country
road,' the fugitive being killed by a re-
volver-shot.

The crowd greeted the pictures up-
roariously. They applauded every suc-
cessful turn the fugitive made, and
cheered loudly during the fight. They
were not jaded by amusements in Lar-
kin City.

The next scene was the final round of
a battle between two well-known pugi-
lists. This proved highly popular, and
there were cries from the excited crowd of
" Good boy, Tommy ! " and " Hit him
again, Jack ! " •

And then the preliminary white let-
ters flashed out on the screen :

Local view — work on the Bendwatea?
Dam. '

There it was — the long, gray line of
masonry, with the mountains rising at
each side, and the derricks lifting the
heavy blocks of stone and swinging them
to place. The workmen were moving
about or bending at their toil. In the
foreground — though not near enough to
be recognized, except by one familiar
with his attitude — stood Bill Murdock,
looking on.

Jack was puzzled to determine when
these pictures had been taken. He re-
membered no visit of a moving-picture
camera to the camp. He realized, how-
ever, that the apparatus might have been
brought up in a wagon at a time when
everybody was busy, and, perhaps, no- a
body would have noticed it.

People often drove up to look at the
work. It had come to be no noteworthy
sight if two or three buggies or carts
were drawn up by the road just below
the camp.

Now there was a break in the film.
The camera had been moved nearer, or
else a telephotographic appliance had
been used. Only a section of the work
— at one of the sluices — was to be seen,
and between it and the camera stood
Murdoch, now as large as life.

Into the picture suddenly walked
Larry, and behind him Garth, and then

Thomas Briggs and Jack himself. The
crowd shouted its recognition of Garth.
Standing there at the back of the
theater, Jack gasped at the photographic
presentment. His own motions, as pic-
tured on the screen, appeared both fa-
miliar and strange.

He had not realized that his walk had
such an effect of indolence. But there
' was no strangeness to him in the manner
of the other men. The camera had un-
doubtedly caught the group at the mo-
ment when Thomas Briggs was being in-
troduced to the work.

Larry, on the screen, seemed to hail
Murdock, for the big contractor sudden-
ly turned toward the four men who
were approaching him. The expression
of his face was distinct — the opening of
the mouth when he recognized Briggs,
the involuntary step forward. And
there was that swift look of warning on
Briggs's face.

The introduction took place — just as
he remembered it. Then something hap-
pened which he had forgotten. Garth
was pointing toward the dam and speak-
ing to Larry, and he himself stepped
forward.

Briggs and Murdock were now behind
the others. Suddenly Briggs stepped
forward and put his mouth close to the
contractor's ear.

Apparently, he was whispering some-
thing. The contractor nodded assent,
and the two men moved apart.

Another moment, and the five men
on the screen were all talking together
again. Briggs took out his handkerchief
and mopped his brow. Then Jack saw
himself stoop, pick something up, and
• slip it into his pocket.

What was it he had picked up? Oh,
yes — the broken shilling. His eyes still
on the pictures, he quickly felt in his
pocket.

The fragment of coin was still there.
The moving-pictures now shifted to
the pipe-line. But Jack had seen enough.
He had seen Briggs seize the moment
when the backs of the others were
turned to whisper to Murdock.

He wondered how Murdock had en-
joyed the pictures. Looking to where
Murdock was sitting, he observed that
the contractor was stirring, as if about
to rise. Therefore, he stepped quickly

340

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

out to the open air and, hurrying across
the street, took up a position in the half-
concealment of a doorway.

CHAPTER V.

Room 631 .

PRESENTLY, Murdock came slowly
•*■ out of the theater. His eyes were^
on the ground, as though he had been
made thoughtful by what he had seen.
He turned to the right, and slouched
in the direction of the hotel.

Jack followed on the other side of the
street. He had begun to think that
the object of the contractor's visit to the
city was to see the moving pictures. The
news that they were being shown might
easily have spread to the camp.

When he got to the hotel, however,
Murdock turned in at the main entrance
with a manner of definite purpose, . first
glancing toward the clock-tower of the
railroad station, two blocks away. The
hands on the illuminated dial registered
eight-thirty.

Whether the time of the evening had
anything to do with the contractor's
sudden alertness, Jack, of course, could
not tell. He waited in a shadow at the
other side of the street, to make certain
that his man had not merely stepped into
the hotel for a moment.

Five minutes passed. People were
frequently going in and out of the hotel
entrance, but Murdock was not among
them.

At last, Jack crossed the street and
entered. The lobby was a place where
the business men of Larkin City fre-
quently went, of evenings, to meet, not
only acquaintances from out of town,
but each other. It was, to all intents
and purposes, a club; and if Murdock
should see Jack come in, he would sus-
pect nothing unusual in the arrival, since
this was the natural center of gravitation
for a young fellow of Jack's standing.

Murdock was not among the groups in
the lobby, however. Nor was he in the
cafe. Either he had gone out by an-
other door, or — and this became, for the
moment, a conviction — he was planning
to' spend the night in the city and had
taken a room.

The obvious course for Jack was to

look at the register. He strolled over
to the desk.

"Hallo, Mellish," he said to the clerk.
" What are you doing here this time of
the evening? "

" Wharton had a little business to
look after " — Wharton was the night-
clerk — " and I am staying on till he
comes. He'll be here in a few minutes."
Mellish laid his pen down with a flourish
of emphasis.

Jack swung the register around. As
his eyes fell on the names of the late
arrivals, he exclaimed aloud.

"What's the matter?" inquired Mel-
lish.

" Nothing ! I thought of something
I have to do. So long ! Perhaps I'll
see you later." He hurried away from
the desk and out to the street. He want-
ed to think. For on the last line of the
register, written in a precise, copper-
plate hand, he had read :
»

Thomas Briggs, Denver.

Opposite the name was the room
number, " 631."

There was little doubt now as to what
had become of Murdock. He was surely
closeted in Room 631 with the Denver
capitalist.

But Jack wanted to make sure. That
conference on the sixth floor must not
go on uninterrupted. He walked twice
around the block, trying to decide just
how to act, and at last he made up his
mind that the simplest course was the
best.

Returning to the hotel, he looked in,
and saw that Mellish had been relieved
by Wharton. He walked in quickly,
like a man late for an appointment.

"Hallo, Mr. Marley!" Wharton
twisted at his heavy black mustache, and
turned his body so that the diamond in
his necktie would flash to best advantage.

" Hallo ! " said Jack quickly. " Has
Thomas Briggs arrived?"

"Yes, 631"

" Good! I'm afraid I'm a little late.
Don't bother to announce me. I'll go
right up." And he was on his way to
the elevator before the clerk could ask
a question.

Now Wharton- knew, as every man of
consequence in Larkin City knew, that
Thomas Briggs had some connection

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

341

with the Bendwater project. It there-
fore never occurred to him to question
Jack's right to go to the sixth floor un-
announced. When the opportunity
came, Thomas Briggs had reasons for
not enlightening him as to his mistake.

So Jack was carried up to the sixth
floor, and made his way through the long
corridors. He would have liked to
stand outside the door of Briggs's room,
to overhear as much as possible of the
conversation that was going on within,
for he felt that, in the circumstances,
eavesdropping would be justifiable. But
as it happened, a porter was sitting at
the other end of the same corridor.
, As he stopped before the door, the
end of a sentence came to him through
the open transom. The clean-cut words
were in the voice of Thomas Briggs.

" — simply must be managed."

Jack waited as long as he dared,
hoping to hear a reply, but there was no
immediate answer ; and, seeing that the
porter was watching him, he knocked
sharply on the panel.

A chair was pushed back. Steps
crossed the room. The door opened.
Thomas Briggs stared out at the unex-
pected visitor.

" How are you, Mr. Briggs," Jack
began affably. " I happened to be in
town and saw your name on the register.
The clerk let me come right up."

As he spoke he advanced into the
room, oblivious of any frigidity in
Briggs's manner.

" Why, hallo, Bill Murdock ! " he ex-
claimed, grinning at the embarrassed
contractor. " And Mr. Garth ! "

His astonishment almost declared it-
self in his voice as he caught sight of
the Larkin City partner. Garth's wide
face was a picture of white dismay, and
he tugged nervously at his bunch of
beard.

Thomas Briggs had the trait of show-
ing surprise only by silence. Thus he
was able quickly to adapt himself to un-
expected circumstances. ,

"I am very glad to see you, Mr.
Marley," he now said quietly. " Sit
down. I was not sure until late this
afternoon that I should be able to stop
off here to-night. Then I sent a wire
to Garth from the train, asking him to
meet me here, and suggesting that he get

word to Mr. Smith and yourself, if there
was time. I go on to Denver in the
morning."

The fluent -explanation might or
might not be true.

" Garth could not reach you," contin-
ued Briggs, " but he happened to run
across Mr. Murdock, and brought him
along."

" Lie number one," said Jack to him-
self.

" Murdock was just telling us,"
broke in Garth huskily, " that most of
his men have been concentrated on the
pipe. A very good plan."

" I didn't understand it at first," said
Murdock, in a floundering attempt to
improve the situation. " But I see now
that it is better to get the skilled work
done first. Then I can throw extra
men on the dam masonry, if I have to."

Briggs disapproved of this line of ex-
planation. He made his disapproval
plain by jerking a chair noisily away
from the wall and saying abruptly :

"Since Mr. Smith is. not here, it
would be futile for us to talk about the
work. He is the only one who really
understands it."

" Why not -come up to the camp now,
Mr. Briggs?" suggested Jack. "We'll
rout Larry out and have a night of talk,
and we can get you back here in time to
catch your train in the morning."

" I am too old for anything quite so
strenuous as that," smiled Briggs. " Be-
sides " — his voice took on a graver tone
— " since Garth and Murdock are here,
I must use my time to discuss a project
I aaa undertaking in Utah. You see, I
have many interests, Mr. Marley."

" But I thought you wished to see all
of us."

" I did — if it could be arranged with-
out too much difficulty. But — "

" Well " — Jack arose — " I won't stay,
then."

He thrust his hand into his coat-pocket
and fingered the broken shilling. If it
was a lucky piece, he hoped that luck
went with the possession of it.

" Tell Mr. Smith that I wish the work
all success," said Briggs.

" Lie number two — for sure ! " said
Jack to himself.

" I shall be happy to renew that mort-
gage," continued Briggs earnestly. His

342

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

sharp nose seemed to hack the air as he
spoke. " And even if the work should
not be done on time, you need not worry.
I am already sufficiently convinced that
you mean business — which, of course,
was my one reason for insisting on a
time-limit."

"Lie number three!" thought Jack.
It seemed to him that Briggs was over-
playing the game. Suddenly it occurred
to him to strike a blow for the defense.

" In that case," he said coolly, with a
smile that was not free from contempt,
" you'd better caution Murdoch to burn
no more blue-prints. Good night, gen-
tlemen." He stepped into the hall and
drew the door shut after him.

Descending in the elevator, Jack
glowed with excitement. He realized
that he must have left consternation be-
hind him, and he could picture the as-
tonishment of Garth and Murdoch, and
the glittering anger of Briggs.

They would wonder how much he
knew. Murdoch would tell the story of
the charred piece of paper, and Briggs
would curse the 'stupidity of his ally.

But as Jack thought the affair over,
while he was walking slowly to the stable
where he had left his pony, he saw that
he had really done nothing to help Larry
and himself. He could prove nothing
against Briggs and Garth and Murdoch
in a court of law, and he had simply
made plain to them the need of greater
caution.

Not for an instant had he placed cre-
dence in Briggs's suave reassurances.
The mere fact that the three men had
met together in that hotel room was evi-
dence enough that mischief was being
planned ; and the confusion of Garth
and Murdoch when he entered had been
unmistakable.

Now they would revise their conspir-
acy and mahe it more effective. Larry
and he were certainly up against it. For
what could they do? Watchfulness
would protect them only until the time
when Briggs was ready to drop his mash.

Riding campward over the starlit
reaches of the road through the lower
canon, he decided that the time had
come to lay the entire matter before Lar-
ry. Worry or no worry, the engineer
must not be permitted to continue in the
notion that there was no real reason for

suspecting Briggs. Some preparation
must be made to meet the final issue.

As the wearied pony brought him at
last to a point whence he could make out
dimly the outlines of the camp" and the
serrated wall of the dam, he shook his
fist at it and exclaimed :

" We will succeed! You will be done
on time ! "

CHAPTER VI.

The Walking Delegate.

HpHE next morning he drew Larry
-*■ aside and told the story. He be-
gan with Briggs's visit to the camp and
their first joint suspicions of the man,
and he added his early memory of
Briggs and what his stepfather had said.

Then he took the charred piece of
blue-print from his poeket and de-
scribed how Murdoch had acted when
he saw it. He concluded with an ac-
count of his adventures of the preceding
evening.

Larry listened gravely. " You have
clinched the case against them, Jack,"
he said at last. " Briggs intends to
freeze us out. There's no doubt about
that now. I thought — but it doesn't
matter what I thought. We've got to
be ready for them."

" I didn't more than half think you
wovld believe it, even now."

" Didn't you? " Larry smiled. " You
must remember. Jack, that from the mo-
ment Briggs appeared you had more
reason to suspect him than I had."
That was as near as Larry came to ma-
king reproaches.

"You're right." said Jack; "but I
didn't want to worry you until I was
sure. Now, then, what's to be done?"

" Will you stay here on the job to-day
while I take a run clown to the city? "

" Of course ! "

" Keep an eye on the general situa-
tion. Watch Murdoch. He's back, isn't
he?"

" Yes ; he rode in early this morning."

" I will see if I can make arrange-
ments with another contractor to rush
some men up, if Murdoch's men should
lay off."

" How can you do that, Larry? It's
a ticklish matter to talk about."

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

343

" Yes ; but I can find out what we
want to know without giving much
away. It's all we can do just now, any-
way. You* see, Briggs won't have Mur-
-dock act until the time has almost ex-
pired. Trust him for that.

" There will be a strike, or something
like it, at the last minute, when it looks
as though we couldn't get help. But
we will pull out somehow, Jack."

" Yes," said Jack, " we will ! Shake ! "

They clasped hands in a hearty grip
■of confidence.

So it happened that Jack did not ride
to " Sweden " that day. He stayed in
the close neighborhood of the drafting-
tent. Murdock avoided him.

In the early afternoon a decrepit
road-cart crawled up the road, and a
short, stocky man, with prominent front
teeth, climbed out and walked rapidly
down to the sluices where the men were
working. Jack watched him closely,
and saw that he was talking earnestly to
the men, who rioticeably slowed their
work to listen. Murdock did not ap-
pear to see the man.

Jack walked down to the corral,
where Madden was giving the stranger's
horse a feed of hay.

" Who is that fellow that just came
up? " he asked.

The old Irishman answered readily
enough. " His name's O'Neill."

" What does he want? "

" He's the stone-mason's delegate.
He wants the boys to organize."

Jack asked no more, but hastened to-
ward the place where Murdock stood.
The contractor did not wait for a com-
plaint. Apparently catching sight of
the walking delegate for the first time,
he took a few steps toward him and
bawled :

" Here, you ! Get off the job. You
can't talk to these men durin' hours."

"Aw, what's it to you?" O'Neill's
prominent teeth gleamed.

Murdock halted, and, as Jack came
up to him, remarked in an undertone :

" That's the way the unions bully us.
If I kick that fellow off, he'll spoil me
on some city job when I have to use
union men."

" Do you mean to say you're t?oing to
let that fellow call your bluff?" de-
manded Jack.

'■ What else can I do?"

Jack shrugged his shoulders, then
strode toward the sluice. " O'Neill,"
he called. " Come here a minute."

The delegate did not budge. " Who.
are you?" he sneered.

" Never mind who I am. Come
here." Jack smiled grimly, giving his
command the suggestion of a dare; and
O'Neill, feeling himself challenged,
came cautiously forward.

" How much are they paying you for
this?" asked Jack -in a low voice.

" What you talking about? " exclaimed
O'Neill.

" I asked how much you were being
paid for making trouble here." \

" Paid ! "

" Keep cool ! "

O'Neill thrust his head forward.
" That's the way your kind of men al-
ways sneers at honest working men ! "
he exclaimed bitterly.

" Honest working men ! You're no
honest working man ! You're one of those
fellows who make honest working men
look like monkeys ! "

" I'll knock your block off in a min-
ute," raged O'Neill.

" Hold on ! I asked how much you
were paid, because I want to raise the
ante. I'll give you more than the other
fellows."

" You're talkin' through that Wild
West hat of yours. Who are you, any-
way? "

" I'm one of the owners of this prop-
erty." Jack paused. " And," he add-
ed, " my partner and I own just as
much of it as Aaron Garth. Do you
understand? "

" No," snarled O'Neill, " I don't un-
derstand."

" Well, are you ready to talk busi-
ness? "

" What do you mean by talking busi-
ness? "

Jack did a rapid problem in mental
arithmetic. After putting his share inta
the company, there had remained to his
credit at his Eastern bank a little more
than six thousand dollars. A third of
that he had spent for various purposes,
and the remaining four thousand was all
the free money he had in the world — or
was likely to have, unless the dam was
finished on time. He could not offer

344

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

it all ; and Larry, he knew, had few re-
sources. '

" Well," he said at last, " I mean,
say, a couple of thousand."

O'Neill laughed. " I guess there
ain't any business for you and me to
talk," he jeered.

" Perhaps I can make it more."

" Cut it out! "

O'Neill moved away, and Jack real-
ized that he must have struck far below
the sum promised by Briggs and Garth.
The knowledge of his helplessness made
him angry.

" Then get off this property," he
called after O'Neill. " Get off now, or
I'll put you off."

The delegate swung about. " You'll
put me off, will you?"

"Will you "go quietly?"

O'Neill laughed. " I won't go till I
get good and ready," he said.

Jack glanced at Murdock. The big
contractor remained in his former posi-
tion, watching the little drama with a
non-committal air. The men at the sluice
had stopped work entirely. Apparently
they were getting great enjoyment out
of the situation.

O'Neill looked ugly. His upper lip
was drawn up, and his teeth were more
prominent than ever. Apparently he
felt at home in the prospect of a rough-
and-tumble fight. He was shorter than
Jack, but heavier.

Nevertheless, Jack was committed.
He felt vaguely that he was making a
mistake in taking the aggressive, but
there seemed to be nothing else to do.
Walking slowly to O'Neill, he said :

" Come, now, I don't want any trou-
ble, but you have no right on this work.
Murdock has told you to go, and I have
told you to go."

O'Neill did not answer. Jack, still
smiling that grim smile, laid his right
hand on the delegate's shoulder. He did
this with full knowledge of what Avas
likely to follow.

At once, O'Neill made a vicious
swing with his right. Jack leaped back,
and the blow missed him, the force of
the swing being so great that O'Neill
spun around and almost lost his balance.
His failure enraged him. He lost all
his prudence and, just as Jack had hoped
he would, rushed forward.

He struck out, first with his left, and
immediately afterward with his right.
Perhaps he hardly expected the blows
to land. His intention must have been
to get to close quarters, where he could
rough it with his extra weight.

Jack warded off the two blows. He
had expected them. Almost at the same
instant he swung his left foot, so that
it struck the inside of O'Neill's advan-
cing left leg, a little below the knee.
The result was astounding. O'Neill
plunged heavily to the ground, striking
on his right side. His cheek plowed into
the soil.

Jack stepped aside. He had struck
no blow with his fists, and the kick had
been so quick that its connection with
the fellow's tumble might easily have
passed unnoticed by the onlookers.

Even if they had observed it, they
might think that he had lost his balance
parrying O'Neill's right-arm blow, and
had swung his foot around to save him-
self from falling. He did not wish to
seem even to defend himself aggressive-
ly against the delegate, and he was glad
to see that the faces of Murdock and
the workmen at the sluice showed merely
surprise.

O'Neill slowly rolled over on his back
and stared at Jack in a daze. He was
bruised and shaken.

" I don't often boast," said Jack in a
low voice; "but I'm going to tell you
something, O'Neill. I boxed ten rounds
once with a middleweight champion,
and — well, he didn't put me away.

"If you want any more trouble, just
come at me again. You'll go down and
out, next time. If you don't want more
trouble, clear out."

O'Neill was sitting up. " I don't
want any more," he said sullenly.
" There are better ways of fixing you."

" Thank you," replied Jack. " My
friends shall hear about that threat. If
anything happens to me, they'll give you
what's coming to you."

O'Neill got to his feet, and, without
a look or a word, walked away to the
corral. Two minutes later he was dri-
ving down the cation.

Murdock spoke up abruptly. " That
was a bad move," he said. " There's
sure to be trouble now."

" Not if vou know your business." re-

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

345

plied Jack. Then to the men at the
sluice : " I call you to witness that that
fellow attacked me."

" You laid your hand on him first,"
blurted Murdoch.

" Not in a way to hurt him. And
you, men, I hope you understand that
there isn't any objection to the man's
coming and talking to you about organ-
izing, so long as he doesn't bother you
while you're at work."

With that, he went back to. the draft-
ing-tent. More than ever, he was con-
cerned about Murdoch's attitude, for it
was obvious that the contractor would
have let the delegate have his way —
" even shaming himself weakly before his
own workmen rather than send the bully
about his business.

Jack was troubled, too, by the con-
sciousness that Larry, with his knowl-
edge of labor organizers, would have
handled the situation differently ; would
not have permitted O'Neill to come to
the point of physical violence ; would
have found a way to put him in his
place by making him ridiculous. But

(To be co

when Larry rode up from Larkin City
and heard the story he had no word of
blame.

" You did the natural thing." he said.

" But it isn't what you would have
done, Larry."

"How about things in the city?"
asked Jack. Then, as Larry hesitated :
" Don't be afraid to tell me."

" There isn't much to tell," said
Larry dejectedly. " Apparently, not a
contractor will be able to supply us with
men for six weeks. Garth has got all
the stone-masons tied up, building a new
stamping-mill."

" Garth ! "

Larry nodded.

" Did you see him. Larry? "

"Oh, no! What was the use?"

" Sure enough." said Jack. " Well,
buck up ! They haven't downed us yet,
Larry. Let's go right ahead with the
work, just as if nothing were wrong."

" Yes, that is what we will do." •

" And remember this, Larry : there's
always some way out, if a man keeps
his eyes open to find it."
n t i nued .)

NOT ENOUGH SLACK.

A SWITCHMAN and a brakeman were
once beating their way across the coun-
try. Both were without funds, but the switch-
man had nerve and managed to feed both of
them. However, he finally became dissatis-
fied and told the brakeman he must make
an effort himself. So the next house they
decided to hit the brakeman advanced,
knocked on the door and asked the lady of
the house :

" Could you give a poor man a bite ?- "
" Certainly," said the lady, and kicks a
bulldog out.

The brakeman started round the house
with the dog behind. Meanwhile the switch-
man stood outside the gate. Round came
pursued and pursuer.

" Open the gate ! " yells the brakeman.
•Around they went again.

" Open the gate ! " cried the brake agent,
but still the switchman stood.

" Why don't you open that gate ? " panted
the discouraged man.

" Can't do it, pal." he said. " You'll have
to give me more slack if you want to make
a drop of that bulldog." — Ex.

WHEN DOES A JOURNEY BEGIN?

AS to just when or at what point a trav-
eler's journey is considered as begun
is a question that has been put up to the
Interstate Commerce Commission to settle,
says The Railway and Engineering Maga-
zine. It is asserted for some lines that as
soon as a traveler's ticket has been punched
at the gate entrance to the train-house pre-

paratory to boarding a train, he is actually
on his way. Although he may change his
mind and not proceed farther, they refuse
to assent to a redemption of his ticket. An
administrative ruling by the commission is
expected ; and if this is not accepted as
final, a formal hearing may follow to test
matters.

A NINE OF ENGINEERS.

BY FREDERICK SANDERS.

Written for ''The Railroad Man's Magazine.'

_-^£TO doubt, you know, it has been often stated,
Jj^-'ta That baseball stars are greatly in demand;
And the scarcity each year grows unabated,

Though scouts have searched throughout this baseball
land.

There's a scheme, I've wondered why they haven't tried it,
For to me a very good one, it appears;
If I owned a team and wished to win the pennant,
I'd choose my men from railroad engineers.

Every player who has won fame on the diamond,

In his work relies on signs to some degree;
Every engineer that ever pulled a throttle

Is one well versed in " signals," you'll agree.
His ability the bases to encircle,

If his past you take as a criterion,
Would compare with any of the celebrated

He's trained in knowing how to " make a run."

At bat he would be rated with the leaders;

His eye is true, and steady are his nerves;
The strike-out route he would refuse to travel,

He's too experienced in " hitting curves."
Another fact the dope reveals, worth mention,

He'd grace the pitcher's box, so it would seem,
With qualities that go to make the majors;

He has the " speed," in other words, the " steam."

He'd make a " short stop " — this he oft has proven — *

He'd "pick up" everything that came his way;
And if, perchance, it was found necessary,

He'd " switch," and any " station " he could play.
He'd cause no demonstration on decisions

That were close and would affect the final score.
He'd show no willingness to "run the mogul "

Of the game — for he has been " called out " before.

346

$56,000,000 a Year for Ties.

BY RICHARD MAXWELL WINANS.

THE wooden tie on which the steel rail rests is one of the very important
factors of the right of way. It gives a road-bed elasticity as well
as solidity. And, strange to say, the wooden tie has proved superior
to the steel tie.

The tie problem is an all-important one with the railroads just now.
More trees must be grown or there will be a serious slump. There are
many people who own abandoned farms or waste stretches of land who will
learn something by reading this article.

Oak, and Particularly White Oak, Is the Preferred Wood ; but a Great

Many Other Varieties Are Used, and Some Have

To Be Treated Chemically.

URING the year 1908 the
railroads of the United
States — steam and electric
— purchased over 112,000,-
000 cross-ties, at an aver-
age of fifty cents a tie,
making a total of over $56,000,000 for
this part of railway road-beds alone.

And the cost of ties is not diminish-
ing. Indeed, it is increasing. For
serviceable stability, the wooden tie has
not been equaled — and it is frequently
reported that some day soon there may
be a famine, as the supply of tie-pro-
ducing timber is "slowly being exhausted.
James J. Hill, the veteran builder of
the Northwest, and Edward H. Harri-
man, the little colossus of roads, have
not overlooked the serious side of this
rumor. They have even proposed plant-
ing both sides of their track with trees
of the tie-producing varieties — making a.

parkway through which the trains would
pass. Of course, this is a project of some
magnitude and expense, and could only
be put into effect by men who build
roads not only for to-day, but for ages
to come.

Both are practical men, and if they
carry out this scheme it will be in a
practical way to a practical end, so the
thousands upon thousands of miles of
waste space beside their roads is to be
utilized to produce a supply of timber
for the future use of these roads. It is
probable that they expect to see ties laid
that come from the trees growing along
their right of way.

Railroads That Own Forests.

So far, only two or three of the rail-
roads of the United States have attempt-
ed to provide a future timber supply for

347

348

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

their roads. The Pennsylvania system
and the Santa Fe system are both man-
aging their timber lands in accordance
with the latest dictates of scientific for-
estry.

The Pennsylvania system has a large
supply of standing timber, which it
is gradually increasing through con-
stant annual plantings. The Santa
Fe system is planting many thousands of
eucalyptus - trees in southern California,
especially purchased for this purpose;
The Illinois Central Railway at one time
attempted the raising of hardy catalpa-
trees for cross-ties, but was unsuccessful.

If the increase in the visible supply
of lumber was in proportion to the in-
creased demand, there would be little
cause for any grave concern as to the
conservation of our forests. However,
the opposite condition exists. The sup-
ply decreases and the demand increases.
This is particularly true oNf the railroad
cross-tie and the timber of which it is
made. -

Over $56,000,000 a year for railroad
ties gives pause for thoughtful concern.
Suppose, for instance, that the consump-
tion of ties goes on doubling itself every
two years! Where would the material
come from to make them after a few
years ?

If the proportion of increase should
hold, the number purchased by the steam
and electric roads this year would amount
to 224,000,000; in 1911 they would use
448,000,000, and by 1913 there probably
would be required the enormous total
of 1,000,000,000 ties to supply the de-
mand.

Increase in Tra.ckage.

According to Poor's Manual, the total
trackage in the United States on Jan-
uary 1, 1905, amounted to 293,937 miles.
The same authority shows the total
trackage for 1908 to be 324,034 miles,
an increase of over 30,000 miles of
trackage in three years. And we are
still laying new rails and driving spikes
on newly constructed track !

From coast to coast electric lines, both
suburban trolley and high-speed, long-
distance lines, are being built to an ex-
tent that was not dreamed of ten years
ago.

There are many not directly inter-

ested in railroads who have looked far
enough into the future to see the neces-
sity of growing a supply of. tie timber
for future use. It is learned that Maude
Adams, the actress, who has a sense of
business foresight as well as the ability
to act, purchased some years ago a tract
of land on Long Island, which she plant-
ed to spruce.

This, she said, would be her drawing
bank - account for old age. She could
hardly have selected a better investment
— an investment that, without further
care or worry on her part, would go on
piling up principal as well as interest
for years to come.

Looking to the Future.

It is learned,x also, that many other in-
dividuals, both East and West, have
planted available tracts. By making an-
nual plantings, these tracts of land will
yield a constant source of income of very
. substantial proportions for many genera-
lions to come. The advantage of this
tree-growing is that once the land is set
to the trees, it requires very little atten-
tion until time to cut and market the
timber.

If fifteen hundred trees are set per
acre, a small tract of, say, two hundred
acres will carry 300,000 trees. In fif-
teen or twenty years, according to variety
and size, this acreage should cut three
or more ties to the tree, or at least 900,-
000 ties, and these, if sold at the average
price of fifty cents per tie, the present
rate, would put about $450,000 on the
credit side of the owner's bank-account.

Since land may be utilized for this
purpose that would be of little value for
cultivated crops, the original investment
would be of small moment. The cost of
the plantings could be reduced to a min-
imum by the grower raising his own seed-
lings.

1907, the Banner Year.

During 1907 the railroads purchased
153,700,000 cross-ties, the greatest con-
sumption of ties ever recorded. These
cost the railroads, at the point of pur-
chase, the neat sum of $76,850,000, or
an average of fifty cents. per tie. The
falling off in 1908 is accounted for bv

$56,000,000 A YEAR FOR TIES.

349

. the general business depression that af-
fected every line of industry.

There is a wide range of woods used
for cross-ties, there being listed separate-
ly fifteen classes or species. The oaks
are at present and always have been by
far the most important. For 1908 the
oak ties amounted to more than 48,000,-
000, or forty-three per cent of the total
quantity purchased. The reports show
that next to these ranked the Southern
yellow pines, with 21,500,000, or nine-
teen per cent of the total. In some pre-
vious years the per cent of oaks has
ranged close to fifty per cent and the
pines to twenty-five per cent.

Oak and Pine Most Used.

However, the oaks and pines furnished
nearly three-fourths of all the ties
bought by the railroad companies in
1908. Cedar and chestnut supplied
more than 8,000,000 ties each, with
Douglas fir trailing very close to that
number. About 4,000,000 tamarack ties
were used; nearly 3,500,000 of cypress
ties ; and, in round numbers, 3,000,000
each of Western pine and hemlock.
Spruce, beech, gum, lodge-pole pine,
white pine, and redwood, and several
other woods we're used in smaller quan-
tities.

This gives some idea of the range of
territory in which cross-tie timber may
be grown, there being hardly a tree-
growing State in the Union that is
not adapted to the growth of one or
more of the varieties.

While the reports show that the oaks,
and particularly the white oaks, have al-
ways been the preferred woods, and still
form a large per cent of the total, the
increasing price that the roads have to
-pay for satisfactory oak ties are forcing
them to look more and more for substi-
tutes.

A Variety of Woods.

This accounts for the variety of woods
that are now being used. White oak,
untreated, makes a tie which gives excel-
lent service for many years, but it has
been found possible to take woods which
are not naturally durable, give them a
treatment with either creosote or zinc-
chlorid to prevent decay, and thus get

much longer service from them than can
be secured from untreated oak.

Among the woods that have been most
largely treated so far are the yellow
pines, particularly loblolly pine, Douglas
fir, Western pine, and lodge-pole pine.

There are two kinds of woods listed
in this year's statistics for use as ties
which previously had not been reported
in sufficient quantity to justify listing
them separately. These are gum and
beech. In 1908 the purchase of gum ties
exceeded 260,000, while hardly more
than 15,000 of them had been reported
for any previous year. Of the beech"
ties, the purchase in 1908 amounted to
nearly 195,000, against but little more
than 50,000 in 1907.

These woods are not suitable unless
given preservative treatment. 4"heir in-
creased use, therefore, is one of the many
results of the progress of wood preserva-
tion in the United States. For many
years beech has been one of the prin-
cipal woods used for ties in Europe,
where its value, when given chemical
treatment, was long ago recognized.

It is said that it is not uncommon for
European roads to secure from twenty
to thirty years' service from beech ties.
Untreated, they would be absolutely use-
less.

More Ties Needed.

As far back as 1905, at least a dozen
American roads were conducting experi-
ments in preservative treatment of ties.
At present nearly twenty-five per cent
of the ties purchased are given one of
the several preservative treatments.

The hemlock and tamarack ties are
among the cheapest used, being listed in
the government statistics at a cost of
thirty-three and thirty-six cents each,
respectively. .The Chicago and North-
western Railway, however, estimates that
these ties, including freight and labor
charges, cost, untreated, when laid for
use west of the Mississippi, about sev-
enty-five cents apiece.

When treated with zinc-chlorid the
cost is about twelve cents per tie, ma-
king the total cost of the treated tie
eighty-seven cents.

On the basis of an annual charge, the
following comparative statistics are de-

350

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

rived — the basic data used estimates the
life of an untreated tie at five years,
with an interest rate of four per cent.

Being almost impervious to the pre-
servative fluid, hemlock and tamarack
are the hardest and most expensive of
all woods to treat. With the more po-
rous woods better results are obtained,
and the life of the tie is increased in
proportion.

Just at the present moment, the great
problem is to get the ties to treat ; the
problem of a supply to meet the demand
— a demand that will naturally increase
with every year, and that will advance
prices as the supply diminishes.

Only one-fifth of our forest area is in
national or State forests, and that four-
fifths is either in private hands or likely
to pass into private hands. Out of a

total of 700,469,760 acres of wooded
area, the government owns but 144,896,-
485 ajcres, with 2,582,711 acres in State
forests, and the remaining 554,313,511
acres are in private control or ' in unre-
served public forests.

It is claimed that the average age of
the trees that are being felled this year
is not less than one hundred and fifty
years. The lumberman could not afford
to replace them, even were he blessed with
the prospect of unequaled longevity.

In consequence, there arises the need
that the State and national governments,
which do not need to look for so high
a rate of interest as the private investor,
and which are concerned with the pro-
motion of the general welfare, should
assume the responsibility of providing a
future supply of timber.

HOLLAND'S "CONTROLLED" RAILWAYS.

Where the Principle of Government Ownership Is Resulting in a

Severe Economic Problem.

IF recent newspaper accounts can be relied
upon it would seem that the railroads of
Holland are in danger of being legislated,
or " controlled," out of existence. Holland,
according to these reports, has carried the
principle of government control of railroads
to a great extreme, at the same time without
accepting any responsibility in the way of
guarantees, and without showing any desire
to take the logical step of government
ownership that its course, in the long run,
would render inevitable.

The government itself owns 1,107 niiles of
line, which is operated in two separate sys-
tems by two private companies. The gov-
ernment has the fullest power of control,
and proceeds on unlimited competition.

The companies cannot make any changes
in their schedules or tariffs without first re-
ceiving the permission of the minister of
railways. The result is a congestion of tin-
remunerative train service.

Economies cannot be effected by mutual
agreement, as this means of serving the
public and paying dividends is frowned upon
by the government department. If it so de-
sires, the government may take over the rail-
roads any time up to 1915 by giving the
companies one year's notice, and on the
other hand the companies may insist on
government purchase if their dividends are
no more than three and one-half per cent
for two years in succession.

In 1907, the dividend was down to the
prescribed minimum, and 1908 was little
better. Therefore, the administration, find-
ing itself perilously close to being compelled
to take a step it wished to avoid, has ap-
pointed a royal commission to investigate
t! e situation, and it is believed that its cast-
iro and uneconomical policy will be suf-
fice tly revised to permit the companies to
pa} • fficient dividend to keep them on their
fee , even if tottering.

Recent Railroad Patents.

BY FORREST G . SMITH.

Describing an Air-Cooler for Electric Locomotives, an Automatic Turn-
table, a New Idea in the Construction of Dump -Cars, a
Decided Improvement in Car- Fenders, More Switch and
Point Inventions, and a Valuable Contrivance for Train-Shed
Ventilation.

TO COOL THE MOTORS.

Device for Overcoming the Tendency to Heat

Shown by Electric Locomotives

at High Speed.

ONE disadvantage incident to the use of
the electric locomotive lies in the fact
that the motors soon become overheated
under high speed. A device to accomplish
this has been invented and patented (No.
929,587, July 27, 1909) by Max R. Hanna,
of Schenectady, New York, and has been
adopted by the leading electric company in
the United States.

It consists of one or more fan-casings
which are mounted in the cab of the loco-
motive, and are preferably driven from the
motors themselves. Leading from these
blower casings are conduits which conduct
the air blast generated therein to a point
beneath the locomotive, where it is directed
upon the motors, thus keeping them cool
during the entire time of travel.

When it is considered that even a small
blower-fan will give quite a blast of air
under high speed, it will be appreciated that
the device is entirely practicable.

GUARD FOR SWITCHES.

Will Replace a Costly and Uncertain Design

with One That Will Last Longer and

Be Cheaper to Install.

AVERY decided improvement in foot-
guards for railway switches and the
like is disclosed in a patent (No. 929,986,
August 3, 1909) issued to Frederick W.
Rizer, of Chicago, Illinois. As is well

known, metallic castings are now employed
for this purpose, and require to be bolted or
spiked in place and frequently renewed at
considerable expense.

Mr. Rizer, however, has conceived the
idea of filling in such spaces as are liable
to catch and hold the foot of a person with
concrete or some other material which may
be applied in a similar manner and will
harden when allowed to set. Such a filling
will of course pack beneath the heads or
treads of the rails, and will not be liable to
become loosened. This will also last for
almost an indefinite period without renewal
or attention of any sort. At the time of
filling in the material, a channel or groove
is formed in the surface for the flanges of
the car-wheels where necessary.

FOR TURNING THE TABLE.

An Automatic Device to Render Easier the

Work of Roundhouse and Yard

Men.

THE operation of the turntables now in
use is laborious, to say the least, and
frequently a comparatively large force of
men is required for this purpose. It has
been proposed to employ some mechanical
motor suitable for the purpose of rotating
the tables, but - while in this instance the
necessity of several yardmen would be elimi-
nated, considerable expense would be in-
volved in installing the motors and mechan-
ism incident to their use.

Michael J. Leonard, of Long Branch, New
Jersey, has secured a patent (No. 928,675,
July 20, 1909) which discloses quite a new
idea in turntables, and one which seems to
fill the bill in every particular. In fact, the

35i

352

THE RAILROAD MAN'S. MAGAZINE.

turntable invented by Mr. Leonard is almost
entirely automatic in its action, and requires
but a single attendant.

The table is so constructed that when the
locomotive is run upon it, the pilot of the
locomotive engages with a trip interposed
in its path, and by the pull exerted upon
this trip, 'a weight which is located beneath
the turntable is pulled from one end of a
beam upon which it is mounted toward the
other end, and past the axis, or center, of
the table.

This weight then acts to rotate the table
at the proper speed until a brake is applied
by the attendant, whereupon the engine is
free to move onto another track, leaving the
table in its original condition for further
use.

Means are provided for locking the table
at the proper points, and are under the con-
trol, also, of the attendant.
J*

A SIMPLE DUMP-CAR.

Will Relieve the Strain from the Weakest

Part and Put Operation Under

Better Control.

IN nearly every form of dumping-car
now in use, the entire weight of the
load is sustained by the mechanism employed
for raising and lowering the dumping doors,
and where such means include chains among
its other elements, a weak link will fre-
quently result in premature discharge of
the load and possibly a derailment. Where
such is not the case, on the other hand,
means such as latches are employed, but it
is necessary for the train crew to operate
them manually, and* this requires considera-
ble time.

To overcome these disadvantages and at
the same time to provide means which will
act automatically to lock the doors when
swung up to closed position, Harvey Allen,
of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has in a device
covered by patent No. 929,268, July 27, 1909,
a combined dump-car door operating and
holding or supporting means.

The construction of the car disclosed in
the patent to Mr. Allen is of the ordinary
type, except that a shaft is mounted along
each side of the car near the bottom, and
to each shaft are connected chains which
connect also with the doors which are to
be raised and lowered. In the ordinary
form of car, these chains connect directly
with the doors, and other means is provided
for holding the doors in closed position, but
in this device a hoop-shaped link is con-
nected to each door and to each chain.

When the shafts are rotated to wind up

the chains and raise the doors to closed po-
sitions, these hooked-shaped links are drawn
over the shafts and act as supporting hooks
for the doors so that the chains are relieved

of all strain.

A FENDER THAT FENDS.

Following the Course of the Trucks, It Is as

Effective on Curves as on Straight

Track.

IT is very probable that as many, if not
more, persons are struck by street rail-
way cars while on curves as when on a
straight stretch of track. When this oc-
curs the risk is even greater, for the reason
that the present fenders are- fixed with re-
spect to the platforms of the cars, and swing
out beyond the curve, leaving a clear space
for one to fall beneath the wheels.

Also persons are frequently struck by the
fenders as they swing out beyond the track
line. With the object in view of remedy-
ing this defect of the present fenders, Henry
D. Gardy, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has
patented (No. 929,205, July 27, 1909) a con-
struction of fender which will turn with
the car trucks so as to at all times follow
the track.

This fender is of substantially the ordi-
nary construction except that it is swiveled
to turn upon the car platform and has con-
nections with the forward truck which act
to turn it, when the car is rounding a curve,
so as to follow the track and more nearly
the general line of travel of the car.

Notwithstanding the fact that the fender
is so mounted, it may be tripped as readily
as can the ordinary fender, by the motor-
man, to drop upon the track.

NEW POINT CONNECTION.

Device Which Overcomes a Long-Standing

Difficulty and Is of Simple and

Effective Construction.

IT is a difficult matter to make adjust-
ments for wear of switch-points under
present conditions, owing to the character
of the connection between the switch-point
and the switch-rod, this connection being
such that either no adjustment is provided
for at all, or only a very insecure one. In
a patent (No. 928,931, -"July 27, 1909) issued
to Phillip B. Blish, of Chicago, and Charles
M. Bruff, of Chicago Heights, Illinois,
there is disclosed a novel form of connec-
tion for switch-point and rod which will

RECENT RAILROAD PATENTS.

353

not only allow for adjustment, but will hold
the parts securely in set position.

In carrying out the invention, a hole is
drilled in the switch-rod, and a box-like
sleeve is fitted over the rod and has its
tipper and under surfaces roughened or
toothed. These sides of the sleeve are also
slotted and a bolt is passed through the
slots and the opening in the rod, and also
through the ends of a clip,- which is fitted
over the sleeve and has toothed 'ends bearing
upon the toothed surfaces of the sleeve.

When the bolt is tightened, the sleeve will
be securely held upon the rod at the posi-
tion to which it is adjusted, and as this
sleeve has connection with the switch-point,
the point is also held at adjustment. The
value of the device lies in the fact that
there is no possibility of the sleeve slipping,
and the switch-point is therefore held posi-
tively in adjusted position upon the rod.

A MOTORMAN'S FRIEND.

Improved Vestibule Window-Gleaner for Rid-
ding Front Glass of Snow and Ice
Without Exposing Operator.

CONSIDERABLE annoyance is caused
the motormen of street railway cars
during the winter months by the accumula-
tion of snow and ice on the windows of the
car platforms or vestibules, and where time
cannot be spent in removing this snow and
ice at intervals, the motorman is freqtiently
compelled, in order to see ahead, to open the
window and subject himself to the cold.

While a number of devices have been
patented for the purpose of removing this
accumulation without the necessity of open-
ing the window, they have nearly all been
so complicated as to render them imprac-
ticable. A very simple, cheap, and efficient
device for this purpose is, however, shown
in a patent (No. 930,185, August 3, 1909)
issued to S. Jones, of Finleyville, Pennsyl-
vania.

In carrying out the invention disclosed in
the patent, a short sleeve is fixed in one
lower corner of the front window frame of
the car vestibule, and a short shaft is mount-
ed to rock in this sleeve and carries at its
outer end an arm having secured thereto a
strip of felt or other suitable wiping ma-
terial.

Normally, this arm is held in raised posi-
tion beside the near side of the window-
frame and practically out of view, but by
turning' the shaft slightly, the arm may be
made to sweep across the window-pane, re-
moving any snow or ice that may have col-
lected thereon. A spring holds the arm

11 RR

raised, and as soon as the shaft is released
this spring returns the arm to its normal
position and holds it there.

GOVERNOR TROLLEY-POLE.

Air Cylinder Which Will Control the Pole

When Wheel Leaves the Wire, and Will

Be Easy To Keep in Order.

IN mounting trolley-poles upon cars, it is
usual to provide some sort of spring-
controlled means for preventing undue up-
ward movement of the trolley-pole, or to
allow the pole to drop after it has swung
up after leaving the wire.

Such means is of course provided to pre-
vent the pole coming in contact with the
Overhead hangers for the trolley-wire. A
very simple means for accomplishing this
result, and one which will not require any
considerable expense to install, is disclosed
in a patent (No. 930,698, August 10, 1909)
issued to Major D. Self, -of Bessemer,
Alabama.

Mr. Self contemplates mounting upon the
roof of the car an air cylinder, the piston
of which is connected directly to the trolley-
pole. A pipe leads to this piston, and in
the pipe is a valve which has its stem pro-
jecting into a slot in an arm hung also from
the pole-
As soon as the pole jumps the wire, the
sudden upward movement of the arm opens
the valve and allows air to enter the cylin-
der, thereby immediately lowering the pole.
The usual rope connected with the pole is
then pu+ied to further lower the pole, where-
upon the valve will be closed and the wheel
may be replaced on the wire.

LETTING IN FRESH AIR.

Simple Mechanism by Which Ventilation

May Be Secured Without Constant

Exposure to Weather.

HENRY J. SCHLACKS, of Chicago, Illi-
nois, has patented (No. 929,115, July
27, 1909) an improvement in roundhouse
construction which, will provide for perfect
ventilation, not only of roundhouses, but
also of train-sheds and other similar struc-
tures to which it is applied. In the roof
of the train-shed or other building of like
character there are provided a number of
openings or flues for the escape of smoke
and gases given off from the smoke-stacks
of locomotives, and over each of these
flues there is mounted a cap or shutter.

THE LEAP OF OLD 637.

BY EMMET F. HARTE.

There Was a Gap in the Trestle — But
She Got Over It Without Much Trouble.

ALF an hour before train
time, I passed through the
gate and sat on a baggage-
truck near the iron fence
in the Ninth and Broad-
way Streets station, Louis-
ville. The train nearest me — eight elec-
tric-lighted palaces, besides mail and
baggage-cars, drawn by a 100-ton L. and
N. racer — -was the one by which I should
depart.

I became aware of a small, gray man
sauntering along -by the big engine — a
grizzled, stocky figure of a man with a
slight roll in his stride, seemingly en-
grossed in his own thoughts. He passed
along, stopped, examined her outlines
with an admiring eye, patted her pon-
derous cylinder as one might pet a child,
and stood listening to the purr of her
steam. Presently he noticed me, and
strolled over to the truck.

"Ain't she a beauty?" he queried,
jerking his thumb in the direction of the
engine. I assented, and after a pause,
to keep up conversation, mentioned that
the weather was warm.

" Quite so," he said. " Quite so, but
it would be cool on a moving train.
Mighty fine to lean out of a cab and
watch her throw the right of way be-
hind her on a night like this; mighty
fine ! "

I remarked that he must have leaned
from a cab in his time, and he nodded
with some pride.

" Yes," he said, " I wrestled the re-
verse-lever and eased the steam into the
cylinders on one of them for sixteen
years. Not a big girl like that one,
though ; there wasn't any like her in my
day — 1 quit in '86. I come n down
here once in a while to hear the sputter

354

of an engine and to pat one on the side
sort of familiar, but I haven't been in
a cab or even aboard a train for twenty
years. I run a grocery-store," he added
with an apologetic air, as if it was an
occupation of small renown and to be
mentioned without enthusiasm.

He relapsed into silence, and I
waited.

" Excuse me," I said finally. " but I
am waiting for you to tell me about it."

"About what?" he asked.

" Well, about — your most thrilling ex-
perience ! " I said.

" Never had. many thrills," he said.
" Used to have lots of hard work and
plenty of wrecks and very little pay ; but
thrills, as you call them, we didn't pay
much attention to. I worked on the old
C. O. and S. W., a rickety old road in
those days, but some better, I under-
stand, since the I. C. got it.

" It was fierce then, though; track so
loose that after a rain we could squirt
water from under the ties into a dog's
eyes twenty feet away. The coach win-
dows used to rattle and clatter, and the
bell on the engine never stopped

" Johnny Westover, who used to run
the accommodation from Cecilia to
Louisville and back, went down to
Charleston about the time they had the
earthquake, and they said he woke up
when things'began to dance and rattle,
and said, ' Muldraugh's Hill, by Gad-
frey ! ' He thought he was on- his old
run.

" We used to get hot boxes regular
right by a big watermelon patch ; and
while we'd stop to cool, Pete and Sam,
our two darky brakemen, would go over
and get some big ripe ones.

" We rarely ever got from one end of

THE LEAP OF OLD 637.

355

the division to another without going
in the ditch ; and for a gondola to
jump off, run a hundred yards or so on
the ties, and then jump back on again
at the first curve, was so common that
half the time we never knew it unless
a truck happened to turn sideways and
tear up the track; then we'd find it out
for about twelve hours.

" In the winter we'd buck -snow, and

there that was built like a culvert —
nothing above the stringers but ties and
rails, not even a hand-rail.

" The Ohio was backed up in the Salt,
chock-full, and there wasn't any bridge
in sight — just black, lapping water. Old
man Morrison and me went down and
set sticks to see how fast she was rising,
and she was crawling pretty fast.

" ' What'll we do?' said the old man

I PULLED HER WIDE OPEN, AND SHE TOOK IT LIKE A HUNTED DEER.

in the spring the Ohio would get on
a rampage, and we'd get laid out by
floods.

" One time we got into West Point
about midnight, and the river was out
in the bottoms. There used to be an
old wooden drawbridge across the Salt

— we hadn't been home for forty-eight
hours, and if we got hung up there we
might be out for two weeks more.

" ' Cross her, if the bridge is there,'
I said ; and we all climbed on, and I
let 637 walk out on that bridge mighty
slow and eyeful, with the crew ready

356

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

to pile off if she dropped. The bridge
was there, all right, four inches under
water, and we got across.

"Old 637! There was a good old
■engine! She knew me just as well as
a horse or dog knows their masters, and
she never went back on me, not even the
last trip when I quit the road. She
killed two engineers after I left her, and
she's gone to the scrap-pile long ago, but
she never did me a mean trick in all
those years.

" How did I happen to quit? Yes,
I know old-timers are not supposed to
ever quit, but sometimes they do. See
these gray hairs? I reckon I got most
of them one night on that same old Mul-
draugh's Hill.

" You know how the old line winds
in and around that old knob and all
those old wooden trestles. There used
to be nine of them trestles — some away
up in the air, too — built on short curves ;
one had a reverse curve in the trestle
itself.

" I was pulling a local freight that
year, and we had quite a bit of business
along' the old Chesapeake, hauling dried
apples, tobacco, sorghum, and such like,
and we never had any schedule except
to start out on — we got back when we
could. Ben Austin was running the
way car, and the two darkies, Pete and
Sam, were braking.

" I had a fireman named Brady, who
was young and enthusiastic when he
wasn't drunk, and a hoodoo to the train
when he was, according to the darkies.
Whenever Brady came out loaded, Pete
would roll his eyes and say, ' 'N other
wreck this trip,' and shake his head.

" That last trip was sure unlucky.
Brady was drunk, two cars went into
the ditch down by Big Clifty, we killed
a cow at East View, and a gang-
plank broke at Bethlehem and let a
barrel or something fall on Austin's leg,
mashing him up considerable. We were
anywhere from eight to ten hours late
when we hit the hill, and I shut old 637
off when we started down and sat back,
contented like to let her roll easy.

"It was about seven o'clock of a sum-
mer evening, quiet and peaceful, the fire-
man standing in the gangway enjoying
the breeze ; everybody feeling comfort-
able except Bob Austin, who was nurs-

ing his smashed leg back in the caboose.
We had a pretty fair train, twelve or
fifteen cars, mostly loaded, and we
pushed along about thirty-five miles an
hour, snug and cozy.

" Down around the hill we bowled,
over the trestles, and around the rocky
points. I was thinking about supper
and a smoke on my back porch at home
when we came out of a short curve in
a shallow cut and out onto one of those
hundred-foot high bridges, and my
breath stopped.

" About the middle, the bridge was
burned in two.

" It took me about a second to pull
a screech for brakes, yell for Brady to
jump, throw the engine into the back
motion, and give her steam, but in that
second we were out on the trestle, and
the valley looked a long ways below.
The fireman jumped before we had
hardly left the embankment, and wasn't
hurt. The rest of the crew got off,
Austin with them, some way, before the
caboose got out of the cut.

" As for me and 637, we were out
in the air ; behind us, a loaded train
shoving too hard to be stopped ; before
us, a gap in the trestle, where for three
or four feet everything was gone but the
rails. When I saw how it stood, I got
up and threw her into the forward like
a maniac — I guess I was crazy.

" Then I gave her steam, and Ave
jerked away from the train like a horse
when you cut it with the whip. Then,
when we reached the gap, I pulled her
wide open, and she took it like a hunted
deer. She shivered one instant, settled,
and sunk — then she rose and leaped, sir,
she leaped across, and we went out on
the firm track beyond.

" The rest of the train went through,
the box cars dropping and crashing, end
over end, to the valley below, and the
farmers used them for kindling wood
afterward.

" I took my engine in and resigned.
I haven't been in a cab since. I read
about these young lads with their Twen-
tieth Century Limiteds, and their racing
for the mail contracts, and all that, but
it's too hard on the nerves.

" I like to come down occasionally and
kind of snuggle up to an engine and
hear her breathe, but that's all."

What the Hoboes Cost Yearly.

BY CHARLTON C. ANDREWS.

A GRIM way in which the importance and scope of the tramp problem
may be brought home to the general public is in the perusal of the
analyzed accident reports of any large railroad. It will be found
that the bad name that American roads have achieved in the matter of
casualties is very largely due to the tramp evil. More " trespassers " are
killed or injured than any other class of railroad users — -often more than all
the other classes put together.

The Harmful, Unnecessary Tramp, Does Many Things to Hinder the

Country's Transportation and Increase the Cost

of Living.

HILE the season for

the annual outing

of the underworld is

still with us it would

be well if its prey,

the public, could be

induced to bestow upon the subject a

passing thought or so. Lack of thought

has permitted a condition to develop in

the United States without a parallel else-
where, a condition which has grown
steadily worse until it has become unbear-
able.

It is a condition of universal concern,
for no community is too remote to escape
the visits of, no one too influential to be
safe from, none too humble to avoid the
imposts levied by, the predatory hosts

357

358

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

of criminals which, under the convenient
incognito of " tramps," combine plunder
with pleasure on their summer prowl of
vicious indolence.

For some incomprehensible reason the
popular mind seems unable to disabuse
itself of the idea that the tramp is an
amiable, harmless creature, whose ex-
istence is to be regarded as a joke, or at
the worst as a remote impersonal inflic-
tion, like the tariff. Possibly this may
be ascribed in part to the comic supple-
ment of which the tramp is the favorite
hero, and to persistent exploitation of
these vagrants in magazine articles.

Possibly the facts herein set forth may
serve to show that, so far from being
harmless, tramps have become the most
insufferable plague that ever preyed upon
a supine people. Perhaps the truest ex-
planation of the easy indulgence with
which tramps are treated is the popular
belief that, since they travel by beating
their way on railroads, the -matter is one
which concerns, and must be remedied
by, the railroads alone.

Railroad managements might be par-
doned for sharing that belief, for they
have been left to cope with the plague
of tramps without assistance from any-
body, and least of all from those who are
paid to enforce the laws.

Encouraging a Nuisance.

The theory that the railroads are in
duty bound to carry, free of charge or
molestation, every vagabond and criminal
who feels the need of a change of- scene,
is even more firmly held in the country
than in the city. The rural justice usu-
ally goes through the farce of imposing
a nominal fine upon the tramps brought
before him, which is then suspended on
condition that the culprit take the next
train out of the town.

The chief of police of an Ohio city
simply refuses to lock up tramps taken^
to him by railroad police. The Governor
of an" Eastern State,' peculiarly afflicted
by tramps, declines to commission rail-
road policemen as State detectives, thus
rendering them liable to arrest for carry-
ing concealed weapons if they are found
to have a revolver in their possession,
and the municipal police have not been
slow to take advantage of every oppor-

tunity in their power to humiliate rail-
road policemen.

Thus sustained by public opinion, in-
dorsed by official approval, and backed
up by the strong arm of the law in the
principle that the railroad is the legiti-
mate runway of the underworld, the
tramp has nourished until there is to-day
in the United States a floating army of
five hundred thousand criminal vagrants,
and the number is rapidly increasing.

The Opposing Force.

Riding on trains, intimidating, often
assaulting, and not infrequently murder-
ing trainmen are by no means the only
offenses of the tramps. All the millions
of dollars' worth of valuable goods re-
tailed in the stores of the land must
pass over the railroads before they reach
the consumer, and these goods in tran-
sit are at the mercy of the tramps along
the line, who are not slow to help them-
selves to what they want — and their
wants are not modest.

Three years ago an average of three
hundred to four hundred cars a month
were robbed on a single road entering
New York. The value of the stolen mer-
chandise on this line footed up approxi-
mately half a million dollars a year.

So serious has the situation become
that every railroad in the land is obliged
to maintain a police force of its own,
or a corps of "special agents," or some-
thing of the kind. Whatever be the
euphemism by which this force is desig-
nated on the pay-roll, its use is to do po-
lice work, guarding the track against
train-wreckers, Avatching for car burglars
who steal A-aluable merchandise, protect-
ing passengers from pickpockets at
crowded stations and on trains, and from
sneak-thieves who take valuables, cloth-
ing, and baggage from sleeping-cars.

The railroad systems centering at New
York City alone are obliged to maintain
an army of two thousand policemen to
protect their property and that of their
patrons.

Some idea of the difficulties encoun-
tered in discharging this responsibility
may be gathered from the following ex-
tract from the last annual report of the
chief of police of one of the trunk lines.
As it was not expected by the writer that

WHAT THE HOBOES COST YEARLY

359

any eyes but those of his superior officer
would ever see the report, every word in
it may be taken at its face value.

Hobo Fatalities.

" The train rider problem is one which
calls for a radical change in
existing laws. Trunk line 0
railroads have become the
popular routes of travel
for escaping criminals, yegg-
men, who are the most dan-
gerous class in the coun-
try to-day, and a young
tough element Avho find they
can obtain free transporta-
tion from town to town in
this manner.

" The fact that the Penn-
sylvania Railroad alone re-
ported having killed six
hundred and fifty-seven and
injured seven hundred and
ninety-one train riders dur-
ing the last year shows the
desperate character of this
class. The fear of death or
injury does not deter them
from travel, neither does the
fear of consequences prevent
them from killing any one
who interferes with them.
The local courts will do
nothing with train riders
on account of the expense
their punishment would in-
volve ; they simply pass them
along to the next town,
where the same treatment is
given.

" Conditions at Buffalo
and Jersey City are bad, and
are growing steadily worse.
During the year fully a doz-
en different officers have
been shot at in the dis-
charge of their duty by car burglars
in the Buffalo yards alone. At Jersey
City officers have been shot at repeatedly
by armed mobs of thieves, which enter
the yards in daylight and shoot at officers
or whoever attempts to interfere with
them.

" The leniency with which the courts
deal with these people when arrested is
responsible for this condition. It is

growing worse, and the time is coming
when our men will have to be greatly in-
creased and heavily armed, or we shall
have to abandon the property to the
thieves. We are continually cautioning
our men not to use firearms ; but it is a
question how long we can do so and ex-

HE MANAGED TO ESCAPE AFTER A LONG CHASE IN WHICH
FIFTEEN SHOTS WERE FIRED.

pect them to do their duty and effectively
protect the property of the company."

Desperate Remedies.

This is pretty strong language, but it
is far from telling the whole story of the
plague of tramps. The plain truth is
that the situation became so desperate
last year that one of the trunk lines

360

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

was compelled to add a pack of blood-
hounds to its police force to protect the
lives of employees and patrons from train-
wreckers, car burglars, thieves, highway-
men, and other desperate " tramps."

Another line was so hard pressed that
it was finally obliged to arm its police
force at Buffalo with shotguns. Another
line quickly followed suit, and now all
railroad police at Buffalo are to be
armed with short-barrelled shotguns.

At short range a shotgun is more
likely to knock a man out, yet is not so
apt to kill as a revolver. Besides it
affords more chances of a hit, and a rail-
road policeman in the lonely wilderness
of tracks around Buffalo needs all the
chances he can get.

Captain Weber, of the New York Cen-
tral police, caught a notorious car thief
in the act of plundering a car of mer-
chandise in the Buffalo yards last Octo-
ber. He slipped upon the thief and
clinched with him, whereupon the thief
shot him twice in the chest.

By a miracle of good luck both bullets
struck at an angle that sent tliem plowing
around his ribs to come out of his back
instead of passing through his heart, as
they were intended. Still holding on to
his prisoner the captain drew his own
revolver and shot the fellow in the eye.

Captor and captive, still locked in each
other's arms, went down and lay there
till help came. The captain's bullet
also failed to inflict a mortal wound, so
both he and his prisoner recovered.

A Dangerous Occupation.

This was not the end f the matter,
however. So emboldened have the tramps
who have made Buffalo their temporary
headquarters become, and so determined
are they to retain possession of a hunting-
ground which affords such rich plunder,
that they visit summary vengeance on all
who "attempt to interfere with them.

As soon as Captain Weber was re-
ported to have left the hospital and re-
turned to duty, an ambush was prepared
for him. One night, in a lonely part
of the yards, a Lake Shore policeman
who resembled him was shot and mor-
tally wounded.

The railroad police ■ have many such
experiences, for the tramp, indeed, does

not hesitate to kill any one who inter-
feres with him. Officer Wilson was shot
and killed while in the discharge of his
duty in the yards of the Erie Railroad
at Bergen, New Jersey, four years ago.
Five negro tramps who attempted to cap-
ture a freight-train at Sparta, Illinois,
last July, shot and instantly killed a
deputy sheriff who came to the relief
of the tram crew.

Unscrupulous Wreckers.

Lieutenant William Kane, of the Erie
police, captured a giant negro in the act
of robbing a car at Goshen one day last
summer. While taking his prisoner to
jail the negro snatched the officer's club
and knocked him down.

The negro then sprang upon Kane
and began chewing his ear, only pausing
to announce that he meant to kill him.
As Kane's right hancb had been ampu-
tated at the wrist he was at something
of a disadvantage. The coroner's jury
which investigated the matter, found that
the lieutenant was justified in shooting
the negro dead as he held him fiat on his
back biting and choking him.

Several trains were wrecked by tramps
last year, and a great many more at-
tempts were frustrated only by the vigi-
lance of the railroad police. An Erie
policeman saw a man bending over a
frog. Running up he found a pig of
iron wedged in the frog.

As a passenger-train was due in less
than five minutes the officer stopped to
remove the iron. This gave the wrecker
a good start, and he managed to escape
after a long chase in which fifteen shots
were fired. In another attempt at wreck-
ing on the same road an unexpected
freight happened along ahead of the pas-
senger - train for which the obstruction
was intended, preventing the accident.

Even Commit Murder.

Fifteen train robberies, accompanied
by four murders, were committed in the
United States last year by wandering
criminals known to the unsophisticated
public as " tramps." No one will ever
know how many other robberies and
murders were committed by the same
class, nor could any good purpose be

WHAT THE HOBOES COST YEARLY.

361

served by compiling a catalogue of such
crimes. If such as have been mentioned
are not sufficient to show the tramp in
his true character, any seeker after infor-
mation can get all he wants by applying
to any one who has ever been brought in
contact with tramps.

There is a popular impression that the
tramp is a downtrodden creature, whom
misfortune has followed until it has de-
prived him of any inordinate appetite
for work, but who is harmless and would
soon become an ornament to society if
he only had a chance. Nothing could
be further from the truth.

It may be true that occasionally some
honest hard-working man, out of employ-
ment and out of money, may undertake
to beat his way to another town in the
hope of finding a job. But the moment
he takes to the box car or the truck, he
becomes, perforce, the traveling com-
panion of the dregs of humanity, for the
railroad is the ever-ready refuge, the
safest retreat, the surest means of escape
for criminals of every degree.

Wasted Sympathy.

By the time your honest workman has
reached his destination he has lost his
taste for toil. In a month, like the rest
of the vagrants with whom he now trains
by choice, he is not worth the. powder it
would take to shoot him. He is simply
a pest.

The railroad police must be conceded
to have some opportunities for gathering
first-hand impressions. They made thir-
ty-five thousand arrests on four trunk
lines last year for offenses running the
whole gamut of the criminal code from
stealing rides to burglary, train-wrecking,
and murder. They will tell you the
tramp is such from choice, and that he is
in the profession to stay.

Unless he has recently been robbed by
his fellow travelers the tramp usually
has his kit, consisting of a pocket-mirror,
razor, soap, needle and thread, and other
trinkets of that sort, thus showing that
he is out for the season. He also has a
weapon, perhaps a murderous bludgeon,
made out of two feet of wire cable, load-
ed with lead and wrapped with gummed
cloth such as is used by electricians, per-
haps brass knuckles or a knife, or more

likely a revolver, which may be taken as
an indication that he is not out for the
good of society.

Criminals by Instinct.

Wherever they may be found, gangs
of tramps may safely be set down as
criminals. A pertinent illustration of
this fact may be found in an incident in
the work of Special Agent J. M. Bing-
ham, of the Chesapeake and Ohio Rail-
road.

Hearing that a gang of thirteen tramps
was camped at Olive Hill, Kentucky,
Bingham boarded a freight-train to visit
them. After the custom of their kind,
the tramps kept on the move, so that
Bingham had a long chase.

One night, while riding a freight-
train, the surest way to find the men he
wanted, Bingham saw a camp-fire near
the track at Lewis, West Virginia.
Summoning some tool-car men to help
him, Bingham surrounded and surprised
the camp.

In due time the entire gang was land-
ed in Cattlesberg, Kentucky, but there
was no evidence against them. As they
could only be held four days without
some sort of definite charge being made
against them, Bingham was obliged to
move his prisoners to another jail while
he kept up his search for evidence.

Being still unsuccessful when the sec-
ond period of four clays was up, there
■was another move to a new jail, and
another. After the fourth move, Super-
intendent Bowden sent for -the special
agent.

After glowering at the officer a mo-
ment, the superintendent inquired :

" Mr. Bingham, are you running a
hobo excursion? "

" You bet I am. I am running an
excursion to the penitentiary, and I
think there will be just about one more
side trip between here and our destina-
tion."

He was right, for before the time limit
at the next jail was up evidence had
been found that his prisoners had robbed
some cars at Ashland Junction. Then
one of the gang turned State's evidence,
told the whole story, and confessed that
he and his companions constituted the
notorious " Lake Shore Gang " of car

362

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

thieves, thugs, and all-around despera-
does. The excursion ended with a sen-
tence of seven years in the penitentiary
for all the gang except the one who
turned State's evidence.

The situation being such as has just

ALWAYS HAS HIS KIT, CONSISTING OF POCKET MIRROR,
RAZOR AND OTHER TRINKETS.

been indicated, the question naturally
arises, what are we going to do about it?
The question is of some moment, for the
plague of tramps now costs the railroads
twenty-five million dollars a year.

Let it not be forgotten that even a
railroad company cannot pay out what
it does not take in. That twenty-five

million dollars does not come from an
inexhaustible reserve fund in the coffers
of the Morgans, Harriman-s, and Rocke-
fellers, but is added to the freight bills
of all the merchants in the land, who
simply tack it onto the prices of their
wares, as they hand them over
the counters to the public.

In the last analysis, the cost
of the crimes and depreda-
tions of vagrant banditti is
borne by the people of the
United States just as all other
charges are. It may also be
well to remember that it is
a per capita tax, for freight
tariffs are based on weight,
and plain John Smith, of
Jonesville, eats just as many
pounds of steak and potatoes
as a Pittsburgh millionaire.

If one may believe what
one reads, Henry VIII hit
upon the most effective reme-
dy for vagrant criminals re-
corded in history. He simply
had a thousand or so of the
worst of them hanged out of
hand.- Lesser offenders of
this sort were flogged and sent
home.

If they neglected to obtain
a certificate signed by two
justices to prove that they had
had their whipping, they were
liable to be given another by
the first officer they met on
the road. No doubt such
methods would be quite as
effective in the twentieth cen-
tury, but doubtless they would
be considered too radical for
this soft-hearted age.

Perhaps the next best
course would be to turn the
whole tramp problem over
unreservedly to the rail-
roads. Since the railroads
are expected to furnish their
own police force to protect the property
and lives of the public while in transit,
why not compel them also to maintain
their own courts, penitentiaries, gallows,
and hangmen?

Surely, such a course would be better
than the present system of requiring
them to arrest vagrants and criminals

WHAT THE HOBOES COST YEARLY.

363

and then thwarting every effort to mete
out justice to them. Take, for instance,
the case of. a New York Central track-
walker who caught a man in the act of
fastening fish-plates and other obstacles
on the track just before a passenger-
train was due.

The fellow was pursued, immediately
caught, and positively identified ; but,
by methods only too familiar, he secured
delay after delay until at last the track-
walker, the principal witness against
him, died, and so he escaped punishment.

Another example of many such cases
was the stealing of a quantity of silk
from a car on the Erie Railroad. The
case was followed up so energetically by
the railroad police that the thieves were
"captured and the silks found in the pos-
session of notorious receivers of stolen
goods. The tramps who committed the

robbery were sent to prison, but the re-
ceivers of the stolen goods have secured
one postponement after another, and
there is no present indication that they
can ever be brought to trial, to say noth-
ing of punishment.

Possibly the best plan of all for deal-
ing with this evil would be to -exercise a
little common sense. If public officials
would but perform their sworn duty by
zealously and faithfully executing the
laws already on the statute - books ; if
they would sentence train riders to a
month's labor on the rock pile instead of
sending them on to the next town or
giving them a rest-cure in a comfortable
jail, and see that train wreckers, car
burglars, train robbjrs, and the like were
promptly tried and relentlessly punished,
the plague of tramps would' disappear
like mist before an August sun.

FRESH AIR FOR THE HUDSON TUBES.

How the Engineers Solved a Difficult Problem in the New Tunnels
Connecting New York and New Jersey.

THE two submarine tubes under the Hud-
son River connecting the new termi-
nal station of the Hudson and Manhattan
Railroad Company at Cortlandt and Church
Streets, New York City, with the Pennsyl-
vania Railroad station in Jersey City, New
Jersey, are now in full operation. The
question of ventilation was simply solved.

Experience in the operation of the up-
•town tunnels of the Hudson and Manhattan
system, says the Electric Railway Journal,
proved to the engineers that with trains
running in separate tubes, which, for the
most part, pass through soil saturated at all
times with water, there was little difficulty
in maintaining good natural ventilation in
both the tunnels and the stations, and,
furthermore, that the temperature oi the air
in the tunnels was uniformly cool.

Fans have been provided in the terminal
station, however, to accelerate the move-
ment of air if it is found necessary, and
suitable chambers have been provided in the
land tunnels on the Jersey side, so that ven-
tilating apparatus can. be installed in that
section if found necessary.

The ventilation of the concourse and track
level of the terminal station is entirely in-
dependent of the general ventilating scheme
installed in the building for the offices on the

upper floors. An intake tunnel has been
driven under the inbound Jrain tunnel for
some distance toward the river.

Air is drawn out of the inbound river tun-
nel through these 'openings, and the intake
tunnel by two fans located in the basement
below the track level. These fans have a
capacity each of 57,000 cubic feet of air a
minute. They are one hundred and sixty
inches in diameter, and are driven by direct-
connected motors. They exhaust the foul
air drawn out of the tunnels into an uptake
flue, which extends up to the level of the
roof of the building. Adjoining this ex-
haust flue is a fresh-air flue, which also
passes down to the basement level, and from
which air is drawn for cooling the trans-
formers and rotaries in the substation.

No air is drawn from this flue directly
into the terminal station. At the north end
of two of the platforms of the station there
have been installed motor-driven fans, each
with a capacity of fifteen thousand feet of
air per minute. These fans draw air out of
the station and discharge it through suitable
passages into the outbound tunnel, some dis-
tance beyond the station. With the aid of
these four fans it is believed that the piston
action of the trains in the two tubes will be
ample to maintain satisfactory circulation.

The Railroad Man's
Brain Teasers.

Here are Three Hard Nuts to Crack, Boys, and,

Perhaps, You Can Send Us Some That

Are Equally as Good.

P^N answer to our request for puzzles, two of our friends
have sent us the following:

Mr. Charles J. Bills, of DuBois, Pennsylvania, asks :
Conductor Jim says to Conductor Bill: "Hello, Bill!
A heavy string of one hundred cars you've got."

" No," says Bill, " I have not got a hundred, but if
the number were doubled, plus one-half of the number, plus one-
fourth of the number, and the caboose thrown in, I would have a
hundred; therefore, how many cars have I in the string?"

Here is another one of Mr. Bills's perplexers :

Conductor Z comes in with a string of cars which are to be dis-
tributed on switches at the division point. If he puts a car on each
track there will be one car remaining, but if he puts two on each track
there will be an extra track. How many cars and how many tracks
are there?

Also, we are indebted to Mr. J. R. Conway, of Alberta, Canada,
for the following :

An engine and caboose, west bound, meets an engine and caboose,
east bound. The only means they have of passing is by a turntable,
which holds but two, i.e., one engine and caboose, or two engines
or two cabooses. They pass and proceed with their engines headed
right and cabooses behind. How do they do it?

If it takes passenger train No. i seven days to go from New York
to San Francisco, and No. 2 the same from San Francisco to New
York, No. 1, as it leaves New York, meets a No. 2 there, and when it
reaches San Francisco meets a No. 2 just about to leave. How many
No. 2's has it met?

364

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

BY EDWARD BEDINGER MITCHELL,

Author of " Ad American Knight Errant," " The Yellow Rose," Etc.

Paget Enters a Very Convenient Apartment and
Drives to a Convenient Storage Warehouse.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

STEPHEN PAGET, a retired newspaper man, and his friend Marshfield, are at-
tracted by the sight of a beautiful girl in a poor building opposite Paget's apartment.
A few minutes later a middle-aged woman in the street below is heard to scream
hysterically, and on Paget rushing down to find out the reason, she says she has seen
the evil one, indicating as the place the room in which the two men have just seen the girl.
Paget escorts the woman to her store in the basement of the cheap house, where he learns
that her name is Rosa, and that she and the girl, Maria Bigontina, live in the room above.
Some days later, Paget finds the girl in a park, homeless. Rosa has disappeared and
Maria's brother is also lost. Paget arranges for her to stay at the Walton until her
people can be found. He goes to interview the landlord, who has turned her out, and
in her room has an adventure with several Italian cutthroats. Dining with Maria, he
is warned by a Hungarian orchestra leader not to take the first cab or walk when going
home.

The cab they do take breaks down, and in the confusion, they are actually led into
taking the first cab. The driver tries to abduct them, but Paget thrashes him, and after
seeing Maria to the Walton he changes coats with the driver and goes to the place the
latter was instructed to drive them to. He sees his enemy, but fails to learn anything.
Next morning, with Maria, he dodges the spies and carries the girl to the seclusion of
his cousin's home.

As Paget is going home he is met by Marshfield, who insists that he go to his house
to dinner. A scheme is on foot through which the elder Marshfield may purchase valu-
able mining property in Abyssinia, and it is - practically settled that Paget and young
Marshfield shall go to look things over. Paget sees one of the guests at the dinner in
conversation with one of the Italians of his previous adventure, and, later, he and Marsh-
field overhear a conference of the cutthroats, in which it is planned to get possession of
Maria.

CHAPTER XIJ. people meet to-night down-stairs in the

The Basement of the Auvergne.

annex.

Marshfield did not start, he did not

ARSHFIELD looked his even look at me. Only his eyes narrowed

unspoken question as I as he gazed through the smoke from his

seated myself in front cigar at the leaderless orchestra huddled

of him. " It's a gang in confusion on their platform.

of fiends," I murmured. "Where's the annex?" he asked at

" A gang of — " last.

" Never mind all that," interrupted " I can getrto it, all right," I answered.

David. " Do you know what it means? " Very slowly David's head turned and

" No, I don't, except," I leaned for- his eye left the orchestra to rest for a

ward, dropping my voice to a whisper moment on my face. Simultaneously

that was barely audible to the alert man we rose from the table, reaching for our

across the table, '.' except that Ghedina coats. Neither had spoken, for there

is after our friend and that Ghedina's was no need.

Began in the August Railroad Man's Magazine. Single copies, 10 cents.

365

366

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

his
but

Leaving the section of the hotel given
over to the restaurant and cafe, we made
our way down a corridor of the rambling
old structure to the office. A stout,
florid individual perched on a high stool
and lazily writing in an enormous ledger,
raised his head as I stopped in front of
the desk.

" Good evening," he grumbled rather
sulkily. "Anything I can do' for you?"

" My friend and I were thinking of
taking rooms here — by the year," said
I. " They're cheaper in the annex,
aren't they? "

" They're cheaper," retorted
majesty from his wooden throne,
that won't do you any good."

" Why not? "

" Because they are all taken.'
dipped his pen in the inkwell and went
on writing as though the conversation
"was at an end for all time.

" Well, some of them will be vacant by
and by, won't they?" I had been room-
hunting in earnest in New York in my
time and I was not to be so easily put
down.

"Perhaps; how do I know?" Com-
pelled to pay attention, the stout indi-
vidual laid dowu his pen with an
aggrieved air' and waited for my next
demand.

" Could we see some of them?"

" Not now. It's eleven o'clock. How
would you like to have a fellow walk
into your room in the middle of the
night?"

" That's so," I smiled cheerfully back
in the face of the man's insolence. " By
the way, what do you do with the rooms
on the ground floor?"

" There's only two of them that are
any good. Some kind of a club has
them in the daytime. They come here
to lunch and then sit around and gas
down there."

" And what do you do with them in
the evening? "

" Nothing." The clerk reached for
his pen again. " They're no good — ■
dark holes we're lucky enough to rent at
lunch time. Don't get anything for
them at that. You don't want to hire
them."

" We might like to- see them," sug-
gested David mildly.

" It wouldn't do you any good. Be-

sides, I'm too busy to show them to-
night. I've got to finish this work and
get to sleep. No use your wasting my
time as well as your own."

" Cheerful- citizen," remarked Marsh-
field as we turned away. " And what
now, Steve? "

" This." I led the way down the
stairs to the bar and the lower, obscure
regions of the hotel. Before us stretched
a dim corridor lined with painted hands
that pointed to barber-shops and tailor-
shops and heaven knows what other para-
sites of a prosperous hotel. At the. foot
of the stairs, I halted for a second to
look back at Marshfield.

" We'll show ourselves," I said. " If
we get into trouble, we're drunk and
have lost our way, do you understand?"

" I understand." With a grim smile,
Marshfield jammed his hat on one side
of his head and twisted his white tie to
one side. " It's the best I can do on
what I've had. Go ahead."

Treading silently over the tiled floor-
ing, we had gone but a pace or two down
the corridor when a squat figure popped
out upon us from a side door.

" Hey, hey! " it cried, waving its arms
in front of us. " Where you going?
Nothing this way."

" That's what we want — nothing."
Marshfield reeled uncertainly forward to
be stopped roughly by the outspread arms
of the bootblack of the Hotel Auvergne.

" You in wrong — wrong — wrong."

The American slang on foreign, lips
was ludicrous enough, but it was not of
that I thought. With his last words the
boy's voice had risen almost to a shriek,
but it did -not drown a strange sound at
the end of the corridor — the sound of a
heavy door sliding shut. Marshfield
heard it, too, and fell away from the
human barrier that blocked us.

" Where's the bar?" he muttered
thickly. " We want a drink."

" Down that wa}\"

The bootblack positively pushed him
along the corridor back whence we had
come. In himself the bov was but a
feeble guard — either one of us could
have brushed him aside with one hand —
but we could not batter down an iron
door. Retreat was all that was left us.

"Well?" asked Marshfield. We
stood together in the quiet street looking

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

367

at each other in discomfiture. " How
about it? "

" We'll spend the night here," I re-
plied with ' sudden determination.
'•' There's one more chance. We'll get
room forty if we can."

The florid clerk grunted in disgust
when he heard my modest request.
" Huh, yes, you can have forty if you
want it. It ain't much of a room. Why
didn't you say that was what you were
■ after before? "

He slammed down the key on the desk
and turned back to his writing.

" If I was the proprietor of this place,"
remarked Marshfield in the elevator,
" I'd fire that fellow. He's not what
you'd call a business-getter."

" I'd fire the bootblack and the starter
and — " and then I remembered that the
elevator-boy was not deaf, and subsided.

Number forty was not much of a
room. The clerk might be rude, but in
that at least he spoke the truth. The
light I turned on as we shut the door
disclosed a narrow, cell-like apartment
with two small beds, a washstand, and a
window opening high up upon a court.
There was another window in the side
wall, for we were at the extreme end of
the main building of the Hotel Au-
vergne.

David glanced about him with a quick
eye before he turned to me. "Well?"
he said again.

" We're at the end of the corridor,
next to the annex," I explained. " There's
a fire-escape running down from that
window."

" Oh," said David, and he sat down
on the bed and proceeded to kick off his
evening pumps. " You don't want any
noise in this game, do you? " he asked in
answer to my look of surprise.

" I wish I knew what I do want," I
replied. "I am a long way beyond my
depth, I can tell you."

" The only way to learn how to swim,"
retorted Marshfield, as he stood up in his
stockings, " when are we going to touch
bottom?"

" Meaning the down-stairs rooms in
the annex? "

As Marshfield nodded, I reached above
me and turned off the light ; then stum-
bling through the darkness to the win-
dow, I threw it open and leaned out.

"Do you see that fire-escape?" I
asked, pointing to the slender thread of
iron which ran down into the blackness.

Ahead of us we could distinguish the
roofs of several private houses fronting
on a broad avenue ; on our left was the
rear wall of the annex, a floor or .two
lower than the main building of the
hotel; to the right, enclosing the court,
was an old stable and two or three di-
lapidated structures. They were the
vanguard of the slums, rubbing elbows
here with the wealth of New York as it
retreated northward.

"Where does it go?" David peered
over my shoulder, striving to follow the
dim ladder.

" To the roof of a passageway, run-
ning from that stable to the basement of
the annex. The main entrance to the
place is by a high stoop from the avenue.
That brings it on a level with the office
floor of the hotel. There's a way into
the annex from there, of course, but I
am pretty sure the door leading down-
stairs is locked at night ; anyway, you can
bet it would be guarded just as the base-
ment corridor was.

"Of course. What about the pas-
sage?" David was following me atten-
tively as I whispered in his ear, and his
breath came in quick gasps of excite-
ment.

" It's on the same level as those rooms.
There must be a door between them. I
think that stable is empty, since the Au-
vergne took over the annex. There's the
bare chance we can get into the passage
by a window or somehow, and then — "

" I see," muttered Marshfield. " Come
on."

Bareheaded, without our overcoats,
and noiseless ' in our stocking feet, we
crept down the cold iron rungs. A few
of the rooms we passed were lighted,
but the occupants did not see the silent
shadows that dropped rapidly through
the shafts of light from their windows
into the darkness beneath. The fire-
escape ended where I had hoped it would,
and Ave stood on the flat roof of the cov-
ered passage.

Where it joined the wall of the old,
disused stable was an expanse of glass,
the thick dust and cobwebs which
stretched across it visible even in the
faint light of far-off lamps. Before that

368

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

blessed passage had been built, it must
have been a window of the stable ; now,
as we shoved and pushed upon it, it
swung open, pouring a shower of dirt
upon our heads. Lowering ourselves by
our hands, we dropped silently into the
blackness and the secret of the stable.

And black it was. The few rays which
straggled through the forced window
served only to emphasize the impenetra-
ble blank in which we found ourselves.
Every window must have been shuttered
and we could only guess from the un-
broken silence that the place was empty.
Not daring to strike a match, we groped
for the entrance to the passage that we
knew must exist.

My hand was on what might have
been a door, when I jerked it back to
clutch at Marshfield. From the outside
of the building came the sound of nailed
boots striking on stone. 'More than one
pair was there and a trap like this was
no place in which to offer battle. To-
gether we leaped far to one side, falling
flat on our faces in the heart of the sur-
rounding night. Unless the visitors
brought a lantern with them it was pos-
sible that the two forms low on the floor
would escape attention.

A door was flung open and for a sec-
ond three men were silhouetted against
the dim background of an obscure alley.
They closed the door behind them,
tramped with the knowledge born of
familiarity through the darkness to where
I had been standing, and then we heard
their heavy tread tiptoeing cautiously
down the passageway. The midnight
reception was about to begin.

With the sound of their footsteps still
in our ears, we rose to our feet and stole
after them, guided by a spot of light at
the end of the passage. It came from
the keyhole of what had been the back
door when the annex of the Hotel Au-
vergne was merely an unpretentious pri-
vate house. At the sides of the door
rose two stone columns, and between one
of them and the wall of the passage our
hands found' for us a narrow hiding-
space into which we squeezed for a mo-
ment's thought.

The house was an old one. In its
long life it had passed through many
phases, and one of its tenants had seen
fit, for some purpose of his own, to join

the stable to it by this passage. Why
he had done it we neither knew nor cared,
but it occurred to me as • we huddled
close to the column that he had labored <
well for the schemers within.

Apparently they had the control of a
part at least of the force of employees
of the Auvergne; thus, the entrance
through the hotel was open to them and
closed to all others, including busybodies
like ourselves. The way by which the
three men had come was practically a
secret passage, as secret as any under-
ground tunnel to a medieval fortress.
And, most important of all, there was
no need for obvious and mysterious safe-
guards with which to attract the suspi-
cion of the curious. •

My respect for the intelligence of the
rascals had mounted as high as my won-
der at their motive, when the door was
thrust partly open and a commanding
voice cried in Italian :

" That is better. There is no need to
suffocate. Now, Giuseppe, what is it?"

The gruff, uneducated tongue of a
Sicilian of the lower orders answered
him in a dialect I could with difficulty
understand. For a • while, indeed, I
heard nothing but the harsh voice as it
plowed forward through its story, muti-
lating the musical . Italian shockingly ;
then, as my ear grew accustomed to the
patois and to the words clipped short in
ignorant sloth, I began to understand.

" We found them, sir," the man was
saying, '.' on a rafter close to the wall in a
little crevice, as one might say. When
we first looked we missed them, but you
ordered us to stay until we found them
and we searched again."

" You have taken long enough about
it," came the sneering reply, and I
gripped Marshfield's arm in excitement.
It was the voice of the man who had
put me on the track of Ghedina, the man
whom I had seen lighting a cigarette as
he drove away from the Marshfields.
" Hand them over," he ordered crisply.

" What ' they' were we had no means
of knowing, but presumably they were
handed over. The conversation ended
and silence fell upon the room. It was
broken by a sharp question from the man
we had left smiling and smoking in the
restaurant :

" Where's the kev?"

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

369

" The key? " several voices echoed the
word in apparent astonishment.

" Yes, the key." Ghedina's voice rose
high in anger. " What's the good of
this stuff without it? Don't you under-
stand? Where's the rest of it?"

" But, signore, that is all we found.
There is no more."

A chair was pushed violently back and
Ghedina's voice rang out, no longer shrill
and excited, but cold with menace and
command :

" Don't play with me. Where is the
rest? No man lies to me twice."

" Signore, I swear — I swear it is all.
I do not lie, . signore. It is all except — "

The gruff tones of the man who had
found " them " had turned into stam-
mering quaver of fright. A palsy of
terror seemed to fall upon all who looked
upon the fresh, suave face of my late
dinner companion.

" Except what? "

" Except," the fellow seemed to hesi-
tate as though between the devil and the
deep sea, " except a little book with fig-
ures in it that Signor Cagno took."

"What!" It was more a bellow of
rage than an articulated word which
burst from Ghedina's lips. " Signor
Caimo took it ! What did he do with
it?"

''Signore ! ' " ■ So eloquent was the one
word that I could almost see the gesture
of humble deference with which the ter-
rified man disclaimed all knowledge of
Signor Cagno's doings.

"Is this true, Cagno?" Apparently
Ghedina possessed a wonderful ability to
lose and recover his temper at will, for
now his words were fraught with the
same cold menace with which he had a
minute before addressed the working-
man.

" I — I — there was a book, but it was
nothing," Cagno stammered, and, recog-
nizing his voice, I knew that Cagno was
the name of my slender adversary of the
attic room. Over him, too, lay Ghe-
dina's baleful influence, for his voice
shook as he answered :

" Nothing ! It will be something
when I tell the chief. Give it to me."

" But I — it — I have lost it. It was
stolen."

" Lost ! Stolen ! You bungling fool ! "
( >nce more rose the roar of wrath with
12 R R

almost incredible intensity. " Don't
glare at me. You had better be saying
your prayers. Stolen! Who stole it?"

" That busybody Paget. He stole it
from my pocket when he threw me down-
stairs. Nobody told me what it was.
I kept it, but I did not know. The chief
will understand — he must understand.
Paget—"

" Paget! " Ghedina cut short the whi-
ning man with an exclamation of wonder.
" Paget? I dined with a Paget to-night.
What has he to do with the Bigontinas? "

Stuttering and confused, Cagno poured
forth a torrent of explanation and apol-
ogy.- He had been ordered to search the
rooms. He had found the black book,
but he had been, told to find papers. The
book meant nothing to him.

Paget — and the curse of the evil eye
upon him — had forced his way into the
rooms. He had thrown him down-stairs,
he had stolen his book. He had run
away with Maria Bigontina. Cagno had
planned to get them both, but the cabman
was a fool and a coward.

Pie had done all that man could do.
The chief himself would have fared no
better. And nobody had told him
about the book and he didn't know now
what it was.

He stopped and I gazed down the dark
passage-way, a thousand wild surmises
rioting in my brain. One thing I knew.
The little black book over the loss of
which Cagno trembled and Ghedina
stormed, lay where I had thrown it in
disgust, on the top of my desk. While
it remained in my possession no minute
of the day or night would be safe for
me ; and yet it was a tool, an invaluable
tool, if I could, only learn how to use it.

" You did not know what it was and
you have lost it. Also, you have lost
the girl." Ghedina's voice again broke
the protracted silence. " It is a bad
business for you, Signor Cagno. The
chief does not like bunglers. He is
angry already ; when he hears this he
will be furious. What do you propose ? "

" We can get Paget," muttered the
cowed Cagno. " That will be easy. We
can get him to-morrow — he is a careless
fool — and then we can find a way to
search his rooms."

" A wise thought for one in your po-
sition." Ghedina's jeer cut like a keen

370

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

knife. " That will give us the key to
these " — he slapped his hand on the ta-
ble and I heard the rustle of papers —
" and it will lose the key to the Signorina
Bigontina. The chief wants both — and
just between ourselves, Signor Cagno, he
will have both, or you will pay for it."

"But what then?" asked Cagno in
obvious despair.

" I will talk with the chief. He will
find a way. Until then watch this Paget
and young David Marshfield, too. They
are friends. And see that nobody steals
the boy Pietro. He is no good to us
now, but we cannot let him go to tell his
story. The chief must decide that also.

" And, hark you, Giuseppe, or what-
ever your name is, you have been to-night
where you have no business to be, and
you have heard things not for the ears
of such as you. If there is a leak we
shall know whom to blame. We only
blame once, my friend. Leave us."

Marshfield and I held our breath as
we forced ourselves back into our nar-
row hiding-place by the side of the stone
column. The door swung wider open
and the three men we had seen come
through the stable stamped into the pas-
sageway as quietly as their clumsy
frames and heavy boots permitted.

They did not glance behind them — I
fancy the fear of Ghedina lay heavy upon
them also, and that they were glad to
escape the overladen atmosphere. Steal-
ing down the passageway, the darkness
swallowed them and left us undetected.

"If this business is to be left to the
chief," said a man whom we had not
heard speak before, " there is nothing
more for us to do. The small affairs
can wait. I am tired and thirsty. Let
us go to the cafe."

A general murmur of assent was lost
in the scraping of chairs on the uncar-
peted floor as the party within rose to
their feet.

"Just a minute; I nearly forgot."
Ghedina's words brought instant silence.
" This fellow who plays the violin and
sings here — get him at once — alive, if
you can, for I want to talk to him — but
get him. It is important."

" But," interposed some one mildly,
" what—"

" Get him," interrupted Ghedina.
" Surely, you need no help in that. He

has balked us on the other side. For
heaven's sake, do you ever do anything
here in New York?"

It was the last sneer that we heard
from him that night. The heavy door
which had shut at the bookblack's shrill
warning, creaked upon its hinges and the
members of the black conclave trooped
out into the corridor of the Hotel Au-
vergne. Marshfield and I were left
alone in the silence and the darkness.

CHAPTER XIII.

I Play the Guide.

" jV/F Y boy, what do vou want me to do

LVA about it?" " Old Marshfield
leaned back in his chair and surveyed
me calmly. We were in his private
office, high above the turmoil of Wall
Street, and it was the morning after
David and I had been uninvited guests
at the meeting of Ghedina and his
friends. After their departure, we had
waited for a while in the dark passage
before following them into the hotel cor-
ridor.

No one observed us, and we made
our stay unostentatiously to number forty
in quest of our pumps. When we returned
there was no sign of any of the partici-
pants in the conference. Apparently
they had sought elsewhere refreshment
after their labors. Now I had come to
lay what I knew before the banker and
to seek his advise.

I met with scant comfort. Puffing
at his eternal cigar, Marshfield, Senior,
listened to my wild tale as he listened
to many men's stories, no evidence of be-
lief or disbelief upon his face, self-con-
tained, inscrutable. It was as though I
were appealing to the Sphinx. By the
time I had finished, I had almost come
to doubt the truth of my own words.

"What do you want me to do?" he
asked again as I stared blankly at him
across the broad, flat top of the desk.

" Do? But I want to know." I stam-
mered.

" I can't help you to know," retorted
Marshfield. " People have to do that
for themselves in this world. I'm a hard-
headed business man, Stephen, and I
don't go in much for romance and senti-
ment— not in business hours, anvwav.

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

371

" To tell you the truth, I don't take
much stock in your story. There's a lot
of funny business in New York, I know,
and you may have run into some of it,
but I don't see what I can do to help
you.

" As for this Ghedina chap, what he
does with his private affairs I don't know
and I don't care. He can help me in
this Abyssinian deal, I, am told. If he
doesn't do that he can go home, and the
sooner the better. And by the way, Ste-
phen, there's been talk enough about this
Abyssinia affair — just leave it alone for
a while, will you?"

" Leave it alone ! " The cold-blooded,
invulnerable absorption of the man in
his own gains broke the spell and I
leaped to my feet in indignation.
" Leave it alone ! I tell you there's a
gang of ruffians plotting to steal a help-
less girl, plotting murder, plotting
Heaven knows what, and that you had
one of them to dinner at your own house,
and all you say is not to talk about your
business affairs ! "

" And that's what I mean." Marsh-
field's heavy brows met across his fore-
head and his bulldog jaw set. " I'm
not going to quarrel with you, Paget.
You're a friend of David's and I like
you besides. But by Heaven you don't
"dictate to me in my own office !

" I ask people to dinner to please my-
self and I'm not going to waste my day
explaining why. If you really want
help, I'm home in the evenings 'usually
— not listening to fiddlers and fighting
cabmen. I'm sorry to cut you short, but
I have an appointment. Come up to-
night if you want to." . *

As he ended he glanced at the small
clock on his desk. The hands pointed
precisely to eleven o'clock. From the
doorway came the respectful voice of
his secretary.

" Mr. Korea is outside, sir."

" Show him in," Marshfield ordered
without another look at my angry and
amazed countenance.

The bulky figure of t1 • Italian
blocked the door as I turned to go. A
sudden gleam flashed in the deep-set eyes
as they fell upon me, but he extended
his hand cordially.

" Good morning, Mr. Paget. We meet
again, I sec. You have not forgotten

your engagement to luncheon with me,
I trust. I am looking forward to an
Abyssinian talk."

It was childish enough, but I was
smarting under Marshfield's rough treat-
ment and I grasped at any opening for
revenge, however puerile.

" There is no danger of my forgetting,
Mr. Rocco. I am much interested in
Abyssinia and now more than ever."

I have never been quite positive, but
I have always believed that the sound
which came from behind my back was
the sound of a drawer in a mahogany
desk slammed violently shut by a man
in a very bad temper. It was the little
things in life which most irritated Mr.
Marshfield. With a malicious mental
chuckle, I stepped to one side to allow
Rocca to pass, but he did not move for-
ward at once toward the waiting mag-
nate.

" If you are coming up-town, Mr.
Paget," he remarked, " let me take you
up. I have a hansom waiting for me
and I shall detain Mr. Marshfield only
a minute. You may be hardened -to it,
but I find your New York cars really
abominable."

Considerably surprised, I murmured
my thanks. Certainly this distinguished
foreigner was more than affable. If he
were half as big as man as David ap-
peared to believe and his relation's with
Marshfield indicated, if I did go to
Italy, and if he were as cordial at home
as he was abroad, I would find myself
in clover. Those were a good many ifs,
I thought as I sat down in the outer
office and picked up a newspaper, but
it was well worth my while to wait.

My eye read the words, but my mind
refused to listen to the news of the day.
Instead, I fell to speculating on the real
character of the strange man who sat
at the big desk behind the closed door
and who was the father of a son so to-
tally unlike me. I liked old Marsh-
field— at least I had liked him up to
a few minutes ago.

In business, I knew., he was commonly
supposed to- pound his way to the desired
goal as much by sheer, overpowering
Avill as by any extraordinary commercial
genius, but his business did not concern
me. At home I had always found him
cordial and considerate in his peculiar

372

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

gruff way. At bottom he was an affec-
tionate father and a kind friend.

Even now, still boiling at his sum-
mary dismissal of my tale, I did not
doubt that he spoke the truth. If I
chose to go to his house that evening,
I would receive a very different greeting.

But I would not go. I would find
my way to the heart of the labyrinth
without his aid. There were enough
threads in my hand to guide me— the
black book which was the key to some-
thing, though Heaven knew what, Ghe-
dina, Cagno, the musician, the cabman,
and, above all, Maria Bigontina. I alone
knew where she was. She must know
something, and for the sake of her own
safety she would have to tell me what
she knew.

As I reached this comforting conclu-
sion, Rocca emerged from the magnate's
lair. Though short, the interview must
have been satisfactory, for he beamed
more cordially than ever upon me as he
apologized for detaining me.

" At last we are off," he said, as we
stepped across the pavement to the wait-
ing hansom, " and on a sunny day like
this the open air is far preferable to that
underground atrocity you call the Sub-
way, is it not so? "

Far preferable it was, but with a cau-
tion born of recent experiences, I glanced
upward at the driver. He was a round-
faced Irishman on whom I had never
laid eyes, and I took my seat with a
secret blush at my suspicions. Was I
to go through life in terror of every
member of the innumerable host of cab-
drivers ?

We had gone but a few blocks when
Rocca poked with his stick at the trap
above him. " I know Fifth Avenue,"
he called to the inquiring countenance
visible through the aperture. " Take
us some other way."

" Very good, sir." The trap closed and
we swung off to the west. No profes-
sional guide ever worked harder than
I for the next fifteen minutes to gratify
the visitor's insatiable curiosity. Rocca
asked questions about everything, but
they were intelligent questions.

He had seen most of Europe, he de-
clared, but of New York he was igno-
.rant. Yet it was interesting — most inter-
esting, and to him especially. Once he

had been commissioner of emigration
and he knew of the hundreds of thou-
sands of his countrymen who had found
here a new home. Ah, yes, every poor
Italian dreamed of New York as the
gateway to the land of hope.

We were still hard at it, asking and
answering, as the ,cab rolled up Sixth
Avenue. Suddenly a new thought
flashed across the keen brain of the man
and he turned apologetically to me.

" I beg your pardon, Mr. Paget. I had
forgotten that you may not wish to go
this way. Tell me where you are bound
and I will drop you there."

" I was going to my rooms," I an-
swered, " but it is no matter. They are
near by and I can walk."

" Ah, but I insist. It was stupid of
me not to have thought of it before.
Really I insist."

It was impossible to refuse, and in
obedience to my order the driver turned
east again at the next corner. As we
left the rear of the elevated trains and
the teeming life of the avenue behind us
I realized for the first time that this
comparatively quiet by-way was Eleventh
Street. The next remark of Rocca's fell
on deaf ears, for I was looking eagerly
along the stretch of stone pavement in
the unreasoning hope that chance would
allow me a glimpse of Maria Bigontina.

With a little start, I leaned far for-
ward in the seat, my head thrust out be-
yond the apron of the hansom. ' In front
of the high stoop that led up to the
White door and the silver name-plate,
two figures were standing as though to
enjoy for a minute the sunshine of early
spring before they entered the house.
One was Mrs. Noyes, and the slender
girl by her-side was Maria Bigontina.

The black dress and rather worn hat
had been replaced, it is true, by fresher
attire, but there was no mistaking the
grace of the figure. A smile flickered
over my face at the sight. Cousin Lucy
had taken her new charge shopping.

Rocca did not share my interest in
Eleventh Street. He was leaning back
comfortably in the cab and Mrs. Noyes
apparently saw only my familiar face
protruding from the hansom as we came
abreast of her.

" Oh, Stephen, stop ! " she cried, rais-
ing her arm, and the driver pulled up

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

o i O

abruptly without further orders. " Where
have you been all this time ? Here we've
been getting all sorts of new things and
nobody to show our finery to except
my husband, and he wouldn't care if we
dressed ourselves in the drawing-room
rugs. Get out of that cab and pay
some attention to two lone women."

I threw open the doors of the hansom
and jumped out.

" What do you want me to say, Cous-
in Lucy? Something about painting the
lily and so forth. I am sure Miss Bigon-
tina— "

I stopped as though the rest of the
sentence had been driven back into my
mouth by a clenched fist. Maria had
turned to welcome me with a suspicion
of a~blush and a smile of genuine happi-
ness on her lips and in her eyes. In a
second the smile was dead and the face
ghastly in its sudden whiteness. One
wide glance she threw along the length
of the quiet street, then turned and ran
up the steps to the door old Jane held
hospitably open.

"Heavens, Stephen!" Mrs. Noyes
gasped in consternation as the fleeing
girl vanished within the shelter of her
house. "What can have happened?"

She stood in the center of the side-
walk, twisting about in the frantic at-
tempt to see in all directions at once,
her own cheerful visage clouded with
anxiety and fear.

. " What can have happened? " she re-
peated. " She was quite happy a minute
ago, before she saw you."

" I'm just the same," I burst out. " I
don't know what has happened — I don't
know anything about the confounded
business."

" I must go to her," said Mrs. Noyes
with decision. " She needs comfort.
Oh — " For the first time she noticed
Rocca within the cab. " We have kept
your friend waiting. Come back when
you can, Stephen. I want to talk to
you."

CHAPTER XIV.

A Wooing That Began Badly.

T CAME back very soon, parting from
•*■ Signor Rocca at the door of my
apartment-house with scant thanks for

his courtesy. The Italian, it is true,
hinted* rather broadly that an invitation
to refresh himself in my rooms would be
acceptable, but I was in no humor for
the entertainment of distinguished vis-
itors.

Maria had.jrun from me as though I
had the plague ; my cousin had said that
she was quite happy before she saw me.
For Rocca and his amiable conversation
I cared nothing ; for the welfare of
Maria Bigontina I cared much, and I
fancy that my feelings were quite ap-
parent. At any rate, Rocca proved him-
self quicker to take a hint than I chose
to be. With a polite reminder that he
would expect me to luncheon at half
after one, he drove away, and I was free
to return to Eleventh Street.

For Maria's welfare I have said that
I cared much. It was of her welfare
that I told myself I was thinking as I
strode rapidly across Washington Square.
It was true- — I was thinking of her wel-
fare. But I was thinking of something
else as well, of the way she had fled
from me — fled as though I were some-
thing to be loathed. No man is so hum-
ble that he relishes loathing by any one,
but when it is the girl that —

At the foot of Fifth Avenue I stopped
abruptly. The white arch rose against
the clear sky, children were romping
about the square, the benches were lined
with toil-worn mothers. The whole city
was reveling in the first days of spring,
while I gazed blankly at nothing,
numbed by the suddenness of the revela-
tion. The last words of my unfinished,
unspoken sentence danced before my
eyes and shut out the rest of the world.

The girl that I loved! But I didn't
love her. It was absurd. How could
a man love a girl he had talked to for
half an hour in his rooms and dined with
once? Love at first sight? That sort
of thing came to an end with Shake-
speare. The futile sneer wilted in the
light that burst upon me. Absurd it
might be ; it was true, nevertheless. I
did love her.

With a long - drawn breath I threw
back my shoulders to face the new world.
There was the arch, there were the chil-
dren watched by their mothers. Spring
had come for them, but for me there was
as yet only hope. First, I must win

ST4

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Maria for myself; second, I must hold
her against the world. Gaping on a cor-
ner would do neither, and I strode on-
ward.

As I entered the door of my cousin's
house the vision sank into nothingness.
In the dim hall Mrs. Noyes met me, a
very different woman from the one who
had stood in the sunshine to laugh with
me a quarter of an hour before. She
had no cheerful greeting for me now,
but the look of relief on her face showed
more eloquently than words how eagerly
she' had been awaiting my coming.

" Something terrible has happened,
Stephen," she began at once. ' Maria is
another girl. She will tell me nothing.
What can it all mean? I am frightened,
Stephen."

"Where is she?" I demanded.

" Up-stairs in the library. But do
you think you had better see her? You
know it was from you that she ran so
wildly and — "

" I know it was," I interrupted.
" That's why I am going to see her.
We've got to find out what this means.
I am — I mean you and I — we are her
only friends, Cousin Lucy, and we must
stand by her."

" Of course we must," retorted Mrs.
Noyes with unusual heat; "but how?
It's no use your making melodramatic
speeches at me. She runs away from
you, and she won't talk to me. What are
we going to do, Stephen?"

" I intend to find out." At the bot-
tom of the stairs I turned for one low
warning. "If I don't find out, Cousin
Lucy, don't let Maria out of the house,
and don't let any one in." Then I went
on into the library.

She was there, huddled in a big arm-
chair, staring out of a back window with
white, strained face. At the sight, my
own face went white and my breath
came hard. Forgetful of everything
save the one truth that I loved her, and
that she was helpless and suffering be-
fore my eyes, I took a step forward.

" Maria! " I cried.

She sprang from the chair and faced
me, her dark eyes blazing with inexplic-
able wrath.

" You ! " she cried. " You ! "

Contempt, scorn, rage — all were in the
two words. I stopped, appalled at the

transformation. Mrs. Noyes had not
exaggerated. This waj not the Maria
Bigontina I knew. This, was not the
shrinking, timid, grateful girl I had left
in my cousin's care the day before. At
the detestable miracle I stood dumfound-
ed, while her eyes flashed their full scorn
upon me.

" You! " she cried again. " You dare
to come ! "

Had the long strain been too great?
Had collapse come with the relaxation
of security? The hideous thought grew
irresistibly' in my mind as the fixed eyes
burned through me and the face that
nature had made so delicate grew harder
and harder.

So, for a moment we stood gazing at
each other; then I took another step
forward.

"Miss Bigontina, what is this? Won't
you tell us ? "

Though I spoke gently, as one might
to a frightened child, the mere sound of
my voice was like a whip to her. The
slight frame quivered, and she sprang
away from me behind the great chair,
as though she would thrust it as a bar-
rier between us. . There she stood, her
eyes still fastened on me in undisguised'
loathing and terror.

To me the situation was unbearable in
its hideousness.

"What is it? What have I done? I
am the same man that I was yesterday.
I am the one friend you have in the city,
and you treat me as though I were the
lowest of the low."

Unable to contain myself longer, the
words poured forth in a torrent of bitter-
ness. The vision I had seen by the side
of the arch of Washington Square rose
to mock me. This was a pretty way for
a man to begin his Avooing, a fine ending
to my brief dream.

"You, my friend!" I should never
have recognized her voice in those low
syllables that "echoed the scorn in her
eyes. " My friend ! Is there no one to
trust in the world? Mrs. Noyes was so
kind, so loving ; and yet you brought me
to her — you! But I will not believe it
of her. It is you have done it — you !
you ! you ! It is you, and you are vile !
You are unspeakable ! "

Stunned by the onslaught, I staggered
back as though from a blow. Of what

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

375

I was accused I had then no idea ; but,
doubtless, to the heated imagination of
the girl my confusion and dismay pre-
sented the very picture of detected guilt.
Of feelings I believe I had none — cer-
tainly none that can be described. Only
one who has come with love in his heart
to such a reception can conceive the
numbness which seized me as I saw and
heard.

Gradually the same appalling thought
asserted itself — the girl was hysterical, if
not actually demented. But with it, and
towering higher and higher above it,
came blind anger, born of grief and
pride. My love might not be worth
much ; it was all that I had to offer, and
it was not for Maria Bigontina or any
one else to spurn it as an abomination.
Needless to say, I did not stop to re-
member that of love I had as yet said
absolutely nothing to her.

" And this is all you have to say to me
— that I am vile ! " When I spoke, at
last, I was as bitter as she. " You are
not particular about your words, Miss
Bigontina."

" Go ! " was all she answered, her out-
stretched arm and white hand pointing
to the door in resolute command.

Too choked with rage to speak, I
turned away. At the door I stopped
and, with one last effort for self-com-
mand, faced her.

"Of what you mean I have no idea;
and when you have come to your senses,
Miss Bigontina, you will regret your be-
havior. But I can tell you this now :
whatever you fancy me to have done,
Mrs. Noyes has had no hand in it. You
can stay here with safety — I shall not
return to trouble you."

My words fell upon a girl turned to
stone.

" Go ! " she repeated, and, ordered
like a whipped cur from my cousin's
library, I walked down the stairs to Mrs.,
Noyes-. She looked anxiously at me,
but the thought of any discussion of the
scene was more than I could bear. I
reached my hat from the rack and
jammed it on my head.

" Take care of her," I muttered. " I
can do nothing." Then the white door
closed upon me, and with wrath in my
heart I strode down the steps into the
world again.

Mechanically I turned toward my
rooms, and mechanically I stopped for
the second time that morning under the
shadow of the great arch. It was there
that a few minutes before I had admitted
my love to myself. I had not told it to
Maria ; I never would. The dead weight
of it all sank down upon me and crushed
the flame of my anger.

What did it matter what she had said to
me? I loved her, and I knew I always
would.

As I stood there, slowly rallying from
the shock, the familiar sights began once
more to convey their meaning to me.
This was Washington Square ; and over
there, in the center of that row of build-
ings, was what I called home. It was
all just as it had been, and yet there was
a difference. Unconsciously I felt it.
Dazed by its grief, my mind wandered
afield to seek an explanation for ■ the
change.

The children had gone, and only a
dilapidated horde of vagrants occupied
the benches which had been lined with
mothers. It was dinner - time. In an
hour they, or "a fresh lot, would be back,
and the square would be alive once more.
The world was going on as though I had
never seen Maria Bigontina, and I must
go on with it.

Dinner.- time ! That meant luncheon
for me. I had some sort of engagement
for luncheon, I remembered. It was
with Rocca, and at one-thirty. If I
walked up, I could do it comfortably,
and I needed the walk.

I swung about and headed up the ave-
nue, the mere physical exercise of walk-
ing toward some definite goal an infinite
relief. But, as I walked, there was
more than mere physical relief. A new
hope was born in my mind. Marshfield
had told me that Ghedina could help
him in the Abyssinian business, and
Rocca was the controlling genius of the
Abyssinian business.

Therefore, Rocca might know some-
thing about Ghedina.

Ghedina certainly knew Cagno, and
Cagno had started the whole thing with
his men in Rosa's humble dwelling.
Also, there was that black book on my
desk, about which Ghedina had raised
such a hubbub last night. The key to
the whole mystery, to Maria's wild scorn,

$76

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

must be within my grasp. Could it not
be in the luncheon in which I sought re-
lief from present pain?

CHAPTER XV.

I Am Too Highly Honored.

FT was an excellent luncheon, so excel-
-■• lent that Marshfield commented on
it as we sat over its relics in the dining-
room of Rocca's apartment on Thirtieth
Street. Throughout the meal I had been
vaguely conscious of good cooking, of a
noiseless individual in black who had
made of waiting a high art, of unobtru-
sive luxury all about me, of a steady
flow of conversation from my almost un-
known host which David appeared to
find entertaining..

All this I had perceived, but I had per-
ceived it through the haze of my own
thoughts. My mind was not on Rocca
nor his talk of Abyssinia, nor the ele-
gance of his dwelling; it was traveling
in endless, fruitless repetition from my
own love to the inexplicable behavior of
Maria Bigontina and back again. Al-
ways in the center of my thoughts was
the slight figure of the girl, tense with
white rage, as she drove me from the
house to which I had taken her ; but,
around it, like the frame of -a picture,
were the shifting memories of all that I
had seen and heard since Rosa had
rushed screaming into the square.

I could make nothing of them. Dazed
and appalled by the morning's shock, the
clues I had fancied that I held slipped
from me as I strove to grasp them. And
all the time the black-clothed man waited
noiselessly upon us, David and Rocca
talked and laughed, and mechanically I
laughed and talked with them.

" A very delightful luncheon, Mr.
Rocca," Marshfield pushed back his chair
and lighted the cigar the servant handed
him. "I do not wonder you prefer this-
to a hotel."

" Ah, I do not care for hotels, and
some friends of mine were kind enough
to secure this for me." Rocca looked
about him carelessly. " It does for a
time, and it is convenient — very."

A singular emphasis on the last word
made me look lip quickly. I saw noth-
ing but our suave Italian host smoking

placidly, and I plunged back into the
dreary routine of my thoughts, the voice
of my friend reaching me as though from
a great distance :

" So convenient that I wonder you
have the energy to think of the Avilds of
Africa."

" Great Heavens, I am not going to
Abyssinia 1 " At the thought Rocca
burst into a louder laugh than I had
ever heard from him. " I leave that to
younger blood, to you and Mr. Paget. I
am too old for adventure and the fare
of the mountains."

" It might do you good." David's eye
dwelt with disrespectful frankness upon
the surplus flesh of our host. " Anyhow.
Stephen and I are quite young enough,
aren't we, Steve? "

" Eh — certainly — quite — of course."

I awoke from my abstraction to won-
der what the dickens possessed the whole
world to talk of nothing but Abyssinia,
and why David should be bent on drag-
ging me there. I wouldn't stir from New
York until Maria was safe — that was
flat. Afterward — Abyssinia or China
or the North Pole — it did not matter.

" You have quite converted me into an
enthusiast, though upon my word " —
Marshfield set down his coffee-cup and
surveyed Rocca with cool appraisal —
" upon my word I don't know how you
have done it."

It was not a polite speech — in fact. I
have always considered it distinctly rude.
To my ears it conveyed clearly the im-
pression that David regarded his host
somewhat in the light of a confidence
man and was not averse to proclaiming
his opinion.

Rocca was fully as intelligent a man
as I. What I perceived he must have
also, had he chosen. But he did not
choose, and in that instant my respect
for the distinguished foreigner crumbled
into nothingness.

" Truth works in mysterious ways," he
laughed with no trace of resentment visi-
ble on his strong face, and the talk drift-
ed into other channels.

Suddenly Rocca pulled out his watch.
" If you really wanted to know how I
can convince you, I would offer to show
you specimens of ore, maps, and all that,
but such things are really rather a bore.
I should be delighted to show them, how-

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

377

ever. Ah, I forgot ! You said you
were engaged this afternoon and they
are not here — it would take time to bring
you to them."

David rose from the table with a slight,
frown.

" Thank you for reminding me," he
said. " I remember now that I am busy'
this afternoon, though I had forgotten
the engagement as well as you."

I knew the man too well to miss the
sarcasm in his voice. Moreover, David
had said nothing to me of an engage-
ment. He made no pretense of confi-
ding all his affairs to any one, it is true,
but had there been any reason for his
hurrying away from that luncheon it was
probable that he would have mentioned
it when the invitation was first accepted.

I saw the frown on his face, heard the
sarcasm in his voice, and I jumped to
the conclusion that he felt that he was
being asked to leave. Unlike Rocca,
David Marshfield was never blind to
rudeness.

As a matter of course I rose also. I
wanted to be alone, to think and to plan".
To my surprise Rocca checked me with
his most affable smile.

" Sit down, Mr. Paget. I am sorry
Mr. Marshfield has to leave us- so abrupt-
ly, but I know that he is a busy man.
You have emancipated yourself from
business ; surely you can spare a stranger
an hour or two."

I sat down abruptly in the chair I had
just vacated. Who told Rocca I had
emancipated myself from business, and
what did it matter to him if I had? This
individual took a deal of interest in an
unknown young man he had met only the
day before. If another, in whom I" took
a deal of interest, had shared his senti-
ments, it would have been pleasanter.

"Well, Stephen, are you coming?"
From the doorway David looked at me in
obvious surprise as I remained seated at
Rocca's table.

" I think I'll stay a little longer, since
Mr. Rocca is kind enough to ask me."

There would be plenty of time to sit
in my lonely apartments thinking. It
occurred to me suddenly that if the Ital-
ian went out of his way to seek my so-
ciety, he must have some reason besides
the charm of my society. To me, at that
moment, there was only one reason in the

world, and that was Maria Bigontina.
Therefore it must be on account of Maria
Bigontina that Rocca asked me to stay.

Naturally the processes .of my bewil-
dered mind were hidden from David.
For a minute he appeared to hesitate as
though he regretted his determination to
depart. But Rocca stood ready to bid
him farewell ; there was no excuse, no
reason for him to change his mind.

" As you please," he said. " I must
be off. Good-by, Mr. Rocca. I shall
see you again."

He shook hands with the Italian and
then the servant ushered him ceremo-
niously down the stairs to the street. It
was all as it should be, of course, polite,
perhaps a little formal ; but, disguise it
as they might, master and man, between
them, had managed to eject Marshfield
as effectually- as if they had kicked him
out of the house. Possibly Rocca had
his own way of resenting unwelcome re-
marks.

" It is a thousand pities your friend
had to leave us." The Italian dropped
back into his chair at the head of the ta-
ble. " I should really have enjoyed
showing him" several things — the young
men of to-day are so skeptical, Mr.
Paget. In my time, Abyssinia — "

Abyssinia again ! The man had the
wretched place on the brain. I wanted
no more lectures from the encyclopedia.

" Possibly he is not greatly interested,"
I interrupted. " Why should he be? "

Rocca leaned over and filled his liqueur
glass. ' " A little Benedictine, Mr.
Paget? No? Why should he be inter-
ested in Abyssinia? You were present at
the dinner last night. Do you not think
most men are interested in great wealth."

" Apparently neither of the Marshfields
is convinced that it means wealth," I re-
turned.

At last the man seemed to be coming
to his point. If he did, it might throw
some light on- Ghedina's connection with
the affair and on Ghedina himself, and
that would throw light on Maria and —
I was back in the midst of my dreary
circle before I knew it. Rocca's mild
remark rescued me :

" I have been trying to convince them
of that for some time. Ideas appear to
frighten them."

""Well?" My tone was hardly cor-

378

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

dial. I did not care to hear this fellow
criticize the Marshfields, and also I had
discovered that the shorter one was with
the great man the more confidential he
became.

" Possibly you are more receptive."
The voice was silky in its smoothness.
It flashed across me that I was about to
be offered a bribe. He knew that I was
a friend of David's, and somehow he had
learned that I had " emancipated my-
self " from business, and, presumably,
from an income at the same time. My
influence might be worth paying for.

"What do you wish me to do?" I
asked, running rapidly over in my mind
all the dramatic tales of incorruptible
virtue I had heard. One man had light-

( To be c

ed a cigar with a hundred-dollar bill —
that story had always rather appealed to
me. Unfortunately, my cigar was al-
ready burning nicely.

" I merely wdsh you to convince your-
self that Abyssinia does mean wealth."

"And how am I to do that?"

" By driving with me to where I have
stored my specimens and my maps. I
do not keep them here — there is no
proper safe. Will you come?"

Rocca rose and stood looking down at
me with the confident smile of one who
held earth's treasures in his hands.

" With pleasure. But where are Ave
going? "

" To my warehouse down-town — in
Barent Street, if you know7 where that is."

ontinued.)

AN ENGINE FOR SHARP CURVES.

New Mallet Creation To Be Used in the Logging Camps of the

Tennessee Mountains.

THE Baldwin Locomotive Works have
recently completed for the Little River
Railroad a Mallet articulated locomotive
which is of special interest. It is the first
engine of its wheel arrangement thus far
constructed by the builders, says the Rail-
zixiy and Engineering Review,- and has been
designed to meet difficult operathig conditions.
This engine is in logging service in the Ten-
nessee mountains, on a line having grades of
two and a half per cent combined with un-
compensated curves of 180 feet radius.

The sharpest curves have a radius of 160
feet, and the track is standard gage, with
rails weighing 56 and 60 pounds per yard.
The design of a locomotive suitable for
handling trains of about 200 tons weight
under such circumstances requires special
treatment, and the problem was given care-
ful consideration. The 2-4-4-2 wheel ar-
rangement was finally selected, as offering
a minimum rigid wheel base, ample flexi-
bility, and a good weight distribution, with
a sufficient amount on the driving wheels to
give the necessary adhesion. The tractive
force exerted by this engine is 27,430 pounds.

In its constructive details this locomotive
is similar to heavier engines of the articu-
lated type previously built at these works.
The leading truck is center bearing and is
equalized with the front group of driving
wheels, while the trailing truck, which is

side bearing, is equalized with the rear
group. The rear frames are of cast steel,
each frame being in one piece.

The front frames are also of cast steel,
with double wrought iron front rails. The
articulated connection is effected by two
radius bars, and the weight on the two
groups of wheels are equalized by contact
between the frames, no equalizing bolts be-
ing used in this design.

The high pressure cylinders are cast
separate from their saddle and from each
other, while the low pressure cylinder cast-
ings are bolted together on the center line
of the engine. Walschaert's valve gear is
applied, the design being in accordance with
the latest practise of the builders.

The front and back reverse shafts are
connected by a single reach rod placed on
the center line of the engine, and having a
suitable joint at midlength. This joint is
carried by a cross-head, which is guided be-
tween the inner walls of the high-pressure
cylinder saddle. The steam distribution is
controlled by balanced slide valves.

Sand is delivered to the rear group of
driving wheels by a box placed over the
boiler, and to the front group by two boxes,
placed well down, between the low-pressure
cylinders.

The tender carries 4,000 gallons of water
and 7 tons of coal. It has a steel frame.

ON THE EDITORIAL CARPET.

Gome, Boys, Gather Around Us Back Here
in the Hut, and Listen to the Stove-piping.

THE DECEMBER RUN.

WHEN we gave the Courage Club series
the highball some months ago, the
idea was an experiment with us. It proved
a very successful one, and we feel sure
that many of, our readers regretted the end
of the series last month. But, if you no-
tice, we have always balm for the regrets
of our friends, and when you read the open-
ing instalments of our new serial, " The
Daughter of the Idol," in this number, you
will agree with us that we are in no danger
of letting the gage drop below its normal
position, which is close to the shadow of the
blow-off point.

For a real steamer, with classy lines and
a high draw-bar pull, " The Daughter of the
Idol " is about as fine a bit of motive power
as we have turned out of this shop, and her
designer, Mr. John Mack Stone, has reason
to be proud of her.

In the October number we promised you
" The Trail of the Missed Extra," by J. N.
Shreve, for this month. Well, we found we
had to cut that high-class car out and leave
her on a siding, but she has been picked up,
and is coming right along for the December
number. When you read that story, you'll
be glad we saved it for you, even if we did
it by accident.

" The Ten-Thirty Call " is a railroad story
dealing with the original methods of a very
bright call-boy. We know that grown-up
railroad men give another name to the pre-
cocity of the call-boy, but as we read the
story, perched in the snug comfort of our
office-chair, we had no fear of the impish-
ness of that tormentor of roadmen, and we
laughed. So will you laugh when you read
it, even if you have just kicked the call-boy
down-stairs for suggesting that, owing to
the shortness of your wheel-base, he has to
wake you half an hour before everybody
else.

" Mabel on a Mountain " is another rail-
road story, dealing delightfully with the
love-affairs of two operators. Mabel is
one of them. The name of the other is not

Mabel, naturally, but that does not prevent
them from owning- one name in common,
anyhow, before the story gets through with
them.

Another delightful feature of the Decem-
ber number is a little story by Clara Morris,
the famous actress, called "Christmas on
the Rail." Miss Morris has a large place in
a large heart for railroad men, and you
will like her sketch.

In the matter of special articles, we shall
again be "Riding the Rail from Coast to
Coast " with Mr. Willets, who has by now
taken us to California, the Golden State.
J. E. Smith is still " Observing " in the ca-
pacity of a Country Station-Agent, and his
" Observations " are even more fruitful of
keen, wise humor than ever. May he live
long. He is a real railroad man, and we
are proud of him.

A new feature to be inaugurated in the
December number is a series of letters be-
tween an old railroad man and his son, just
starting out in the business, by Herman Da
Costa. Mr. Da Costa needs no introduction
to our readers, -many of whom will remem-
ber his delicious bits of wit and humor in
the earlier numbers of the magazine. This
time he is more serious, but he is just as
pointed, and as a railroad man writing about
railroad matters we have no fear for his
reputation.

The great trouble in writing this edi-
torial paragraph is" the conflicting emotions
of the editor. We must tell you something
about the running schedule, but we haven't
got room to tell you all, and when we look-
over our fine equipment and consider that
we have to make a choice and show a seem-
ing favoritism where everything is so good,
we are disturbed.

Thus we are reduced to the expedient of
mentioning them as they come, and while
the train is solid-vestibuled throughout, we
can only mention the names of a few of the
leading cars. The other cars are just as
good, however, and if you don't get aboard
you'll be sorry, for never in the history of
railroading was such a fine ride and such

379

380

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

an excellent table d'hote offered for the in-
clusive price of ten cents.

First call for dinner in the diner!

SONGS OF THE RAIL.

WE have many requests for songs this
month, and if any reader can oblige
with one or more of the following
railroad ditties we shall be much obliged:

C. H. P., Galiton, Pennsylvania, asks if
anybody is familiar with a song entitled
" Jim Blake, or the Midnight Express," the
first verse of which begins :

Jim Blake is an engine-driver;
He runs on the midnight express.

Another reader, Mr. E. F. McKenzie, asks
if we can obtain the words of the song
entitled " Poor Tramps," the chorus of
which goes something like this :

It was just the other day, on the N. P.
Railway,
A poor tramp, all tattered and torn,
Saw an empty box car standing still on the
track,
So he went in and closed the door.
But he had not gone far in that empty box
car
When a brakeman came round with a
lamp ;
He was thrown from the train and was
killed by the mail,
Because he was only a tramp.

Mr. W. M. Kensill wishes to know where
he can get an old railroad song by the name
of " Mike O'Dinner Was a Good Engineer."
It runs :

Mike O'Dinner was a good engineer,
He said, to the fireman, " Don't you have any
fear,

All I want is lots of water and coal ;

And I'll put my head out of the window,

And watch the drivers roll."

Another song desired is one written on
the " Chatsworth Wreck " about twenty
years ago. It begins :

With hand upon the lever,

And eye along the track,
The engineer is watching,

While the shades of night grow black.

Mr. T. B. Fopeman, of Metz, Missouri,
asks if we have run across a song beginning :

He climbs on his engine and looks about;
Two short whistles, and the drag pulls out !

Can any reader oblige?

If " A Reader," of Chicago, Illinois, will
refer to The Railroad Man's Magazine for
November, 1908, he will find that the poem
he asks for, " Swifty Joe," by J'. E. Hunger-
ford, originated in our columns.

Expressing a hope that we will not be
offended, Mr. A. J. Ahern, of Baltimore,
sends us another verse for the song, " The
Rock Candy Mountains," published in the
August number. So far from being offend-
ed, we are very much obliged to Mr. Ahern
for his interest. Here is the verse :

The Punk rolled up his big blue eyes and

said to his Jocko : " Sandy,
I've been hiking all day long, where is that

gol darn candy?
I'll hike no more, for my feet are sore. If

we ever reach that fountain
I'll be a ' home-guard,' with a lemonade card,

at the Big Rock Candy Mountain."

A HASTY FRIEND.

GENUINE objections are as welcome in
this office as is genuine praise, and
much of the popularity we enjoy has been
gained by our readiness to take hints from
our readers. The people we are making this
magazine for are the people who buy it, and
we like to make it as much in line with their
wishes as is practicable.

We must admit that our friends have
been generous in taking advantage of this
privilege of readers, and the letters of criti-
cism we have received have usually been
thoughtful and valuable.

We have just received a letter from a gen-
tleman signing with the initials H. E. R.,
to which we fear we must hesitate to apply
these adjectives. We fear the gentleman is
hasty; in fact, from certain slight mis-
statements, we are sure of it.

We feel sure that he paused for a mo-
ment and laid aside matters of pressing
official importance to take up his pen and
hurriedly give us much-needed advice. His
first point of attack is the article on the air-
brake, by C. F. Carter, in the September
number.

Let us be frank ! We have tried innu-
merable times to catch Mr. Carter napping,
so that we might have the editorial satis-
faction of pointing out to him how little
he knew, compared with ourselves, and —
we have never succeeded. We have come
hopefully upon promising points, and have
quoted our authorities with the care-free
indifference of those who know these
things because they cannot help it, only to
find that Mr. Carter had the drop on us at
some unguarded spot.

It has been like trying to pull clinkers

ON THE EDITORIAL CARPET.

381

out of an oil-burner, and, frankly, we would
give a year's subscription for ninety-nine
cents and a postage-stamp to anybody who
would show us how it could be done.

At first, when we saw H. E. R.'s letter,
we were hopeful, but by the time we had
finished it our hopes had fallen, for we
found that the sum of it was a suggestion
that Mr. Carter get a copy of the Westing-
house Air-brake Company's instruction-book
and copy it verbatim.

Now, this is biting sarcasm, but it really
doesn't prove anything. We refrain . from
publishing Mr. Carter's reply, because we
are determined to get even with him some
way.

Having thus carefully shown that the air-
brake doesn't work as Mr. Carter says it does,
our friend, H. E. R., transfers his attention
to the editor of By the Light of the
Lantern department, and the things he does
to him are awful. The insignificant fact
that the instance he quotes does not occur
in By the Light of the Lantern de-
partment at all, but in the Editorial Carpet,
does not disturb him.

He declares that the man who attempts
to answer the questions in this department
must have lived close to a railroad at some
time in his life, and imagined that he had
absorbed the points of practical railroading.
He further suggests — and trusts that we will
take it in the spirit it is intended — that we
" get some one to write in your mechanical
department who is capable and up-to-date,"
and further volunteers that " there are
plenty of able men whom you can get, but
you will have to pay them, as men of known
ability come high ; but as it is at present
your mechanical department and By the
Light of the Lantern is indeed laugh-
able."

The idea that the editor of By the
Light of the Lantern department once
lived close to a railroad appeals to us. We
imagine that he must have, for convenience
sake, for, " at one time in his life," not very
long ago, he was master mechanic at the
largest station in the world. Perhaps he
lives close to a railroad even yet, for we
understand tha-t he is a more than ordi-
narily important figure in the mechanical
department of one of the best known rail-
roads in the country.

As H. E. R. is preparing to abandon us,
he further informs us that, " as it is, both
departments are a travesty on practical rail-
roading," and adds — more, we feel, in sor-
row than in anger : " Now, look at this
matter seriously, and either_ give the proper
interpretation of a rule and the practical
operation of a piece of machinery, or else cut
out the department; as I buy the magazine,

not for any information I can get from
these departments, but for the humor that
they contain, as some of the explanations
are ridiculous in the extreme."

Friend, not for all the world would our
ruthless hands deprive you of that humor
which we feel you appreciate so keenly, and
to which you have added so generously. We
have honestly enjoyed your letter — and we
trust you will take this in the spirit it is
intended — and we have been so moved by
it that we have almost decided to live near a
railroad ourselves.

TRAIN NEWS SERVICE.

WH. C, of Winnipeg, calls our atten-
• tion to the fact that the news serv-
ice recently installed by the Great Northern,
and mentioned in a recent number of the
magazine as a step in the progress of rail-
roading, is not by any means an innovation.
He tells us that' the Canadian Pacific has
had such a service on its transcontinental
trains for a number of years.

We did not mean that this was an inno-
vation in railroading, but that the spread of
such a custom marked a step forward in
rendering railroad travel as a whole more
luxurious and convenient.

CAN YOU GIVE US A VERSE, BOYS?

GM. BURNHAM, of Miles City, Mon-
• tana, one of our readers, has tried to
write a song. He did pretty well through
the first verse and the chorus, but then he
found that the Muse had forsaken him, and
his lay, written to the tune of " Alice, Where
Art Thou Going?" halted, as it were, for
lack of a cylinder, and declined to go any
further.

Mr. Burnham therefore appeals to his
fellow readers who may happen to have a
poetic turn, to get the other side in working
order, so that the song may steam down
the line of fame with its tuneful whistle
playing variations of the well-known air.

Here is the cripple, in good shape except
for that one cylinder. Who's got the tools?

We are only N. P. brakemen, looking for

the dough,
And when we leave old Livingston wc do

not go so slow.
We'll soon be down in Billings, in a very,

very short time ;
We'll take our engine to the house, and

prance right down the line.
We'll play the Deanery and vaudevilles, you

know ;

382

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

We arc not multimillionaires, but we have

a little dough.
But when the caller's read}', he will holler

" Go ! "
We'll grab a lantern and a club and start to

hunt the bo.

CHORUS.

Hobo, where are you going?

What's that I hear you say?

You are bound for the coast;

Does this train go that way?

You can ride if you have the chink —

Well, that you surely know ;

So get in a box car, climb on a flat,

Or jump on the pilot and hang on to your

hat !
Climb on, the whistle's blowing !

ACCIDENTS BADLY REPORTED.

K. SANDERSON, of Buffalo, New
► York, has a grievance, but as it is
not against us, we sympathize with him and
congratulate ourselves. Not that the latter
is necessary, for Mr. Sanderson gives us
all the congratulation that even the greediest
of editors could desire.

In the following extremely interesting
and well-written letter, Mr. Sanderson en-
closed a newspaper account of an accident
which, indeed, must have been of so weird
a nature that nobody but an experienced"
newspaper reporter would have had the
courage to rush it into print :

No doubt many will agree with me that
newspaper accounts of railroad accidents
have always been a source of annoyance to
railroad men. In every case where I have
known of the cause and the result of such
accidents, the newspaper report was not only
far from correct, but would make one won-
der how they could obtain a version so
garbled.

Accounts of which I had no knowledge,
other than from the newspapers, could be
easily sized up. The one enclosed is a fair
sample, and shows how brave and thought-
ful the engineer was to shut off steam as
soon as the boiler exploded.

One day during the last Presidential cam-
paign papers came out with the following
scare-head :

" Accident to Taft's Train Narrowly
Averted by Prompt Action of Tower Man ! "

The account, condensed, said :

" Train was running sixty miles an hour.
Just as tower was reached a cylinder-head
blew out on engine. Tower-man saw it
and immediately put semaphore against train
and stopped it."

Of course, the enginemen wouldn't notice a
little thing like a cylinder-head out, so no
doubt the action- of the tower-man — which
was commendable — saved the lives of all on
board.

The railroad stories in papers and maga-
zines, with a very few exceptions, are simply
amusing. The brave acts and hairbreadth
escapes of the entire crew, told by a writer
who wouldn't know whether he was going
east on the main line or being backed into
the yard track, are, to say the least, laugh-
able.

The enclosed lines ' are sent to you as a
poetical (?) curiosity:

The " poetical curiosity " follows, and
what it lacks in quality of verse we are sure
it makes up in good feeling :

RAILROAD LITERATURE— PAST AND
PRESENT.

THE former attempts to cover this field
Have now been made to gracefully yield;
Erstwhile competitors lower their shield.

RAILROAD stories by the writers of old
Are the ones that often " knocked you cold."
Ignore them now, for it will not pay
Longer to read their exciting lay.
Romancers they were, in more ways than one,
Or would have quit before story was done,
And not try to make us believe so soon
Dame Nature used cheese to make the moon.

MAN'S wishes now at'the present time
Are for stories truthful of the rail;
Nor cares he much if from other clime
Since they follow well the beaten trail.

MAGAZINE writers in your popular pages
Are such as we have needed for ages.
Greatly would we like to mention them all,
And praise bestow on the great and small.
Zones are covered by this formidable array,
In a manner leaving nothing for critics to say.
Now, subscribe at once — send a retainer —
Ere the year's half gone you'll be the gainer.

CHAT WITH A LAY READER.

TTERE is a typical letter from Morton-
-*- A ville, California, from a reader who
is not a railroad man. Perhaps some one
can give us more specific information about
the roads Mr. Tongue mentions, or can tell
us of some other instances :

In reading a very interesting article in
the September issue of your magazine, en-
titled " Some Tom Thumb Railroads," I
happened to recall two such roads you evi-
dently overlooked. One is four miles long,
and is " down-grade all the way " from
Exeter, Missouri, to Cassville, Missouri.

Exeter is below Springfield, on the Frisco
Railroad. I do not remember the name of
this little railroad.

The other road probably belongs to the

ON THE EDITORIAL CARPET.

383

Pennsylvania, and runs from Brandywine,
Maryland, to Mechanicsville, Maryland, be-
ing another " one-man " railroad. I don't
know the distance or the name, as I haven't
traveled it for fifteen years, and then for
only one trip.

If your Mr. Willets goes through the
" Sunny South," he could probably get some
interesting pictures of antiquated locomo-
tives around many of the sawmills.

" Riding the Rail From Coast to Coast "
contains information about a great stretch
of salt-fields on the Western Pacific, in
Utah. Your readers might be interested to
hear of similar salt deposits for quite a
stretch along the "Alfalfa Route" — Denver,
Enid and Gulf — now a part of the Santa
Fe, running between Enid, Oklahoma, and
Kiowa, Kansas.

Your magazine is certainly a winner. I
don't see any room for complaint, either.
Although I am not a railroad man, still I
find much interesting and instructive read-
ing. Continued stories are certainly fine.
Respectfully,

Thomas G. Tongue.

"OUR ORPHAN BOYS."

REPLYING to an inquiry in this depart-
ment, Mr. E. McLoughlin, of St. Louis,
Missouri, informs us that the song, " Our
Orphan Boys," is published by the Williams
Brothers, Mapelwood P. O. Station, St.
Louis, Missouri. We are obliged to Mr.
McLoughlin for the information.

FARES AT PISTOL-POINT.

PAUL WEBER, who has done consider-
able railroading in the Central America
countries, adds an interesting chapter to
the queer methods used in a section where
railroading must be regarded as a joke. Mr.
Weber is now located at Walnut Lake, Ar-
kansas :

Editor The Railroad Man's Magazine :

If you will allow me a little space in your
valuable magazine, I will tell you of a little
experience I had while special traveling
auditor for the Salvador Railroad Com-
pany, Limited, of Salvador, Central Amer-
ica, the head office of which is in London.
I was under the auditor-general, Mr.
Gibson, and had orders to check up the con-
ductors and see that everybody had tickets
or passes. It was a new order of things ;
usually everybody could ride that was ac-
quainted with the conductor, and if he
showed his pass once he could ride the rest
of the year without ever carrying it again.
Passes would be exchanged from hand to
hand, and maybe twenty or more persons
would ride on one pass at different times.

I found it very hard to get the aristo-
cratic gentlemen of Salvador to get used to

the new orders. One day in February, 1908,
on our route from the little coast town,
Acajutla, to the capital, a distance of sixty-
six miles, we had with us in the first-class
coach several very proud-looking gentle-
men, accompanied by several officers in uni-
form. The conductor asked them for then-
passes, when one, who seemed to be the
leader, said that he was Colonel Gomez, the
military commander and governor of the
- province of Sonsonate ; that he had his pass
in the office,, and did not intend to carry it
or bother himself with it, and if we asked
him for a pass again he would have us
thrown off the train by his officers.

There were ten officers with him, and
they carried long revolvers. It was ad-
visable to let him ride, but I reported the
matter to the auditor-general, who said if
it happened again he would report it to the
president. Of course, we knew that would
do very little good, since every little one-
horse colonel or general with about twenty
men would start a revolution if they were
corrected too severely by their superiors.

Thereare many generals, and to ask them

for their tickets or passes was quite a

"strain on us, and we had to go at it very

gently. We generally kept out of reach of

them.

Life is very cheap there, and any drunken
officer can shoot a man and will not be
punished, because there is no high official
who would dare to punish or correct him.

Every one who rides on the trains is
asked by a policeman, who enters the cars,
his name, where he is going, and where he
came from. If he don't give the informa-
tion he will have to go to the police station.

In the eastern part of Salvador another
railroad was almost completed, but the peo-
ple there refused to allow the road to be
operated. They would wreck the trains .
continually, and the owners finally quit the
road.

MORE ABOUT LATIN-AMERICA.

APROPOS of the constant advice we have
• given through the Light of the Lan-
tern Department regarding work in South
and Central America, we have received the
following letter. We are more than glad- to
find that our magazine has an interest for
such a varied class of readers, and the fact
that men who travel are among the earnest
readers of The Railroad Man's Magazine
helps us in the belief that we are striking
the right key-note.

Our correspondent says :

While not a railroad man myself, I am
much interested in your magazine and in
any matters relating to railroads, as I have
spent fifteen years in the theatrical business
on the road in this country, Canada, Mexico,
and Central America. I notice that in al-
most every issue you have inquiries from

384

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

railroad men in different parts of the Union
about employment in Latin-American coun-
tries.

I have put in some months down there in
my business, and have ridden on the greater
number of their lines; consequently I have
had a good chance to get first-hand "knowl-
edge of conditions. Besides, I have gotten
what information I could in conversation
with white railroaders from all over who
were employed there at the time.

From what I saw and could gather, I
would say to any prospective candidate for
railroad employment in Latin-America, " Let
it alone ! "

Conditions may seem to a man to be bad
where he is in this country, but I will guar-
antee that the worst railroad job in the
United States is a paradise to the best they
have to offer there. Conditions of life, em-
ployment, and. in fact, any and everything,
are so much different there, that I feel safe
in saying that not one out of a hundred
would stay only long enough to get a stake
to ride back to God's country with.

MISSING RELATIVES.

IT'S only when you become very useful to
your friends that you have to make
rules. Consequently we have to institute
one or two slight restrictions, owing to the
physical difficulty of keeping up with the
calls upon our services.

We have from time to time published par-
agraphs requesting information about the
missing relatives of our readers. These
paragraphs have been useful to our friends
and a pleasure to us, but unfortunately
there are more missing relatives in the
country than we can hope to cope with as a
side issue, so we are compelled to draw up
the following regulations :

Hereafter all letters asking for informa-
tion about missing men must be accom-
panied by a letter from the company with
whom the lost person was last employed.
Also, a reasonable time must have elapsed
since the person sought was last heard from
or about.

It should be clearly understood by rela-
tives or friends that the authorities of their
own town or neighborhood, or of the neigh-
borhood in which their friend was last
heard of, can give them much quicker satis-
faction than we can under ordinary circum-
stances ; therefore, these should first be con-
sulted. Any letter to this magazine should
state exactly what means have been used
for the discovery of the missing person,
and when.

In the meantime we hand on a query for
the whereabouts of R. W. Lilly, last heard
from when working in or about Little Rock,
Arkansas. Any information should be for-

warded to his mother, Mrs. G. W. Lilly,
Point of Rocks, Frederick County, Mary-
land.

We also have a request for information of
the whereabouts of Ralph Kincaird, an
operator, last heard of in Mantua, Ohio,
four years ago. He was then on his way
to Sharon, Pennsylvania.

REACHING THE POLES.

TpHE "Gossip of Railwaymen" depart-
-*• ment of the San Francisco Call is an
entertaining column. What the jokes lack
in vividness and point they usually make up
in good-nature and railroad atmosphere,
and, besides, have a truer sound than some
of the ultra-smart things that ultra-smart
people who haven't got time to be rail-
roaders are supposed to say.

Also, once in a while they drop us some-
thing that is worth repeating. For example,
the following:

" WANTED— Ten thousand poles. Pur-
chasing department Blue Ridge Line.
Highest price for right kind.

"And the result was this:

Dear Mr. Purchasing Department— J
have the right kind of Poles. There are
ten thousand right in New York State, and
thereabouts, who are willing to go West,
and will make the best kind of immigrant
for a young and growing country. They
are all familied men, and each man has one
wife and from six to one dozen children.
If they are not all his children they are his
sister's or his brother's, which, of course,
will make no difference to the railroad com-
pany.

They are all good workmen, and some
of them would buy land and farm. They
all like cows and other kinds of animals,
and never get into fights with railroadmen.

' Some of them can handle pigs and
hogs, and know all about track-building. I
think that if you employed them you would
find that the Poles you are looking for are
right there every time. Shall I se<nd them
on to you at once, and we can talk over the
price I get for sending them if the first
batch suits ? '

And what do you think of that? ' asked
the purchasing agent, after he had spelled
the letter through. ' And so they can get
along with railroadmen because they can
handle cows and hogs !

" ' Look here, boy, take this letter over to
the passenger department. It evidently has
been addressed wrongly.' "

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

A LIVING FROM POULTRY

$1,500.00 FROM GO HENS IN TEN MONTHS
ON A CITY LOT 40 FEET SQUARE.

TO the average poultry-
man that would seem
impossible and when we
It'll you that we have
actually done a $1,500
poultry business with 60
hens on a eorner in the
city garden 40 feet wide
by 40 feet long we are
simply stating facts. It
would not be possible to
get such returns by any
one of the systems of
poultry keeping recom-
mended and practiced by
the American people,
still it is an easy matter
when the new

PHILO
SYSTEM

is adopted.

THE PHILO SYSTEM IS UNLIKE ALLOTHER
WAYS OF KEEPING POULTRY,

and in many respects just the reverse, accomplishing: things in poul-
try work that have always been considered impossible, and getting
unheard-of results that are hard to believe without seeing.

THE NEW SYSTEM COVERS ALL BRANCHES
OF THE WORK NECESSARY FOR SUCCESS

from selecting the breeders to marketing the product. It tells how
to get eggs that will hatch, how to hatch nearly every egg and how
to raise nearly all the chicks hatched. It gives complete plans in
detail how to make everything necessary to run the business and at
less than half the cost required to handle the poultry business in any
other manner.

TWO POUND BROILERS IN EIGHT WEEKS

are raised in a space of less than a square foot to the broiler without
any loss, and the broilers are of the very best quality, bringing here
three cents per pound above the highest market price.

OUR SIX-MONTHS-OLD PULLETS ARE LAYING
AT THE RATE OF 24 EGGS EACH PER MONTH

in a space of two square feet for each bird. No green cut bone of
any description is fed, and the food used is inexpensive as compared
with food others are using.

DON'T LET THE CHICKS DIE IN THE SHELL.

One of our secrets of success is to save all the chickens that are
fully developed at hatching time, whether they can crack the shell
or not. It is a simple trick and believed to be the secret of the
ancient Egyptians and Chinese which enabled them to sell the
chicks at 10 cents a dozen.

South Britain, Conn., April 14, 1909.
Mr. E. R. Philo, Elmira, N. Y.

Dear Sir: — I have followed your system
as close as I could; the result'is a complete
success. If there can be any improvement
on nature, your brooder is it. The first ex-
perience I had with your System was last
December. I hatched 17 chicks under
two hens, put them as soon as hatched in
one of your brooders out of doors and at
the age of three months I sold them at 35c
a pound. They then averaged 21-2 lbs.
each, and the man I sold them to said they
were the finest he ever saw, and he wants
all I can spare this season.

Yours truly A. E. Nelson.

Send $r.oo direct to the publisher and a copy of the latest
revised edition of the book will be sent you by return mail.

THREE POUND ROASTERS TEN WEEKS OLD E. R. PHILO, PU BL IS H E R , 282 TH I R D ST., ELMIRA, N.Y.

CHICKEN FEED AT 15 CENTS A BUSHEL.

OUR NEW BROODER SAVES 2 CENTS ON
EACH CHICKEN.

TESTIMONIALS.

Bellefontaine, Ohio, June 7, 1909.
Mr. E. R. Philo, Elmira, N. Y.

Dear Sir: — I just want to tell you of the success I have had
with the Philo system. In January, 1909, I purchased one of your
Philo System books and I commenced to hatch chickens. On the
third day of February, 1909, I succeeded in hatching ten chicks. I
put them in one of your fireless brooders and we had zero weather.
We succeeded in bringing through nine ; one got killed by accident.
On June 1, one of the pullets laid her first egg, and the most re-
markable thing is she has laid every day since up to the present
time. Yours truly, R. S. LaRue.

205 S. Clinton St., Baltimore, Md., May 28, 1909.
E. R. Philo, Publisher, Elmira, N. Y.

Dear Sir: — I have embarked in the poultry business on a small
scale (Philo System) and am having the best of success so far, sixty-
eight per cent of eggs hatched by hens, all chicks alive and healthy
at this writing ; they are now three weeks old. Mr. Philo is a public
benefactor, and I don't believe his System can be improved upon,
and so I am'now looking for more yard room, having but 15x30
where I am now. Yours truly, C. H. Leach.

Osakis, Minn., June 7, 1909.
Mr. E. R. Philo, Elmira. N. Y.

Dear Sir: — You certainly have the great-
est system the world has ever known. I
have had experience with poultry, but I
know you have the system that brings the
real profits. Yours

Jesse Underwood.
Brockport, N. Y., Sept. 1 2, 1908.
Mr. E. W. Philo, Elmira, N. Y.

M. S. Gooding.

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L. A. KRUPP,

331K N. Main St., Findlay, O.

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412 Third St., Roanoke, Va.

My I. C. S. Course has been of great value to me in many ways.
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FRANK P. HEBARD,

616 E. Fifth St., Muscatine, la.

I was employed as a cutter in a factory, am now with an elec-
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in the factory.

A. W. SPARKS,

25 Morrell St., Long Branch, N. J.

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obligation. Mark it to-day. It means SUCCESS.

The I. C. S. can help you just as it has helped thousands of other ambitious men
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Successes :

I was working as a lineman when taking out my I. C. S. Course.
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Decorah, Iowa.

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I have since been elected County Surveyor of Daviess Co., Indiana.
My ability to successfully carry on the work of this office is cer-
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Washington, Indiana.

I enrolled in your Schools for a Course to prepare me for the
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Greensburg, Pa.

SALARY-RAISING COUPON

INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOLS,
Box lOOS D, SCRAHTOS, PA.

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ix months.

General Foreman
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Building. ROCHESTER. N. Y.

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/0>

MAKE A STOVE of your
LAMP or GAS JETS.,,,,.,.

Giant
Heater

Giving Heat and Light at One Cost

On Round Wick Lamp

The Giant Heater so applied will heat any
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Satisfaction guaranteed or money
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Giant Heater Co. springs,1 Mass'.

The

Stepping

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Special Offer If You Mail Coupon Promptly

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FKEE OFFER COCPO.V

American School of Correspondence, Chicago, U. S. A.

Please send set Cyclopedia of Engineering for 5 days' free examina-
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NAME ,

ADDRESS

OCCUPATION

EMPLOYER

— —m R. R. Mail's, 11 -'119 i

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THE RAILROAD

MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

eyfitso

At dealers or sample direct from A. STEIX &
Makers. 319 Center Ave., Chicago

No. 114 lKt. Gem Solid GoLl
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Su.M Uold Stud, 810.00

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Our Proposition-^eTdntrors^

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AG ENTS: $1 03.50 Per Month Made

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astonishes agents.
V.C.Giebner.Cols.,
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not found in stores, than any other house in the U. S. Samples free
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PATENTS

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A FLOOD OF LIGHT

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Biffgrest Money Maker fur Agents
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THE MANTLE LAMP CO. OF AMERICA. Desk 11.
Chicago, Portland, Ore., ATaterbury, Conn., Winnipeg, Can.

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MICHIGAN BUSIXESS KVSTITUTK.
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USES A STUB OR ANY STEEL PEN
Sanford Fountain Pen $1.00

Everyone who uses a pen ought to know about the Sanford Fountain
Pen, which uses any steel pen. Patented Feb. 25, 1908. A remark-
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— Shorthand Writers use and endorse It enthusiastically.

"Don't Drop a Drop of Ink"

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usthe regular price, SI. 00 — if not, return the pen to us. Thisshows how much

confidence we have in it. Isn't this a fair offer? You be the judge. Satisfaction

The Sanford Manifolding Pencil Is a great convenience for users of in-
delible pencils. All parts hard rubber — dust proof— no stained fingers. Price 50c postpaid.
Including set of indelible leads. AGENTS WANTED EVERYWHERE. Send for Booklet.

686 East 105th Street. Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A.

THE SANFORD PEN CO.. Inc

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REVOLVER

is not a revolver for you to make tem-
porarily safe by throwing on or off
some button or lever, but a revolver
that nve have made permanently and
automatically safe by the patented ex-
clusive Iver Johnson construction.

Our Free Booklet, "Shots," tells the whole story. Send your
name on a postal — it will be mailed free with our full catalogue.

Iver Johnson Safety Hammer Revolver [ Iver Johnson Safety Hammerless Revolver

Richly nickeled. 22 cal. rim-fire or 32 cal. center- $C Richly nickeled, 32 calibre center-fire 3-inch $7

fire. 3-in. bbl.; or 38 cal. center-fire. 3M-in.bbI. v barrel; or 38 calibre center-fire, 3^-inch barrel ' A

Extra length bbl. or blued finish at slight extra cost. Extra length bbl. or blued finish at slight extra' cost, jM

Sold by hardware and Sporting Goods dealers everywhere, or sent prepaid on receipt of price if dealer
will not supply. Look for the owl's head on the grip and our name on the barrel.

Iver Johnson's Arms & Cycle Works, 172 River Street, Fitchburg, Mass.

New York: 99 Chambers Street Hamburg. Germany: Pickhuben 4 . -

Ban Francisco: Phil. R. EekeartCo..
717 Market Street

Hello, Brother !

Shed your pack, fill your pipe, and sit down — we want to have a little straight " Head Camp " fire talk
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National bportsman

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Briefly, the N A'HOVAL SPORTSMAN contains each month 160 pages crammed full of stories,
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enter your name on our subscription list for one year, and send you by return mail one of our heavy burnished S^ S
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It's a whole lot for the money, but we ^r ^r

know that if you once become a National ^r ^r Address in Full

Sportsman you will always be one. S^ S^

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THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

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Woolf 's great Encyclope-
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^t^^^ma^^ and Winter is ready.
This great book contains 300 magnifi-
cent half tone illustrations, picturing as
many styles of men's and women's man-
tailored garments. Every household
ought to have this book and use it as a
purchase guide for clo*hes. We save you about half and sell on
liberal payments — small enough for any one to meet

Sit down now— take your pen in hand— write a postal foe
this book. We send it absolutely free to everyone.

WOOLF'S Hnr ^ 2243'45 w- »2th Street,

w^v^J^r a jmc; Chicago, v. s. a.

Hair Like This

¥7131717 Let me send you a
* *VI_j.Cj remarkable treat-
ment for Baldness, Dandruff,
Gray Hair, etc., at my own ex-
pense. It will surprise and
delight you.

Write to-day to

WM. CHA8. KEENE,' President,

LOKRDIKK INSTITUTE

Dept. 2607, Baltimore, Did.

COPY THIS SKETCH

and let me see what you can do with it. You
can earn $20.00 to $125.00 or more per week,
as illustrator or cartoonist. My practical
system of personal individual lessons by
mail will develop your talent. Fifteen
years' successful work for newspapers and
magazines qualifies me to teach you.

Send me your sketch of President Taft with 6c in
stamps and I will send you a test lesson plate, alBo
collection of drawings showingpossibilities for YOU

The Landon School aWi"toroaninl

1460 SCHOFIELD IS11LDING, CLEVELAND, 0.

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you, mention The Railroad Man's Mag.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

Buy Newest City Styles on

Easiest Credit Terms

Pay As Able

Bernhard's clothes are the kind you will
be proud to wear. They are newest style,
fit perfectly and hold their shape longest
because they are designed and made in the
shops of the world's most famous tailors.
Yet they cost actually less than inferior
garments would cost at spot-cash else-
where. Our enormous business in Chicago
and throughout the United States, added
to our control of large manufacturing
terests, enables us to give you unusual
value for your money.
Our Catalog of Fall and Winter Styles
illustratesover500 latest city models: Men's
Suits, Overcoats, Cravenettes, Hats, Shoes,
Sweaters, Trousers, Fancy Veits, Bath-
robes, etc. Also all kinds of women's
wearing apparel. With our catalog
send samples of fabrics, measurement
blanks, etc. Our splendid self-meas-
urement system insures a perfect fit no
matter what your build is. Our clothes musi
please on arrival, but must wear well and gi
satisfaction. Our GUARANTEE TAG attached to every ga
ment insures this, Let us help you to be better dressed. Our credit
plan is the e isiest way. Goods shipped ou approval. Write us tod
for our large Free Art Catalog. We trust you. Won't you trust r

DEI\rlrLr\I\.JJ O 137-131 Clark St., Chicago

12,

per month.

-We will send for your
approval a genuine »4 Karat, com-
mercial white, perfect diamond,
in any style 14 karat solid gold
mounting, express prepaid, for
$30— $5 down and $3 per month;
or a ?£ Karat diamond of like qual-
ity for $60; $10 down and $5 per
I month.

If you are interested in a reliable
watch, we offer a gentleman's O.F.
1 12, 16, or 18 size, or lady's 6 size,
iJ plain or engraved, 20-year guar-
anteed gold filled case, fitted with
genuine Elgin or Waltham move-
ment at $12.50; $3 down, $1.50
With hunting case $16.75.

ile today for free catalog No.K87. Remit first payment with order
• have foods sent bv prepaid express C; 0. D. for your inspection.

Herbert L. JosephfcCo

Diamond Importers- Watch Jobbers

217-219 (K87) State Street, Chicago

Are you prepared for this call no matter from which
department it conies ? Just think what it would mean
to have constantly at your elbow for consultation, an
expert on the very problems that puzzle you. That's
just what you would have in the

Cyclopedia of

Applied Electricity

Six Big Volumes Bound in Half Morocco — 2,896 Pages
7x10 inches- printed on special paper in large, clear
type 2,000 full page plates, diagrams, formulas, etc.

Written by thirty expert Electrical Engineers, the biggest men in
the profession. It is a working guide for ihe student or practical
electrician, or a ready reference work for the expert.

EXAMINE THESE BOOKS 5 DAYS AT OUR EXPENSE

So confident are we that the books are just what you want, that
we will send them to you by prepaid express — you keep the books
5 days— examine them carefully, test them, apply them to your
every -day work. If satisfied that the books are the most complete
and comprehensive work ever published on electricity, keep them,
send $2.00 within five days and $2.00 a month until you have paid
$ 1 8.80, the special introductory price — the regular list price is
$36.00. If not suited to your needs, notify us. We will send for
them at our expense. Fill in and mail the coupon today —
the books will be sent you at once.

PARTIAL SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS :

Electric Wiring — Electric Telegraph — Wireless
Telegraphy — Telautograph — Theory, Calculation,
Design and Construction of Generators and Motors
— Types of Dynamos and Motors — Elevators — Direct
Current Motors — Direct-Driven Machine Shop
Tools — Electric Lighting — Electric Railways — Sin-
gle-Phase Electric Railway — Management of Dy-
namos and Motors Power Stations — Central Sta-
tion Engineering — Storage Batteries — Power
Transmission — Alternating Current Machinery —
Telephony — Automatic Telephone — Wireless Tele-
phony— Telegraphone, etc.

SPECIAL OFFER IF YOU MARK AND MAIL COUPON PROMPTLY

For a short time we will include, as a monthly supplement, abso-
lutely free of charge for one year, the TECHNICAL WORLD
MAGAZINE. This is a regular $l.50monthly, full of Twentieth
Century Scientific facts, written in popular form. Also contains the
latest discussions on timely topics in invention, discovery, industry, etc.

FREE OFFER COUPON

American School of Correspondence, Chicago, U. S. A.

Please send Cyclopedia of Applied Electricity for Ave days' FREE ex-
amination, also T. W. I'm 1 year. I will send $2.00 within live days and
$2.00 anion Hi until I have paid $18.80 ; otherwise I will notify you and
hold the books subject to your order. Title not to pa6s until fully paid.

NAME

ADDRESS

OCCUPATION

EMPLOYER

H^H^^HMBMM R. R. Man's, I i '09 ■■■^■^■M

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desiral'ce that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine).

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION,

WIN

"The Best Gift of Alt

Her Diamond Engagement Ring
DIAMONDS AS AN INVESTMENT £Z^&*42tt£!&,b£&

insurance or stocks. By the Loftis System you have possession of your prop-
erty while paying for it, the pleasure of its use and the increase in valuation
which is sure to follow. Diamonds have advanced in value 10 to 20 per cent
annually in recent years and their scarcity indicates a still further increase in
the near future. Diamonds are instantly convertible into cash in emergencies.

LOFTIS
SYSTEM

DIAMONDS

ON
CREDIT

AllV PfiTSOn °^ nonest Intentions, no matter how far away
J oiauii he or she may live, may open a Confidential
Charge Account for a Diamond, Watch or other valuable art-
/ole of jewelry, and pay for same In a series of easy monthly
payments.

An Arrmint With lie is a confidential matter. We require
HII HUCOlini WIM US no security, charge no interest ; Im-
pose no penalties and create no publicity. Our customers use
their charge accounts with us year after year, finding them a
great convenience at such times as Christmas, birthdays, anni-
versaries, etc. We have no disagreeable preliminaries or vexa-
tious delays. Everything is pleasant, prompt and guaranteed to
be satisfactory. We want your account.

Write for Our New Big Catalog ^rS,^

over 1,500 illustrations of Beautiful Diamond Rings, Pins,
Brooches, etc. , ranging in price from $10.00 to $500.00. High Grade
Elgin and Waltham Watches, Lady's and Gent's sizes, from 85.00
to $100.00, and all other kinds of Jewelry, Silverware, etc. Select
any article you wish and it will be sent on approval, all charges
prepaid; you incur no expense whatever. If entirely satisfactory,

retain it, paying one-fifth cash and the balance in eight equal
monthly payments. Remember there is no interest to pay.

OlIP PPIOP*. are !0 to 15 per cent lower than those of the
uui r ■ ivco ordinary spot cash retail jeweler. We are direct
importers, buying our Diamonds in the rough, which we cleave,
cut and polish in our own work shops. In baying from us you
save the profit of broker, jobber, wholesaler and retailer.

Wo flro Tho nirloct largest and most reliable Diamond,
lie MIC I lie Uiucsi, jewelry and Watch Credit House in
the World. Est. 1858. We refer to any bank in America— ask
your local bank how we stand In the business world. They will
refer to their Commercial Agency books and tell you that we
stand very high, and that our representations may be accepted
without question.

Do Your Christmas Shopping Now,^vsn*g

in the privacy of your own home. Don't wait until the
Christmas rush is 6n. Now is the best time to make choice
selections. Our New Illustrated Catalog, the finest ever
issued, is sent free. Write for it today. Do it now.

Ta tho Pacli Ruwci* t\f niamnnJe we have a proposition to make which is thoroughly characteristic of our
1W IUC va»U UUJfW VI UlO.UlVUUi>, house. It is nothing less than a written agreement to return the full amount
paid us for a Diamond — less ten per cent, at any time within one year. Thus, one might wear a fifty dollar Diamond for a
whole year, then send it back and get $45.00, making the cost of wearing the Diamond less than ten cents per week.

OlIP Handsome ^(lllVPnir Rnnklpt telling all about "How Easily You Can
UUI ndiiUSU!!!., OUUVeilll DUUKIBU Wear and Own a Diamond on the Loftis
System," will be sent free on request, The Diamond Is the emblem of success.

THE OLD RELIABLE, ORIGINAL
DIAMOND AND WATCH CREDIT HOUSE,

lOFTIS

In RPfK RfO ig?o DePL M661 92 to 98 State St-> CHICAGO, ILL.

H Ul\U^ & UV« 1058 BRANCH STORF.S-PituK„r, P» »„A St 1 „„;. Mn

BRANCH STORES— PitUburg, Pa., and St. Louu, Mo.

In answering this advertisement it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MANS MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

I am King, the Tailor

I tailor clothes to order, dealing: di-
rectly with tbe consumer. You pay
no middleman's profit. My custom-
tailored suits cost you less then ordi-
nary ready made clothes. I'll make a
snappy, stylish, perfect-fitting suit or
overcoat to your measure— a better
looking, better wearing garment than
you can possibly get from your local
dealer or tailor— and save you monk-
ey besides.

This Suit to $1 C
r Your Measure *«*

a suit that your tailor would ask $30
for. I make Suits and Overcoats to
measure for $12.50 to $25.00 and prepay
the express. My system of home
measurement is so easy there is abso-
lutely no chance for mistakes. I take
all the risks. I actually make it easy
for you to order stylish, tailor-made
garments by mail at less than ready-
made prices.

Style Book & Samples FREE

My Style Book contains samples of
the newest weaves and designs for Fall
and Winter, and also fashion plates
showing the latest New York modes.
It is FREE— send for it today.
For ten years, in the same location, I have made clothes
for thousands of satisfied customers; I'll satisfy you, or
refund your money. The Wisconsin National Bank of
Milwaukee, with resources of over $20,000,000, and with whom
I have been doing business for over ten years, will tell you
I am responsible.
Let me be your tailor. Write for style book; it Is Free.

King Tailoring Company

195 West Water Street.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Automobile Jackets, Blizzard Proof

Outside texture so closely woven it resists
wind and wear alike. Lined with wool
fleece that defies the cold. Snap fasteners,
riveted pockets.

i PARKER'S
ARCTIC JACKET

Registered in V. S. Patent Of/ice

Better than an overcoat for facing cold
and work together. Warm, durable,
comfortable. Ask your dealer or sent
postpaid on receipt of $2.35.

JOHN H. PARKER CO.,
27 James Street, Maiden, Mass.

AGENTS ;— IF I KNEW YOUR NAME. I would
send you our $2.19 sample outfit free this very minute,
Let me start you in a profitable business. You do not
need one cent of capital. Experience unnecessary. 50
per cent profit. Credit given. Premiums. Freight
paid. Chance to win $500 in gold extra. Every man and
woman rbould write me for free outfit. Jay Blade,
Pies., 36 Beverly Street, Boston, Mass.

FREE

WRITE AT ONCE

FOR GENUINE NATIVE

ARIZONA Jtl'ISY

RUBY

We will send it to you absolutely FREE prepaid, to introduce our genuine
Mexican Diamonds. These Diamonds exactly resemble finest genuine blue-
white Diamonds, stand acid teists, are cut by experts, brilliancy guaranteed
permanent, and yet we sell at M0 the cost. Rest people wear them.
SPECIAL OFFEK— For 50c deposit, as guarantee of good
faith, we send on approval, registered, either % or 1 carat
Mexican Diamond at special price. Money back if desired.
Illustrated Catalog 1'REE. Write today and get Ruby FKKK.

MEXICAN DIAMOND IMP. CO. Dept., ER-11, Las Cruces, New Mex.

Fighting

the Trust!!

The Smashing Anti-
Irust Fight No w OnS

^■Hf

Trust
Prices
Eclipsed at Last!

An absolutely first-class high-
grade watch at a price within

the reach of the people — The Burlington Special

No-Trust Watch.

The World's Masterpiece of watch manufacture— the
Burlington Special— now sold direct to the public at its
rock-hnttom., no-trust price (and besides without middle-
men's profits).

We do not care what it costs-™ t!r"n:

dependent line and so we are making the most sweeping,
baffling offer ever made on watches.

Some trusts are legal and some are not. We do not say
that the watch trust Is illegal; but we do say that the
methods of the giant factories in making "contracts" with
dealers to uphold double prices on watches is very un-
fair—unfair to us and unfair to you. Hence our direct
offer in the Burlington at the very same price the Whole-
sale Jeweler must pay.

This Is your opportunity— NOW— while this great no-
trust offer lasts— get the best watch made anywhere at
one-third the price of other high-grade watches. Fur-
thermore, in order to fight the Trust most effectually,
we even allow terms of $2.50 a month on our
finest watch— easiest possible payments at the
rock-bottom price, the identical price the ^
Wholesale jeweler must pay. Jr Ao

Watch Book on request S<^

Now do not miss this
opportunity. At least we
want you to know ab< mt
WATCHES and WATCH
PRICES.' Write Today.

Bb posted

Send a postal or letter
or simply mail coupon
without sending a letter
and get the free book.

BURLINGTON
WATCH CO.

Dept. 1108,

Millard Sta. A- ^^

jt Jr ^ °v

<j> vey ov

•%°

-W

-tip

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Cailroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

■'■".■:■■■; -

;-vU "- ■'-■..■"':

riylheBestisGoodEnoiKft

rfife

;; .',-'

(rv but -

0ffic« "* :.

Families read The Youth's
Companion every week because
they have found it "worth while"

The Volume for 1910 would cost $30 if printed in
book form. Each week's issue will be crowded with
the reading that delights every member of the family.

For 1910 — 50 Star Articles by Famous Men and
Women, 250 Stories, 1000 Up-to-Date Notes on Current
Events, etc., 2000 One-Minute Stories will be printed.

FREE

JAN.,

910

Every New Subscriber who at once cuts out
and sends this slip (or the name of this pub-
lication) with $1.75 for the 52 issues of The
Youth's Companion for 1910 will receive

All the issues of The Companion for the
remaining weeks of 1909, including the
Thanksgiving and Christmas Numbers.

The Companion's "Venetian" Calendar for
1910, lithographed in 13 colors and gold.

Then The Youth's Companion for the 52
weeks of 1910 — a treasury of the best
reading for all the family.

Illustrated Prospectus and Specimen Copies Sent Upon Request.
THE YOUTH'S COMPANION, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS

ie pte

In answering this advertisement it is desirable, that you mention The Railkoad Max's Magazine.

With

12 Blades

is&d&

fleadyj}

JOr

Extra
\B1ades

\10for50*

your*
dealers\
or by mail

320 BROADWAY, N.Y.

y^gjjft^

| CONSTANTINO

The Great Spanish Tenor
Sings exclusively for the Columbia

10 inch Double-Di«c Records
> 2 inch Dooble-Duc Rtcordi

THE COLUMBIA

GrafonolA

DE LUXE- $ 2 00.°°

(WITH REGINA ATTACHMENT $225.°°)

Double-Disc Records

65c.

Played on your own machine, no matter
whether it's a Columbia or not, Columbia
Double-Disc Records will give you better
music and longer
service. Get
Columbia Double-
Discs. Don't
take "no" for
an answer. We
can give you the
address of a
nearby dealer ; or send us 65
cents and we will send }rou a
sample record, postage free, with a catalog.

There are "concealed-horn" talking-machines on the
market already. If you will make just one comparison
you will own a Grafonola. You can make this compari-
on by stepping into any store where Columbia Records
are carried in stock— or you can do it fairly well by
mail. We have an advance catalog ready for you.

Columbia Phonograph Company, Gen'l

Dept. Q 11. Tribune Building. New York

Manufacturers of Disc and Cylinder Graphophones, $20 to J200— Double-
Disc and Indestructible Cylinder Records. Dealers everywhere.
Headquarters for Canada— 40 Melinda Street, Toronto. Ont.

Uesllers Wanted. Exclusive seltiug rights given where
we are not properly represented.

THE MUNSEY PRESS, NEW YORK

3RICL lO CENTS

MAGAZINE

COPYRIGHTED
PHOTO BY GESSFORD

THEUFESTORYOF

ROBERT LOVETT

SUCCESSOR TO

HARRIMAN

loldror lhc hrst lime

CHRISTMAS

IHE FRANK AMUNSEY COMPANY NEW YORK AND LONDON

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

Earn $20 to $35

A Week

And enjoy the pleasantest occupation on earth.
Be a chauffeur and drive one of the big fast-
as-the-wind modern automobiles, earning big pay
while you do it.

Learn At Home By Mail

We will teach you as we have hundreds cf young
men, in your spare time: it don't take long. Tou
can keep your present job while learning, and we
will wait for half the low cost of tuition until you
have a position paying you at least 825 a week.
Get into the biggest,- most fascinating occupation
on earth and have a job that's a cinch. $3 starts
you. Write now for full particulars and free book
telling all.

Buffalo Automobile School
76C Franklin Street Buffalo, N. Y.

WOMEN OF ALL NATIONS

<J A new, interesting1, instructive and fascinating work,
splendidly illustrated with hundreds of photographs of
women of all nations. The complete history of women
in every part of the world ; their modes
of dress ; interesting clothing peculiari-
ties ; how they are courted and married ;
the world's only great and standard work
on women. A mammoth picture gallery,
including a series of plates in colois.

Introductory Offer

" Women of All Nations " is pub-
lished in 24 large quarto sections at
25c. per section. Send 35c. for
Section One. We guarantee sat-
isfaction. Our publications have
been standard for sixty years.

CASSELL & CO.

43 East 19th Street, NEW YORK

LEARN

TELEGRAPHY
BOOKKEEPING
OR SHORTHAND
B Y MAIL- A T YOUR OWN HOME

Anyone ran learn it easily in a few weeks. We are unable to supply the
demand for telegraph operators, uookheepere and stenographers. No
charge for tuition until posiiiim is secured. Write today for particulars.

MICHIGAN BUSIMOSS INSTITUTE.
W34 Institute Running. Kalamazoo, Mich.

PREPARE YOURSELF FOR
A BETTER POSITION

Men and Women Received. Knter To-
day. College Course Prepares for Prac-
tice. Commercial and Real Estate Law
Course. Six Years of Success. Easy
Payment Plan. Free Catalog of Corre-
spondence Courses.

POTOMAC UNIVERSITY

LAW SCHOOL, WASHINGTON, D. C.

Mr. Edison's LATEST

Supremely Fine Phonograph

A musical wonder— a perfect reproducer of sound. —
unsurpassable in clearness and beauty of tone.

Double Reproducer Amberol Records
New Style Floral Horn New Style Cabinet
The Latest Model High Grade Edison

OUR OUTFIT M®. lO—Just Out

at $10 less than our former rock-bottom price
on the outfit No. 9 and

Free Loan

We ship on a fr.ee loan— no money down— do not pay us one
cent , C.O.D.— take the outfit to your home on our free loan offer.

You Need Mot Buy Anything: All we want on this

free loan is that you convince yourself ol the absolute superior-
ity of this supero new style Instrument. All We ask is that you
let your family and a few of your neighbors and friends hear the
Edison when we send it to you on a free loan. Let them hear the
magnificent music, operas, comic songs and funny recitations,—
then let them judge. If any of your friends then want an Edison,
we will feel thankful to you, or If you want to keep yours, you
may keep it, on the easiest monthly payments: as lew as
$3.00 a month-*3.00 a month for an Edison. ^

But if you and none of your friends want an instru-
ment just now, there is no harm done. Just return
the outfit at our expense and we charge you noth-
ing for the free loan.

We simply want everybody to hear the latest
product of Mr. Edison's skill.

a*—.. - , \Mm*S4-1mi for the free catalog and
nOW W¥i*StG free list of Edison
records, operas, songs and comic recita-
tions that you want to hear on this free
loan. Just put your name and ad-
dress on a postal or in a letter, or
Blgn and mall the coupon. No ^''^sf&'
letter necessary if you send ^^f "
the coupon. .yv^T o^ c

F.K.BABSON j!^%^i^
Edison Phono-
graph Distrib-
utors

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THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

PROFITABLE EGG FARMING

200 EGGS A YEAR
PER HEN

HOW TO GET THEM

The seventh edition of the book, " 200 Eggs. a Year Per Hen,"
is now ready. Revised, enlarged, and in part rewritten.
96 pages. Contains among other things the method of feeding
by which Mr. S. D. Fox, of Wolfboro, N. H., won the prize of
$100 in gold offered by the manufacturers of a well-known con-
dition powder for the best egg record during the winter
months. Simple as a, b, c — and yet we guarantee it to start
hens to laying earlier and to induce them to lay more eggs than
any other method under the sun. The book also contains
rec"ipe for egg food and tonic used by Mr. Fox, which brought
him in one winter day 68 eggs from 72 hens ; and for five days
in succession from the same flock 64 eggs a day. Mr. E. F.
Chamberlain, of Wolfboro, N. H., says: "By following the
methods outlined in your book I obtained 1,496 eggs from 91
R. I. Reds in the month of January, 1902.'' From 14 pullets
picked at random out of a farmer's flock the author got 2,999
eggs in one year— an average of over 214 eggs apiece. It has been my ambition in writing " 200 Eggs a Year
Per Hen," to make it the standard book on egg production and profits in poultry. Tells all there is to know,
and tells it in a plain, common sense way.

Price 50 cents: or with a year's subscription to the AMERICAN POULTRY
ADVOCATE, both for 75 cents; two years' subscription and book for $1.00; or
given free as a premium for two yearly subscriptions at SO cents each.

Our paper is handsomely illustrated, 44 to 84 pages, 50 cents per year. 3 months' trial, 10 cents. Sample
Free. CATALOGUE of poultry books free.

Established 1892

AMERICAN POULTRY ADVOCATE, 632 Hogan Block, Syracuse, N. Y.

THREE BOOKS FREE

Would you like to succeed in business or secure a good paying life position
with theU. S. Government? If so, you should follow the exa»ple of
hundreds of others who have achieved success through our assistance.

Our Free Books :

"EXPERT BOOKKEEPER," "THE EASY BOSS,"
"SUCCESS IN BUSINESS,"
tell about courses in Bookkeeping, Civil Service
and Shorthand, which you can complete at your
own home without loss of time. They are books of
intenseinterest to those who aspire to success. To
advertise our Schools and help the ambitious, we are
giving these books away. Send your address;
name course in which you are interested, and re-
ceive the book without any cost to you whatever.
COMMERCIAL CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOLS
31 Commercial Bldg., Rochester, N. Y.

$3000!$10,OOOay*ar

FOR
SALE

APPLY TO

JOHN BROWH

IN THE KtEAL ESTATE BUSINESS

We will teach you by mail the Real Estate, General Brokerage and
Insurance Business, and appoint you

SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE

of the oldest and largest co-operative real estate and brokerage company
in America. Representatives are making $3,000 to $10,000 a year without
any investment of capital. Excellent opportunities open to YOU. By our
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A Thorough Commercial Law Course FREE to Each
Representative. Write for 62-page book, Free.

THE CROSS COMPANY, 3337 Reaper Block, Chicago

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THE RAILROAD MAN S MAGAZINE

CONTENTS FOR DECEMBER

SERIALS.

The Daughter of the Idol. Part II John Mack Stone . . .

Treasure of the World. Part III. ........ Stephen Chalmers .

The Dam-Builders. Part III. .......... Bannister Merwin . . .

The Spider of Palermo. Part V Edward Bedinger Mitchell

SHORT STORIES.

He Omitted the " Extra." (Illustrated.) James Norman Shreve

Jimmy Collins and the 442. (Illustrated.) A. E. Cooley . . . .

Not Always to the Swift. (Illustrated.) M. J. Phillips . . . .

Mabel On a Mountain. (Illustrated.) Cromwell Childe

Carrying the Boodle to Casey. (Illustrated.) E. Florence

The Ten-Thirty Call Percy Wilson .

SPECIAL ARTICLES.

Told Before "Hitting the Hay." (Illustrated.) . . . ; Olin Crawford .

The Dynamite Division Dennis H. Stovall . .

Lovett — Harriman's Successor. (Illustrated.) .... Arno Dosch . . . .

Making the Lightning Hustle Charlton C. Andrews

Fighting the Ticket-Scalpers. No. 3 H. A. Koach .

Spending a Railroad's Money T. S. Dayton . . . .

Christmas on a Flooded Track. True Story. No. 39.

(Illustrated.) Clara Morris . . . .

Letters of an Old Railroad Man and His Son. No. 1 .

Jim Gets a Job in the General Manager's Office on

His Dad's Old Line. (Illustrated.) Herman Da Costa

The Stuff That Helps the Wheels Go Round .... Horace H. Smith
Observations of a Country Station-Agent. No. 19.

(Illustrated.) J. E. Smith . ■ .

Help for Men Who Help Themselves. No. 28. Making

Passenger-Cars Comfortable . C. F. Carter

Being a Boomer Brakeman. No. 3. Things Which Break

the Monotony. (Illustrated.) Horace Herr

Riding the Rail from Coast to Coast. No. 10. Romances

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VERSE AND DIVERSE.

My Sweetheart's an Engineer. (Poem.) Kitty Spargur Hulsi

By the Light of the Lantern

Recent Railroad Patents Forrest G Smith

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The Railroad Man's Brain Teasers

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Full Speed Ahead

Last Year's Railroad Earnings
Steel Ties in Europe ....
New York's Abandoned Railway
On the Editorial Carpet

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CopyriKlit, 1909, bv The Frank A. Miinsey Company.

Entered as second-class matter, September 6, 1906, at the Post-Offl-'e, at New York, N. T.t under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

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THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE

Vol. X.

DECEMBER, 1909.

No. 3.

Told Before " Hitting the Hay."

BY OLIN CRAWFORD

IT'S a rough day that doesn't have a story, and a tired man who isn't ready
to hear or tell one. " Ear-pounding " is a pleasant occupation, but it

needs a good frame of mind to get the best out of it. Therefore, where
two or three railroad men are gathered together in one bunk-house, the strain
of the day's toil is relieved by that oldest and most honorable of all barters,
swapping yarns — " stove-piping," to use the term that every railroad man
understands.

These bunk-house tales bear this stamp — the hall-mark of the road. A
nerve-racking incident is laughed over, and, through sheer relief, men who
were almost flagged by the black flag of Death tell a tale with as much gusto
as the head shack when he romances about the hoboes he made hit the dirt.

Here We Have the Inevitable Black Cat, the Empty Air-Brakes, the

Dago Ghosts, the Man with the Hawk Eyes, the Vision

of Snyder, and Others.

ON'T suppose any of you
boys remember Nick
Ferguson?" said Jim
Ronney, as he sat with
his feet on the empty
checker-board table in
the Erie's, bunk-house in the Jersey City
yards. Ronney quit running a freight-
engine when he fell heir to a little
property a few years ago, and he hasn't
had much to do since but to talk about
the old days.

He shot an inquiring glance at the

circle of men from the engines — men

whose eyes seemed preternaturally large

and bright in their wreaths of dust -and

1 RR 3,;

soot as they lounged around the tables
in the big,, dark room on the ground
floor in the shadow of the roundhouse
walls.

" I guess not," said Ronney, noting
the general shaking of heads. " He
hasn't been on the road since the Civil
War, and I haven't seen or heard of
him in forty years.

" The first work 1 ever did was firing
on his engine, and of all the super-
stitious old boys I ever fell in with,
he certainly held the record. That black
cat that sneaked through here just now
put me in mind of him. You know
people have got different theories about

386

THE RAILROAD MAN'S

black cats; some of 'em think they're
good luck, and some think they're bad.

" Ferguson was dead set against 'em.
He couldn't abide the sight of one, and
I can swear he used to actually turn pale
whenever one of 'em came near him.

" It was about 1863, as near as I can
recollect, that we were starting out on
our run one morning, and7he was look-
ing- pretty gloomy and not saying much.
Finally I said: 'Nick, what's the mat-
ter with you this morning ? '

" He didn't give- so much as a word
in answer, but kept looking out of the
cab and watching the track ahead ; and
I made up my mind, that if he was go-
ing to act that way, I wouldn't bother
with him, and kept quiet.

" But after about five minutes he
turned and looked at aae as solemn as
an owl. Then he says: 'Jim, some-
thing's going to happen to us before we
get back.'

"'What's the matter this time?' I
says. I wasn't worrying much, for he'd
made that prediction before without its
coming true.

" ' Well,' he says, ' one of those black
devils came and sat on the porch of my
house, up in Elmira, last evening, and
yowled there all night. That means
death. A cousin of mine, in Port Jervis,
had a black cat come to his house and
act the same way a year ago, and the
next day he dropped dead of apoplexy.
You may laugh, but I tell you there's
something in that superstition.'

Didn't Believe in Black Cats.

" Of course, I didn't take any stock
in such a fool idea as that, and after
we'd run along for an hour or so, it
was pretty near out of my mind, except
that Nick brought it back to me now
and then by his worried look.

" We were to the west of Shohola,
pulling half a dozen freight-cars and
making pretty good time, when we came
to a switch. As it turned out later, the
switchman was drunk. What did we do
but run out onto the siding, with a lone
caboose standing right ahead of us, not
a hundred feet away.

"I lit out for the open air without
another look, and landed, sprawling, in
a sand-pile without so much as a scratch.

MAGAZINE.

I had no more than struck the ground
than I saw Nick coming, too. But as
he jumped, his foot, caught on the cab
and tilted him forward, and he turned
a complete somersault in the air and
landed on his feet. It was as pretty a
stunt as I ever saw in a circus.

" He'd waited just long enough to
shut off steam, but the engine banged
into that caboose and tore it all to
pieces, besides getting pretty well
smashed up itself. The two brakemen
had jumped too, and neither of 'em was
much hurt, but it- was as close a call
as any of us had ever had.

' " ' Nick,' I says, ' the next' time any
black cats come yowling round your
house, you kill 'em. I don't want any
more experiences like this.'

" ' Didn't I tell you?' he says.

" 'Yes,' I says; 'you told me it meant
death. But I never heard a black cat
meant any such circus stunt as you've
been performing.'

" ' Don't be too sure,' he says. ' I'm
getting along in years. I may nave hurt
myself internally doing that somer-
sault.'

" You never can cure a man who was
as superstitious as he was."

Running into Danger.

" I've known men whose premonitions
did come true, and they weren't super-
stitious, either," said Harvey Spring-
stead, who had just come in from Mogul
970, and whose days as an Erie engineer
date back to 1870.

" When it comes really down to the
supernatural, the story about Amos
Beattie is the strangest I ever heard. He
was running along with a passenger-
train at high speed, near the top of the
Oxford grade, when the words came into
his mind, ' There's danger ahead.'

"He was behind time, and if he
slowed down without good reason it
might mean trouble for him at the end
of the run. But he couldn't get the idea
out of his head that he was running into
danger, and just before he came to a
curve where the woods were thick, and
he couldn't see ahead, he shut off steam
and put on the air.

" Everybody wondered why he did it.
for they hadn't seen any sign of trouble.

TOLD BEFORE "HITTING THE HAY.

387

But he had no sooner come to
a stop than there on the curve,
only a few feet away, was a
caboose — = the rear end of a
blocked train. If it hadn't been
for that mysterious warning,
Beattie would have smashed
into it and nobody knows how
many lives would have been
lost.

" It was on the Oxford
grade, too, that Ed Reed's
freight-train ran away with him
a few years ago. Up at the top
of the mountain, Reed had left
his brake-valve handle switched
around ' on the lap,' and grad-
ually all the air had leaked out
of the tanks.

" Coining down the grade, f
there's a fall of almost ninety
feet to the mile. You can
imagine that when he struck it
he began to get up speed with
fifty or sixty heavy freight-cars
behind him. He was running
altogether too fast for safety, so
he grabbed his brake-valve and
found it wasn't working.

" That scared him, and he
switched jt around to emer-
gency. Still nothing doing ;
not air enough to make a
sound. And the old train was .«HE
getting up more and more speed
every second.

" They used to say Reed's hair stood
right up on end when he found his air
had gone. He began to scramble back
toward the cars, and the brakemen, when
they realized what was up, tried to put
on the hand-brakes. But they wouldn't
hold somehow, and away the train went
at a tremendous clip, with pretty near
two miles of down grade ahead of it,
and with only about one chance in a
hundred of holding to the rails.

"I don't suppose anybody ever had
any notion of what speed it reached, but
it was a good guess that it was the fast-
est freight that ever ran on the road.
Talk about your eighteen-hours-to-Chi-
cago trains! They wouldn't have been
in it for a minute with Ed Reed's fast
freight.

" It came down the mountain like a
streak of lightning, with Ed hanging on-

USED TO ACTUALLY TURN PALE WHENEVER ONE
OF 'EM CAME NEAR HIM."

to his cab and wondering how soon he
was going to another world. The train-
crew was yellin' and thinkin' they were
never going to see home again, and then,
a minute later, ahead of 'em, on the same
track, they got sight of another freight.

A Quick- Witted Despatcher.

" It looked as if it was all up with
'em then. The other freight was under
way, and was going the same direction
they were, but it was down at the bot-
tom of the grade ; and even if its engi-
neer had seen them coming, he never
could have worked up enough speed to
run away from them. But as it hap-
pened, he hadn't any idea that there was
such a flier behind him, and he was just
crawling along. .

" Just then, in the nick of time, the

388

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

despatcher at Chester saw Reed coming.
He knew he wouldn't be driving along
at that speed unless something was
wrong, and he made up his mind what
to do in a flash.

" It happened that there wasn't any-
thing on the east-bound track just then,
and he swung the switch to turn Reed's
train over onto it.

"A few seconds later' the runaway
came pounding along to the cross-overs.
It was pretty doubtful whether it would
hold the rails between tracks going at
such a speed and with so many cars, but
it did somehow, and brought up on the
east-bound track safe and sound. But
• it ran along beyond that point almost a
mile on the up grade before Reed could
stop it.

"If it had been a little later, there
would have been a chance of a head-on
collision, for an east - bound train was
soon due. It's a pretty safe guess that
Reed never kept his brake - valve open
after that.

" But to come back to those super-
stitious people, did you ever hear why
Jim Farrington once quit his job? About
fifteen years ago, twelve Italians were
killed in a wreck at Hohokus.

The Hohokus Ghosts.

" Farrington was baggage - master on
my train then, and he was inclined to
be superstitious. Some of us had heard
he believed in ghosts, so we fixed up a
job to test him. The night after the
wreck, when we came to the place where
it had happened, I slowed down a little
bit, and then one of the brakemen let
out a. yell. The next minute Farrington
was running around, wanting to know
what all the trouble was about.

" ' The trouble ! ' said somebody.
' Isn't there trouble enough when you see
the ghosts of twelve Italians all waving
at you at once ? '

" Farrington quit running on that line
after that night. He said twelve dago
ghosts all in a bunch were too much for
the nerves of any man."

A little later, Levi Linley came into
the bunk-house. He has been running
an engine on the Erie for forty -one
years, and was a brakeman as long ago
as 1861.

"Ever see a ghost, Levi?" asked a
young fireman.

" I can't say that I have," said Lin-
ley as he poured his coffee into the in-
verted cover of his dinner-pail. " My
engine has struck a good many men, but
they don't haunt me nights. The only
one that ever came anywhere near it was
a man I ran over up the other side of
Chester, nine or ten years ago.

" I was just running out of the sta-
tion, ; and going not more than six or
eight miles an hour, when I noticed him
walking alongside the track. He was a
man about thirty-five, I should say, and
looked pretty seedy. He and the engine
were going in the same direction, and I
didn't pay much attention to him until
he stopped of a sudden, turned his head,
and looked me straight in the eye.

Eyes of a Hawk.

" He had an eye as sharp as a hawk's,
and, somehow, that look of his seemed
to go clear through me. I never want
to see as much in another man's eyes as
I saw in his that moment. I've heard
of magnetic eyes and soulful eyes and
eyes that spoke volumes, but the eyes
that man turned on me nobody would
ever forget. They sent a creepy feeling
right up and down my spine.

" The next second, what did he do
but kneel down on the track, stretch his
hands out in front of him, and put his
head across the rail.

"I looked the other way. I've seen
dolens of men killed, but I couldn't
stand that, not after those eyes had bored
through me. And I couldn't go back to
see what was left of him, either. The
only man I ever struck that I didn't go
back to see afterward.

" I can see those eyes now, and some-
times I see 'em nights, too. If I ever
have a nightmare, I'll be dreaming that*
man is standing by the track, looking
at me.

" It turned out that he had been to
Greycourt the -evening before, had spent
his last twenty-five cents there for some-
thing to eat, and had gone away saying
he was down and out.

" It's lucky I don't believe in ghosts, or
I might imagine I saw him in front of the
engine some night. This ghost talk is

TOLD BEFORE "HITTING THE HAY.'

389

all bosh ; but in the half

century that I've been on

the railroad, I've run with

a" good many men that be-
lieved in 'em.

"Twenty years or so ago,
., a brak eman named Snyder

was killed at White's

Bridge, near Otisville. The
•next night when we were

running by there, the men

on my train were pretty

near scared to death. They

imagined they saw Snyder

sitting on the wall at the

end of the bridge, waving
his hand at them.

" A few nights later, at
the same place, the brake-
men got another scare.
There was Snyder on the
wall again, they said, beck-
oning to them. One of
them gave a yell you could
have heard a mile away.

" But I hadn't seen any-
thing myself, and I never
did, though for months af-
terward the brakemen run-
ning by there used to think
they saw the ; ghost sitting
on the wall.

" About the worst scare
I ever had didn't come from
ghosts. It was one day in
the early sixties, while we
were running near the Del-
aware Bridge. It was a
cattle-train. In one car
there were twenty-five oxen.
We were going along at a
pretty good clip when the
engine jumped the track,
dragging the nearest cars
into the ditch.

" Alongside the ditch
there was a stone wall about
eight feet high. I was a
brakeman in those days,
and was riding in the ca-
boose. When the smash
came I was pitched clear over that wall,
and landed on my hands and knees with-
out much more than a scratch.

" I had no sooner struck the ground
than an ox came diving through the air
above the wall, looking something like

AN OX CAME
AIR, ABOVE

the pictures of the cow that jumped over
the moon, and landing on all fours al-
most on top of me. It had been thrown
right through the roof of one of the cars,
and why it wasn't killed, or at least hurt,
I never could understand."

390

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Sometimes M. M. Rounds, one of the
oldest railroad men in the country,
strolls down to the Erie yards from his
home in Jersey City. He goes back to
the dim, old days of the strap-iron rails,

In 1870 he was running an engine on the
Erie. In 1872 he was in Maryland as
one of the contractors who were build-
ing the Southern Maryland road.

After thirty miles had been built the
road's backers ran short of
funds, and, in 1874. Rounds
became an engineer on the
Missouri Pacific. Three
years more, and he was back'
running an engine on the
Erie again. Many a story
this old engineer tells of
railroading, in the fifties.

WONDERING HOW SOON HE
WAS GOING TO ANOTHER
WORLD."

when the telegraph played only a very
small part in railroading. Two years
ago the Erie retired him on a pension,
after he had served the company twenty-
nine years as an engineer.

Rounds was born on March 21, 1824,
and it was in 1847 that he became a
railroad man. In that year he went to
work in the Boston Locomotive Works,
and helped to build some of the famous
engines of the time. In 1849 he went to
the Boston and Providence as a car-re-
pairer, and in 1850 became an engineer
on the Hartford, Providence and Fish-
kill, with a run betAveen Willimantic and
Bristol.

In 1851 he became an engineer on the
New York, New Haven and Hartford.
Three years later he was in charge of
the engine repair-shops at New Haven.

He was on one of the engines that ran
through the famous blizzard of 1856,
one of the worst snow-storms that ever
struck New England.

" Railroading through the storm of
1888 was bad enough," he-said, "but it
was a good deal worse in '56, when
the snow was just as deep and the en-
gines smaller. I was in charge of the

TOLD BEFORE "HITTING THE HAY."

391

engine repair-shops then, and in the
height of the storm I ran out from New
Haven with one of the engineers.

" There wasn't any telegraph system
then worth mentioning, and the road was
only a single track. - The train that was
due to meet us didn't come, so we ran
on past the switch, intending to go as
far as we could, until we met either that
train or some other one. The engineer
was worrying. He wasn't sure just what
he ought to do.

" The only rules to guide an engineer
at that time were printed on the backs
of the time-tables, and they didn't pro-
vide for many emergencies. It was risky
business, too, running on a single track
and not knowing where the other trains
were. But, of course, w^ didn't run very
fast. Even under the best of conditions,
a ttain didn't often average more than
twenty miles an hour in those days.

" At last we met not only one train,
but six, all together. The engineer of
the first train insisted that we must run
back and get out of his way. But an-
other train had run up behind us, and
the engineer of that shouted out : ' I
won't back a foot ! Not for the presi-
dent of the road.'

" Well, they began to argue, and were
getting pretty mad about it, when the
superintendent of the road, who had
been on one of the six trains ahead of
us, came running up, and cried out ithat
we had the right of way because we were
on time and the trains ahead of us
weren't.

In the Single-Track Days.

" So all those six trains had to run
back and let us move on. Of course, it
took them a good deal longer than it
would have taken us, and we would
probably have got ahead faster if we
had run back to a switch and let them
pass us, but it was a matter of pride
which should get out of the way. The
question of which way would delay the
passengers the most didn't enter into the
question. ,

" I've known engineers to meet on
that pld single track and stop head-on
only a few feet apart and begin arguing
over which one's watch was right.

" One of 'em would call out : ' Now

look a here, my watch hasn't lost ten
minutes in a week, and I set it by the
town clock only this morning. I'm here
right on time, and, by thunder ! you've
got to back out.'

" Then the other one would begin to
tell about how his watch was guaran-
teed, and they'd keep on arguing until
one or the other would get tired and get
out of the way.

Correct Time Not Kept.

" Nobody had perfect time in those
days, and one of the rules of the road
was that we should wait at a station
five minutes to allow for differences be-
tween watches.

" Queer how there weren't more acci-
dents, isn't it? But they didn't have
half as many big disasters as we have
nowadays. I suppose the worst that
New England ever had in those early
years was the one at the South Norwalk
drawbridge. When the draw was closed,
a red ball hung over the bridge. If the
ball wasn't in sight, it meant that the
draw was open.

" But one day, in 1853, an engineer at
the head of a big passenger-train ran out
into the open draw at full speed when
the ball was down. The engine and
three cars went into the river, and the
only reason the rest didn't follow was
that there wasn't room left in the draw
for them to squeeze through. Forty
persons were drowned in that accident,
and a good many of them were from
some of the best families in New Eng-
land.

" Nobody could understand why the
engineer had run out onto the bridge
when the ball was down, and he didn't
live to explain. Many times after that
I ran a train over the same bridge my-
self, and I used to wonder what it was
that could have led to such a foolish blun-
der.

" And, at last, one clay I solved the
mystery — solved it to my own satisfac-
tion, at least, and other people on the
road agreed with me. Just in line with
the red ball, I caught sight of the top
of a red chimney a few yards back from
the end of the bridge. With the sun in
a man's eyes, he could easily have taken
that chimney-top for the ball itself. I

392

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" THEY SAW SNYDER SITTING ON THE WALL
AT THE END OF THE BRIDGE, WAVING
HIS HAND."

haven't the least doubt that that chim-
ney was responsible for that wreck."

When it comes to queer accidents,
there is the adventure of Clark Caskey,
who runs the Erie's Engine No. 940.
Caskey is one of the very old-timers, too.
Way back in 1861 he was . a brakeman
on the Erie, and throughout most of the
Civil War he was running an engine on
the Atlantic and Great Western. In
1865 he came back to the Erie, and has
been an engineer on that road ever
since.

What Clark Caskey Told.

" It was in the early sixties," said Cas-
key, " that I was running a little west
of Meadville, Pennsylvania, pulling a
train of oil-cars. They didn't have oil-
cars then such as we have to-day. The
oil was carried in big wooden tubs. We
were running toward a switch, which,
for some reason or other, and unknown

to me or the. crew, had
been left open.

" That sent us flying
onto the side-track, where
a freight-car was stand-
ing. It was too late to
prevent a smash, and we
went crashing into it.
The fireman and I and
most of- the crew jumped
just in time, and landed,
unhurt, on the other side
of the ditch.

"The collision knocked
one of the tubs open in
the car behind the engine,
and sent a stream of oil
right out over the boiler.
In another second the
engine and the whole
train was ablaze from
end to end.

" We had no more
than seen the fire flash
along the cars than there
ran 'past us up the slope
a human torch — a man
who was ablaze from
head to foot, and who
left a trail of fire behind
him in the wind as he ran.

" He was Fred Hill,
the head brakeman. I
never see another sight

hope I shall
such as that.

" He ran as fast as he could through
the open fields, until he came to a mud-
Jaole. He dove into it, and rolled
around in the mud till the fire was out.
He lay there until we came up and
dragged him to his feet.

" It seemed for a time as if he would
recover, but- he had inhaled the flames,
and didn't live but a day or two."

Often, among the old-timers, tales are
told of engineers who have long been in
their graves, engineers whose names were
known to thousands of railroad men in
their day, and whose memories are still
kept green.

Such a man was Charlie Leonard. A
good many men still living used to be
his friends. One of them is Tom Shaw.
the brakeman on the Greenwood Lake
Division, who used to run on the same
train with him. Tom Shaw was a brake-
man back in Civil War days, and when

TOLD BEFORE " HITTING THE HAY.

393

he was twelve years old lie was running
messages for J. E. Dunning, the head
operator on the Erie's Eastern Division.

" Leonard was the man who hung
onto his tank with a broken leg all the
way down Shonkum • Mountain," said
Shaw. " A side rod on his engine broke
and knocked a hole through the floor of
his cab. It broke his leg and knocked
him back against the tank.

" Then it went .thrashing around
through the cab so that he couldn't diave
come back to it if he had been able. He
saved himself from going clear out to
the ground by grabbing the edge of the
tank, and there he hung for five miles,
till the brakeman discovered him.

" On the old twenty-one passenger,
Leonard had a brakeman named Frank
Fox,- and a man named Russell was con-
ductor. Fox dreamed one night that he
saw himself lying beside the track, dead.
Russell had been a watchmaker, and it
happened that Fox had a watch that be-
longed to him.

" The morning after his dream he
told his mother that if anything hap-
pened to him she should send the watch
to Russell. He told her he was afraid
he wasn't going to come back alive.

" In the evening, Fox came to the
train for the night run. Part of the
way he rode in the baggage-car. There
was. no light there, and both side-doors
were open. Fox was riding there all
alone when he pitched out of one of the
side-doors and went under the wheels.

" Leonard was— a man who used to
have queer dreams, toor One night he
told the boys that he had dreamed he
had heard his friend, Red Rickey, the
flagman, crying : ' Good-by, Charlie.
You've done for me ! '

" That dream seemed to have scared
him, for he was nervous when he started
out on the. night run, and kept saying he
was afraid something would happen.

" Well, something did happen. - It
was up beyond Turner, and they were
not very far from where Rickey lived,
that . Leonard noticed a man walking
the ties ahead of him. It was midwinter.
Snow was falling ; the track was slippery.

" Leonard blew his whistle, and the
marr turned his head, looked at the en-
gine, and waited until it was almost on
top of him before starting to get off

the track. Then, as he was stepping
over the rail, he slipped and went sprawl-
ing. The next second the engine was
over him.

" When -the train had come to a stop,
Leonard got out and walked back with
the rest to look at the man he had
killed. When he got to the spot, the
body was lying in the snow by the side
of the track, and somebody was holding
a lantern so that the light fell full in
the man's face^

" Leonard gave one look, and turned
away with a hoarse shout. It was Red
Rickey he had killed.

" That was the only time anybody
ever saw Charlie Leonard scared. He
was as white as snow all the re'st of
the night, and his hands were shaking so
that he could hardly pull the lever.

" The way Harry Dexter met his
death always seemed queer to me, too.
He was running on the Greenwood Lake
Division at the time, and the following
day he was to be transferred to the main
line. He came down the meadows to the
Snake Hill draw - bridge, and the day
was clear as a bell, and all the signals
were set ahead of him to show the draw
was open.

" But he kept right on at full speed,
and toppled into the river. There were
five other men on. the engine with him,
and they all jumped into the water and
swam ashore. Dexter jumped, too, but
the heel of his shoe caught on one of the
ties, and he fell forward and broke his
skull against the trestle.

" It was a passenger-train he had been
pulling, and there were fifteen passen-
gers aboard when the cars all went pi-
ling into the water.- For some unknown
reason, the stay chains hadn't been fast-
ened to hold the cars on the trucks. If
they had been, the heavy trucks would
have dragged them to the bottom. As it
was, the cars floated, and the passengers
were all saved. The only one killed in
the wreck was Dexter himself.

" Now, why was it that an experienced
engineer like him could run at full speed
into an open draw when all the signals
were set, and the day was bright and
clear? The men who were in the en-
gine with him never could explain it.
They said that Dexter, at the time, had
been looking straight at the signals, too."

The Dynamite Division

BY DENNIS IT. STOVALL

Some of the Unusual as Well as Unfortunate Things that Have Gome
to Pass While Hauling the High Explosive
in the Far West. •

UNNING through northern
California and southern
Oregon is a section of
the Southern Pacific main
line that railroaders have
appropriately dubbed the
" dynamite division." Possibly no other

Where the cars are completely filled
the danger of explosion is less than when
the cars are only partially filled. A
long freight - train, with three cars of
dynamite in its middle, was speeding
down the grade through Cow Creek
Canon in the Coast Mountains. Near-

section of railroad in America has known ing a tunnel, the engineer applied the

more accidents thaii_-this~ portion ' of the
Southern- Pacific. And it should be
clearly understood that there is not one
lone anarchist on the entire " dynamite
division."

This part of the Southern Pacific
snakes over the great Siskiyou range, on
the Oregon - California line, and the
Coast Mountains of 'southern Oregon.
A vast amount of dynamite is used in
the mines of the district, and a still

air. The train slowed suddenly. One
of the dynamite-cars was only half filled,
and the sudden checking slid the boxes
forward.

A Real Explosion.

They came up hard against the end
wall. The dynamite in all three cars
exploded simultaneously. The shock
that followed was terrific. Towns thirtv

greater amount is hauled over the line miles away trembled as if by an earth-
t© more northern points for excavating quake.

purposes. Nearly every freight - train
has one or more dynamite - cars in its
string, and some trains are loaded almost
entirely with the explosive.

To reduce the danger of handling and
moving it to the lowest possible mini-
mum, nitroglycerin, which supplies the
explosive quality of dynamite, is mixed
with infusorial earth. The silicious

earth simply absorbs and holds the liquid, bruises only.

The two big locomotives drawing the
train were shot through the tunnel like
a stone from a catapult. Except a few
near the tail, all of the cars were re-
duced to atoms and the particles hurled
for miles. Every vestige of the cars
containing the dynamite completely dis-
appeared. Fortunately, the crew was at
each end of the train and escaped with

and also diminishes its sensitiveness.
Besides absorbing it and reducing its
sensitiveness, the earth also allows the
dynamite to be manufactured into con-
venient sticks.

These sticks are the size and shape of
ordinary candles, and are packed in
twenty-five and fifty-pound boxes. In
shipping, these boxes are piled one upon
the other in ordinary freight-cars.

The main force of this explosion was
upward. The canon walls were stripped
of trees and brush. At the top of the
precipice overlooking the canon, and a
mile from the railroad, a hammock was
swung between two trees. A woman lay
in the hammock,- idly reading. When the
explosion occurred she was hurled into
the air and dropped, unhurt, among the
vines and dense growth near by.

394

THE DYNAMITE DIVISION.

395

A few months later another freight-
train, with two cars of dynamite in its
string, met a similar fate at almost the
same point in Cow Creek Canon. One
of the cars was derailed, and it was the
jolting over the ties that shook the dyna-
mite and caused the explosion. This
train was a worse wreck. Two brake-
men who were " on deck " were killed.

There were several cars of lemons on
this train, and railroaders solemnly af-
firm that it rained lemons for a week
following the explosion. Up on top the
mountain, "above the canon, a prospector
had built his cabin. He was frying flap-
jacks when the explosion- occurred, and
was surprised when a fifty-pound section
of steel car-plate came down his chimney.

As a protection against careless loaf-
ers, each car containing dynamite is
posted with big placards. These convey
the information that the car contains a
dangerous explosive, and warns loafers
against passing the time in its vicinity ;
but the big, black-lettered warning is
now and then overlooked by the careless
on the "dynamite division."

In one notable instance, two cars so
placarded were used as a target by three
small boys, who were anxious to test the
shooting qualities of a newly purchased
rifle. They were shooting at the letter
" S " on the car. The boy who tried
first missed by a narrow margin ; the
next boy came a little closer, and the
third boy hit it in the center — at least,
it is presumed he did from what fol-
lowed.

The two cars of dynamite exploded,
and not only the three boys but a half
dozen bystanders were killed, not enough
of their bodies being found to make one

burial. The little California town was
almost wiped off the map, and traffic de-
moralized for two precious days.

In the several accidents that have
occurred the freakish nature of the ex-
plosive has been clearly exemplified.
Dynamite will not ignite or ' explode
from a blaze. Some miners have a play-
ful habit of lighting sticks of the powder
" just to see it burn." If all conditions
are favorable, it will burn quietly with
a blue flame and a slight sputter.

It is supposed to explode only when
subjected to a severe shock, and in using
it this shock is produced by a percussion-
cap containing fulminating mercury.
But there have been instances in hauling
the explosive over the " dynamite divi-
sion " when it failed to explode after
getting a pretty severe jolt.

Near Grant's Pass, Oregon, the north-
bound Overland, running at high speed,
crashed into the rear end of a freight
that had failed to take the siding. The
two locomotives drawing the passenger
plowed through the caboose and into
three cars of dynamite. Not only the
cars containing it, but the boxes of ex-
plosive were broken to bits. The sticks
were bruised and mashed flat ; some were
thrown hundreds of feet. Yet no explo-
sion occurred.

The best " powder experts " fail to
explain why the dynamite did not ignite.
Two hundred people on the Overland
and three thousand persons in Grant's
Pass were sincerely glad it did not.

Considering the vast amount of dan-
gerous explosives hauled over the " dyna-
mite division," the Southern Pacific does
well to transport the stuff with as few
accidents as do occur.

MY SWEETHEART'S AN ENGINEER.

BY KITTIE SPARGUR HULSE.

A Song, Written for "The Railroad Man's Magazine."

OU may sing, if you like, of the boys in blue,
In a song that will move to tears;
I sing of those heroes so brave and true —
God bless them! Our Engineers!
And I love to ride down the shining line,

In the smoky old cab so dear,
While jhe red flames roar through the furnace-door,
With my sweetheart, the Engineer!

REFRAIN: — My sweetheart's an engineer,

And it's proud I am of him;
And there's never a pleasure I hold so dear,
As a ride in the cab with Jim.

His face 'may be grimy; his soul is white;

His honest gray eyes are clear;
My Jim's all right, in one girl's sight,

Though he's only an engineer.
And if ever he's needed, you'll find him there,

Although it may cost him dear;
He'll wait by the lever and stand by the air —

My sweetheart, the Engineer!

396

HE OMITTED THE "EXTRA."

BY JAMES NORMAN SHREVE.

What Happened When Pusher 292, With Redding at
the Throttle, Thought She Had the Right of Way.

|\HE timekeeper struggled
feverishly for several mo-
ments to catch at least a
few of the letters that were
sprayed out in what seemed
to him a hysterical blur of
dots and dashes from the white, deft fin-
gers of Alfred Winter, seeond-trick des-
patcher of the Pecos Valley Lines.

Finally a breath of the cool June night
breeze from the open window behind
him doubled over the sheet of clip he
was writing on, and he lost track of the
meanings^ He shook his head, threw
down his pencil,
and leaned back,
watching admi-
ringly the swift
work of the des-
patches

In a ^moment
the latter closed
his key, looked up
at the clock, and
jotted down
" 10.20 P." on the
train-sheet. Then
he smiled thinly
at the timekeeper.
" Get any?"
The timekeeper
grinned sheepish-
ly. ''Oh, some.
I got ' C. & K.' all
right, and an ' as-
sist ' and ' extra '
and— ^1 et's see —
' over all' and
'trains.' ■ Gee !
You must have
gone at a sixty-a-
minute hike."

" Hardly that. About forty-five.
Farquehar, at Canadian, isn't a fast man.
Here he comes with the repeat. Try it.
He sends slow."

The timekeeper grabbed his pencil and
again bent over his pad. When the des-
patcher handed the train-order copy-book
over the long glass partition to Korby
Browning, his young night operator, the
timekeeper walked around and peered
over Korby's shoulder. For a moment
he compared his slip with the book.
Then he slapped his leg explosively.

" By gracious

A STALWART, BLACK
IN

CAPPED FIGURE, TORCH
HAND.

397

His voice was tri-
umphant. " Look-a
here ! "

He shoved the
paper under Kor-
by's nose.

" What do you
think of that now !
Say, only whisper
to me, friends-
only whisper. I see
your finish, Kor-
by. Me for your
job, all right, all
right. Say the
word, Alfred, and
you can have me."

The despatcher
threw his thin,
ungenial smile at
the operator.
" Get it, did he? "

Korby nodded.
" Sure thing. All
except the date."
He got up and of-
fered his chair to
the timekeeper.
" Here you are,

398

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Shervin. I resign. You're it. When you
get Alfred's job, there, gimme mine back,
will you?" He reached for his pipe.
" Got a match? "

Shervin carefully folded his sheet of
paper. " This is a precious thing. In
future years I shall look upon its frayed
and worn edges and say to one K.
Browning, still a struggling operator
tolerated in my office, ' Young man, re-
member that? Why, oh, why haven't
you taken a leaf out of my book? ' "

He handed over the match. " Well,
I gotta go to bed. 'Night, both. Bet
you I dream of head-end collisions; No.
202 in the ditch; forty people passed in
their checks — and me asleep at the key ! "

The night operator at Canadian sat
for a moment staring at the train-order
pad before him, a shaggy frown roofing
his tired, pleasant eyes.

" Humph ! Funny business, that.
'All trains,' hey? Oh, all right, all
right. Reckon they know what. But
all the same—" He tore off the top
sheet and limped to the door.

Pusher 292 stood on the passing track,
breathing deeply and evenly, as if gath-
ering strength for the stiff climb up Gla-
zier Hill behind the thirty-seven loads
of Extra 18 that waited on the main
line ahead, just beyond the switch. A
stalwart, black-capped figure, torch in
hand, overalled, and jacketed in grease-
smeared faded blue, was leisurely oiling
round, now stooping a little to peer back
of the big drive-wheels, now reaching
over with long-spouted oil-can to satisfy
some thirsty cup.

"Hi, Redding! You Belvedere, you!
Come here and get your orders ! "

The black-cap faced about and the
flaring torch showed clear eyes set in
clean-looking whites, cheeks that, even
in the yellow, smoky light, were pink as
a girl's — what you could see of the
natural color — and strong white teeth in
an amiable grin at the operator's pet clas-
sical allusion when speaking to this par-
ticular black-cap.

Frank Redding knew nothing of
Apollo, or Hercules, or Mercury, or
Venus, except, perhaps, as euphonistic
titles to sundry Pullman sleepers that he
aspired to whip around curves behind
him.

If he had had even a faint knowledge,

can't I see him blush, and jump for his
cab, and swear fluently from the safe re-
treat of his cushion, where -the splutter-
ing hiss of dripping water-cocks and the
subdued roar of fire-box would drown
all answering retorts to the operator?

At the door he caught the little lame
man by the elbows, carried him over to
the desk, and plumped him gently down
into the rickety armchair.

" You stop your Belvy-dearing me, or
I'll tell your wife you're thinking of some
other girl."

It was an old threat that always
brought a chuckle from Farquehar — a
chuckle a trifle puzzling to the young
engineer, indicative somehow of amuse-
ment at his expense.

"Gimme that order." He bent down
close to the dingy station-lamp. In a
moment he had straightened up and
looked quickly at the operator. " Sam
Hill ! Why, this says — say, you sure
you got this right? "

" Sure thing. A. W., O. K.'d my re-
peat."

Redding studied the sheet a full min-
ute longer.

"Humph! We're the moguls to-
night. I suppose if the old man himself
was out in a special we'd be over him,
too — what? "

An impatient screech from far up the
track made him thrust the order into an
inside pocket.

" Well, see you later. Friend lo-
siah's saying ' What the deuce ! ' "

He ran out to his engine and swung
up the steps. A clang or two of the bell,
a quick snort of the whistle, a few soft
expulsions of the exhaust, ^nd 292
moved slowly* up the siding, out across
the switch, and coupled neatly onto the
rear end of Extra 18.

One hour later Redding whistled
" good-by." He and his fireman
watched the cab6ose fade out of the
headlight's ken, and the green eyes of
the rear lanterns grow smaller and nearer
together and suddenly blot out alto-
gether as the train swept around a curve.

Redding pulled back the reverjr. but
before opening the throttle once more
referred to the thin waxy sheet of the
train-order.

" Can't make anything else out of it.
Can you, Carl ? " He handed it over

HE OMITTED THE " EXTRA."

399

to the fireman, at the same time gently
pulling at the throttle. As the steam
dropped hissing into the cylinders and
the drivers grumbled into sullen, clank-
ing motion,, the fireman shook his head

night wind whistled shrilly through the
cab, whipping the bell-cord viciously
against the roof, and swaying the bell it-
self till it protested plaintively. The head-
light case, sharply outlined against the fan

HE LAUNCHED HIMSELF

FRANTICALLY OUT

TOWARD THE

WHITE LINE

OF SAND.

and passed the paper back.
" Nope. We're the folks to-
night."

" All right. Here goes."
- He glanced out along the
track, slipping sluggishly un-
der them through the thick
yellow light from the rear of
the tender, braced himself
comfortably against the win-
dow-jamb, and with right hand on
air - brake lever, opened the throttle
wider for the slight incline to the top
of Glazier Hill. The engine lurched to
the crest, then, with steam shut off,
started on the five-mile coast downward.
The hand of the indicator jerked
steadily to thirty-five, forty, forty-five,
fifty, sixty, seventy, and stayed there. The

JayC<^-

of light beyond, described unsteady arcs
as the tender swung this way or that;
while at every lurch the iron apron be-
tween tender and engine scraped and
rasped and clattered truculently.

The telegraph-poles to the right of the
track, grimly cross-armed far ahead
against the star-shot velvet of the prairie
sky, lengthened swiftly to the dim outer

400

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

edge of the light-shaft, hurtled gigantic
through it, were swallowed voraciously
by the hungry night.

Ragged splotches of mescmit, left un-
scarred by fire-guards beyond the right
of way, lumbered gloomily past, while

with such gusto and self-evidence as to
whom he wished they were, that he
climbed again onto his seat", smiling, and
took a fresh chew of tobacco.,

A fourth mile whipped past, blurredly,
blotchily, streakily, and over sixty feet

HIS OUTSTRETCHED HAND COULD NOT TOUCH THE RAIL.

now and then, still farther out, a tufted
Yucca, cleanly silhouetted from the sum-
mit of some gentle rise, paced slowly to
the rear.

A mile was gone ! Two miles ! A
third. Through Huelger's Cut a swirl
of fine gravel stormed the cab. " Look
what you done!" yelled Carl, ducking
his head.

Redding roared, spitting vigorously,
" I forgot! " Then he grinned, and with
his free hand put thumb to nose and wig-
gled his fingers amiably at his fireman.
" Wouldn't that gravel you ! "

The latter got off his seat, spat on his
hands, and made certain according-to-
code motions as tu what he wanted to
do to somebody's head. Happening to
glance at the steam-gage, he grabbed the
chain and jerked open the furnace-door,
shooting in a couple of shovelfuls of coal

of low trestle they roared splittingly into
the fifth. . Now the damp wind slapped
their faces. Somewhere ahead was the
Canadian River. Redding pressed over
ever so little the brass lever under his
right hand. Straightway a high, thin
wail cut into the harsher sound chaos,
and the cab felt a slight tremor.

He pressed farther. The wail rose to
a scream, the tremor to a shudder. The
driver brake-shoes clamped closer and the
big wheels, fretted hot, struggled impo-
tently to shake off that relentless embrace.
Back dropped the hand of the indicator.
sixty, fifty,- forty, thirty, and at the
bridge, fifteen.

The headlight speared a stretch of
black sluggish water, sullenly menacing,
where it had cut deep into the bank at
the farther end of the bridge, just where
the track elbowed in a sharp curve.

HE OMITTED THE " EXTRA."

401

Redding looked back as the engine
took this curve. He spat contemplative-
ly. "The treacherous son-of-a-gun ! "

For half a mile beyond the bridge the
track was on a flat level. Then it took
a slight dip and swerved around The
Council — a group of ragged rocks quaint-
ly up-tossed to form a circle of squatting
figures. From there on the rise .In the
land, unevenly sand-duned and hillocked,
was such as to conceal for a full mile
the bed ,of the railroad.

Half-way to the dip the fireman sud-
denly jerked himself upright and stared
wildly out into the night — not down the
track, but across the space bound by
the coming curve. His face whitened
under the coal-dust and grease. He
rubbed his eyes — then swung off his
cushion with a shrill yell.

"There's 202's light! For Heaven's
sake, jump, Frank ! "

The last word was hardly past his lips
before he was out on the cab-step. He
hung a fraction of a second by the hand-
rail, and then launched himself fran-
tically out toward the white line of sand
ten feet from the track.

Redding had dropped to his feet. He
peered out. From beyond the faint out-
line of a rounded hummock a long thin
shaft of mellow light pierced the night's
blackness.

" He's right. It's 202 ! "

Snap ! The lever shot to the emerg-
ency notch, but the grinding, furious, up-
heaval for which he braced himself taut-
ly did not occur.

For the first time in her life, 292's
air would not work !

Only one thing to do. He slammed
forward the reverse lever, and, as a
shower of slivered sparks shot from
under 'the wrenched drivers, opened the
throttle to its widest.

Then he ripped the mild summer night
back and across and up and down with
a misery of sound from the raucous
throat of the whistle.

Straightway it was answered, and Red-
ding knew what could be done was be-
ing done by 202. His own engine was
all atremble with the battle of the driv-
ers to grip the rails and the thunder of
the unshackled steam.

The gage showed eight miles an hour
as 292 skidded down the dip at The
2 R R

Council and, rounding the curve, shivered
into the full glare of the east-bound pas-
senger's headlight.

Redding saw they must come together,
but felt that no serious damage would
be done. He hung on to the cab hand-
rail till but a score of feet away, then
dropped. He stumbled, rolled off into
the ditch, and sat up just as 292 bumped
into the other engine.

There was a splintering of wood from
a shattered pilot, a clang of both bells, a
tinkle of smashed headlight glass. No.
202 shoved the pusher forward a few
feet and came to a standstill. Not so
292.

Redding rubbed his eyes. Then he
remembered, and leaped to his feet. He
had thrown over the reverse-lever, and
full steam was on !

The exultant wheels, with the help of
202, had at last come into their own.
Still slipping at times in a blur of spokes,
they clung enough to the rails to send
the engine forward faster with every
stormy5 sputtering breath from the cylin-
ders.

Redding raced silently at the side of
the cab-step, but, strain as he might, his
outstretched hand could not touch the
rail that would offer him grip. More
.frequently the huge drivers bit sure, and
the rocking engine gathered speed.

The panting young engineer saw pic-
tures. He saw the half-mile stretch of
straight, smooth track ahead. No.
292 would end it at seventy-five miles
an hour. He saw the sharp swing to
the track as it met the bridge. When
his engine struck this — Heaven ! What
a thing to see ! A black, raging thing
of the night in a flying leap — up, out,
down, down into that bottomless hole,
into arms patient a hundred years for
this ! He saw himself, his hopes — her !

A thick, dry sob wrung from his lips.
Then his toe struck a tie and he was
hurled sprawling — to reach at length the
hand-rail. His fingers snapped tight.
His legs were whipped across the rough
ties for a few yards, then he drew him-
self up into the cab.

With steam shut off, and new-gained
freedom lost, the engine slowed sullenly
to a clanking, grumbling, curse-the-luck
stop. A scared voice spoke from out the
darkness.

402

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

"Frank! You there? What's hap-
pened ! "

A white, scratched face peered up into
the cab. Bits of cinder and sand clung
to the yellow foretop.

The engineer looked down. He sol-
emnly put thumb to nose and wig-
gled his fingers. " Wouldn't that gravel
you! "

The timekeeper was playing his usual
afternoon game of solitaire, sorting time-
slips. The ' door opened and a big-
shouldered, spruce figure entered.

" Hallo, Frank — Mr. Redding, I
should say. Why, is to-day the big day?
Didn't know it was so soon ! "

The pink cheeks grew somewhat pink-
er, but the teeth gleamed in the usual
wide, attractive grin.

" Shucks ! Naw ! Can't a fellow
wear a new pair of pants once in a
while?" He laid a cigar on the desk.
" That's for my time. Gimme it. Last
month's, I mean."

"Huh! When is the day, then?"

The engineer again protested. " Honest !
Just want to take a lay-off. Since night
before last my — er — nerves have been —
er — upset, doncherknow."

The timekeeper grunted, but reached
for his engineers' record. " Explana- ,
lion's bum. But, seriously, I heard
about your doings. Close shave, wasn't
it."

" Yep. I'm in the clear all right,
though. But poor Farquehar has got
the can, I hear. I'm sorry. He's de-
cent. But he made a bad bust."

" Bull the order, did he? "

" Um-hm. Got it ' right over all east-
bound trains ' instead of ' east-bound
extra trains '."

The other turned quickly. " What's
that? "

Redding reached for his wallet, and
took out a thin, crumpled sheet. " My
copy. See what it says."

The timekeper smoothed it out flat.

6-7. 10.20 P.

C. & K, No. 18.
Engineer, Engine 292.
C. & E., all trains east.
Engine 292 will assist No. 18, Ca--
nadian to Glazier, and will run extra
Glazier to Canadian with right over
all east-bound trains.

W. G. D.

"Well?"

" Why," slipping it back into his wal-
let, " Farquehar left out the one word
that cut the mustard — ' extra.' "

The timekeeper rumpled his hair
"Oh— he did, did he!"

" Sure. Mr. Winter's record shows
that, he says. But I'm sorry for Far-
quehar. He's got some dandy kids.
And his wife ain't very strong. Well, I
gotta go up-stairs and see the chief.
Have that for me when I come down? "

The timekeeper nodded and opened
the record. But for some time he stared
down unseeing at the figures. " Far-
quehar! What'll he do now?"

He spread out his own particular
scrap of clip — his "precious thing."
Word for word, it read as Redding's
copy.

The timekeeper struck the desk a loud
blow with his clenched fist.

" Curse A. W., for a rotten, cowardly
sneak ! Oh, he'll get his, all right • he'll
get his ! "

He began furiously to write out the
engineer's time-check.

THIRTY-SEVEN MILES OF GARS.

A REPORT issued by the Pennsylvania
states that mpre perishable freight
was shipped by the farmers of southern
New Jersey during the month of July than
in any previous month during the history of
the section. During that month a million
and a half dollars' worth of produce was
distributed over the New England States,
the middle West, and Canada from points
located on the West Jersey and Seashore,
a part of the Pennsylvania system.

Compared with these figures in July, 190;.
seven hundred and sixty-four thousand eight
hundred dollars' worth of produce was ship-
ped from the same district, while in 1908
the value totaled one million one hundred
and seventy-eight thousand dollars. There's
something in farming, after all.

Thus, 1909 showed an increase of over
thirty per cent over 1008. Thirty-seven
miles of cars were used to transport these-
products of south Jersey farms.

Lovett — Harriman's Successor.

BY ARNO DOSGH.

WHO will succeed Harriman ? Who will take up the great work he left
undone? Who can do it? These were the questions heard on every
■side when the master-builder of the American railroad world passed
away last September.

The mantle has fallen on the shoulders of Robert S. Lovett, : a Texas
lawyer. Born in a, backwood's village, overcoming the most serious obstacles
that poverty can put in the way of a young man's success, he paid dearly for
an education and worked up inch by inch, the master of his own destiny.

Jay Gould, Huntington, and Harriman in Turn Recognized the Executive

Genius of the Man Who Will Now Be the Guiding

Hand of Properties Worth $5,200,000,000.

austere Texas father, a
generation ago, looked up
across the old - fashioned
sitting-room table, and
said to his tall, beardless
son :
" Robert, I have decided to make a doc-
tor of you. You may prepare to go to
Tulare University, in New Orleans, and
I will pay your expenses."

That was all that was necessary, so far
as the father was concerned. He had
made up his mind about the matter, and
it was as good as settled. He was used
to having his way in all things, and
his, son had always obeyed without ques-
tion.

" But I don't want to be a doctor, fa-
ther. I am going to be a lawyer."

At this unexpected revolt the father's
colch gray eyes settled on the determined
face of his son.

i( But I said you were going to be a
doctor. I don't like lawyers."

" I'm sorry for that, father," replied
the boy, " but I have decided to be a law-
yer."

lie had unconsciously accented the last
" I," and it gave him an uncomfortable
feeling of embarrassment to have so open-

ly thrown down the gage to his father ;
but his gray eyes never flinched as he re-
garded his stern parent.

I HAVE DECIDED TO BE A LAWYER."

403

404

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

There was a marked resemblance be-
tween the two. They were Southerners
of the masterful kind. The Civil War
had not broken the spirit of the father —
and he had handed on his courage to his
son. Neither knew what it was to give
in.

The father broke the silence.

" Then, you can educate yourself," his
thin lips articulated slowly.

Knew His Mind Early.

But, being a fond father, who had
raised two sons and two daughters after
his wife's early death, he stood in the
place of both parents, and, so far as it
was in him to unbend, he talked the mat-
ter over ; but the boy did not waver. He
had reached the age of fifteen, and there
had never been a time since he could first
remember when he did not feel capable
of taking care of himself in every way.

So, one night he packed his clothes,
and in the morning kissed his sisters good-
by. The father smiled behind narrowed
lids as he saw his son stride away into
the world — his back straight and his legs
falling into a long, easy stride for a ten-
mile walk. He had no fear for the boy's
future.

Neither had the boy. In a few hours
he reached the camp of a gang of swamp-
ers, who were grubbing stumps ahead of
the grading-crew making track for the
Houston, East and West Texas, then
building along the eastern border of the
State.

He was put to work immediately, and
earned a man's pay. Later he learned
that tie-splitting paid better, so he
changed to that occupation, and in a
few months he had 'risen to the dignity
of driving a team attached to a scraper.
He worked there some months, and re-
ceived three hundred dollars. Of this
glorious sum he spent, during the time,
just nine dollars and seventy-five cents, ^
saving the rest for a year's schooling in
Houston.

This was the beginning of the career of
Robert Scott Lovett, chairman of the ex-
ecutive committees of the Union Pacific
and Southern Pacific railways. He is
now forty-nine years old. He sits in the
Equitable Life Building, 120 Broadway,
New York, and directlv controls the des-

tiny of twenty-five thousand miles of the
most carefully systematized railroads in
the world. Indirectly, he has a voice in
the management of fifty-two thousand
more.

As the successor of the late E. H. Har-
riman, he has in his hands the fate of
properties valued at five billion two hun-
"dred million dollars.

When Mr. Lovett was announced, as
Harriman's successor, a thousand ques-
tions immediately arose. Who was Judge
Lovett? Whence came he? Why had
we not heard of him before? How could
a man rise so unobtrusively to such emi-
nence ?

His life-story is dike a great drama.
It deals with such usual aspirations and
such common situations that the force
of it seems likely to be lost, until, as it
unfolds, it develops a great human strug-
gle— that of a man who fought against
hard conditions to fulfil his destiny.

The " Silent Texan."

The nation is only beginning to know
him, although he has been a man of wide
influence for years. To present him so
as to appeal succinctly to the popular
imagination, he might be called the
" Silent Texan." He has already earned
the title.

What his influence in the railroad
world will be, it is impossible now to
conjecture. It is expected that he will
carry out the policies of Harriman,
uniting the Harriman lines in closer and
closer cooperation. During the last year
of Harriman's life he conducted almost
all the active work, directing and har-
monizing with the plans of the two great
operating factors — -J. C. Stubbs, director
of traffic, " the money-maker," and Julius
Kruttschnitt, director of maintenance and
operation, " the money-saver." Harri-
man, always wise in his selection of men,
had made of them a team which increases
efficiency and dividend.

Judge Lovett's first duty will be to pre-
vent the disintegration of the traffic sys- ■
tern as established and to widen oppor-
tunities toward even greater efficiency.
The constructive side to Harriman's oper-
ations in the stocks of railroads lay in
the cooperative possibilities of the lines
controlled. To hold together the great

LOVETT— HARRIMAN'S SUCCESSOR.

405

ROBERT SCOTT LOVETT.

Drawn by M. Stein, from a thotografh copyrighted by Gessford, New York.

system he finally established requires a
strong man.

The man who is now in that position,
in personality and experience seems to be
thoroughly fitted for the undertaking.
He has had a training as a railroad man
which few have enjoyed. He not only
gathered in a great deal of information

on his own account, but he absorbed the
knowledge possessed by Jay Gould, Col-
lis P. Huntington, and E. H. Harriman.

No one could wish to learn from more
able masters.

Let it be remembered by every young
man struggling along in the railroad serv-
ice, doing tasks that appear to him to be

406

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

lacking in opportu-
nity : Judge Lovett
would not be
where he is to-day ^
if it were not for
the fact that he
served a railroad
in the humblest and
most monotonous
capacity.

Added to his ex-
perience in con-
struction, he passed
a year at the thank-
less task of a coun-
try station - agent,
and worked six
years as a night
bill-clerk. No more
severe appren-
ticeship could be
asked.

He realizes the
value of his train-
ing now. It did not
mean much to him
then. He regarded
the work as a neces-
sary evil to keep life in his body while he
studied law.

But the fierce contact with the earth,
the ready capability of_ bridge-builder
and engineer, and the shrewd practicality
of a trainman, gave him an under-
standing of what can be done with
a railroad which helped him at every
important step in the steady climb up-
ward, until he stood beside the wizard
of railroading " and told him where he
was right and where he was wrong.

It is a well-known fact among Judge
Lovett's associates that he has no per-
sonal ambition. He does not care for
power. He realized his ambition in life
when he became a thorough lawyer.

His ambition in that direction knows
no limits, but to pile up millions upon
millions has no lure for him.

M>A

HE HAD NO FEAR FOR THE BOY'S FUTURE.

When Harriman, in 1904, brought
Judge Lovett from Texas to be his chief
counsel, Wall Street did not realize
this new and powerful influence that was
being introduced. It is doubtful whether
Harriman realized, himself. It is rather

difficult, in fact,
considering the
standards of to-
day, to appreciate
Judge Lovett's at-
titude.

He would have
been better under-
stood sixty or sev-
enty years ago,
when the point of
view of men was
different. To him
life carries its du-
ties, chief of which
is that a man must
fulfil his destiny.
He has work to do
in the world, and
he must do that to
the best of his
abilities.

If Judge Lov-
ett's fortunes had
confined his life to
the backwoods of
Texas, he would
have prepared his
small cases with the same painstaking
care with which he lined up the defense
for the Harriman merger in the suit for
its dissolution brought by the Interstate
Commerce" Commission.

Pure grit has brought him to the top
of the ladder.. Life has always been to
him a serious matter, and he has not
trifled with it. His presence is dignified,
and must always have been so. There
have never been many people whu called
him " Bob " Lovett.

He has a natural courtesy, easy man-
ners, and consideration for others, and
to the men who work with him he is
friendly and sympathetic, but he could
never have been a " good fellow." It
is not in his make-up.

All these things are plainly written
on his face. It is easy to believe that
he has never "sowed his- wild oats." He
feels himself superior to dishonorable
action.

The chin is absolutely determined,
but not hard. The severe mouth is
drawn into a straight line with thin lips
that might denote cruelty if the eyes did
not show kindness. The nose is purely-
racial in its characteristics, indicating the

LOVETT— HARRIMAN'S SUCCESSOR.

407

strength that was born in him. But the
power of mouth and chin and nose all
feel the tempering of his eyes, which
appeal, perhaps, beyond the point of
sound judgment. No one could look
into his eyes and think evil of him. They
show that high order of intelligence in
which is neither trickery or self-seeking.

What His Face Tells.

His countenance might have come out
of an old portrait. At first glance, he
is rather remindful of the old - time
Yankees. Men of his type are not de-
veloped in cities. When you learn that
his father was a Georgian, who pio-
neered into Texas long before the war,
much is explained.

Physically, he is erect and strong.
The fact that he has not since his youth
turned his hand to physical exercise,
even in sport, has not told on his
athletic build. Years of wearing night-
work have not broken his health. Even
the rush of Wall Street could not
quicken his firm tread.

When, he first went to work on the
railroad, he was already hardened to
labor. Since the day that his father re-
turned from the Civil War and an-
nounced that they would all have to
work, as they could no longer pay the
negroes to work for them, there had
never been a let-up.

Besides the plantation in San Jacinto
County, where they lived, the father,
William L. Lovett, started a country
store and public cotton-gin. Between
the three, at all of which the children
worked, they found their days and eve-
nings well taken up. During the winter
they squeezed in three or four months5
schooling.

His Father's Misfortune.

As they grey older they worked
harder, they became prosperous, and
their family was regarded as well-to-do.
The father maintained his importance in
a growing community, and was able to
go on the bond of a fellow citizen who
was elected tax-collector.

For this friendly act he received no
compensation. The tax-collector ab-
sconded, and William L. Lovett had to

make good the peculations. This re-
duced the family to the point where it
had been at the close of the Civil War,
with the added advantage that the chil-
dren were older and better able to help.
AVithout a whimper, they turned their
hands to work again and forgot the loss.

The Texas which Judge Lovett knew
as a boy is not the Texas of open ranges
and cowboys. The settlement of which
his family formed a part was in a re-
mote valley surrounded by timbered
hills. With the years the father lost
something of the Southerner, and be-
came more of the Westerner. The sons
grew up* typical Texans.

It was the day of the six-shooter and
the Bowie knife, which men found use-
ful, not only against one another, but
as a protection from wild animals. The

HE LEARNED THAT TIE-SPLITTING PAID BETTER.

Lovetts lived ten miles from Cold
Springs, the county-seat, and the inter-,
vening distance was without a house.
It lay through a rough country full of.
deer and bear, which Robert Lovett
hunted from the time he was big enough
to point a rifle.

408

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

These woods also contained such dan-
gerous animals as mountain-lions and
timber - wolves. Returning from Cold
Springs after nightfall,, which frequent-
ly happened, young Robert often heard
the deceptive Avail of the panther and
the chorus of its fellows from every
peak. As this died away, there rose the
howls of the wolves hunting in packs.

HE DIRECTLY CONTROLS THE DESTINY OF

TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND MILES OF THE

MOST CAREFULLY SYSTEMATIZED

RAILROADS IN THE WORLD.'

They sent a chill to his bones — but
the next time there was occasion to re-
turn from Cold Springs at night, he rode
back alone, as usual.

At one point on this long, lonely jour-
ney was a spot locally known as Sol-
dier's Camp. During the war a regi-
ment had been raised in the valley for
the Confederate army, and this had been
their mustering place. Before they
marched away, a quarrel -between two of
them arose one night, and one killed the
other.

He Feared a Ghost.

The negroes immediately became su-
perstitious of the spot, and they instilled
their fears in the young boys of the
neighborhood. Robert Lovett, at the
age of ten, had absorbed all these su-

perstitions and had a thorough belief in
ghosts. Of this large family, the most
prominent local member, was the ghost
of the dead soldier, and his activities
were vouched for by any number of
negroes who had seen him. His pur-
pose in walking, the negroes soon de-
cided, was to take vengeance on any
member of the human family who
crossed his path.

When the boy, returning home from
the market-place in the dark, approached
the spot, he became uncomfortable about
it long before he was within striking
distance. As it became imminent, the
hair prickled under his hat, and, six-
shooter in hand, he rode down upon it,
determined to meet what death was pre-
pared for him.

Each time, as the awful spot was
passed, he drew his breath and scam-
pered home on his pony, safe for the
night. But on the next occasion the
terror was unabated.

He was convinced that, sooner or
later, the ghost would get him. The
chances were too strong against him.

Face to Face.

One night he rode home under a moon-
less sky, the stars so thickly clustered
that their pale light spread thinly along
the uncertain road, lighting the darkness
so that trees and banks he was "long fa-
miliar with took on strange shapes.

The forest was silent, but stirred as if
the earth were about to wake and scream
with a nightmare. He seemed to be get-
ting nowhere. The journey was intol-
erably long.

The distracting light even deceived
him as to how far he had progressed
until he suddenly rounded a curve near
the fateful spot. It took him a second
to realize it, but a form — white and
ghostlike — fluttered over the road.

The jpony started and quivered, and
the world stood still. All the terrors of
the eight miles that lay behind heaped
up at his back. It was not in him to
turn, but he hardly dared go forward.
In his excitement he spurred the pony,
and found himself racing at the awesome
vision.

The~pony's hoofs pounded the hard
road, waking the birds in the near-by

LOVETT— HARRIMAN'S SUCCESSOR.

409

THE FATHER STARTED A COUNTRY STORE.

trees, but worrying not the ghost in the
highway.

He was in for it, and held the six-
shooter cocked for whatever use it might
be to him. He fancied the ghost moved,
and with a fresh spurring he rushed on
the catastrophe.

" Quack, qitackj quack! " went the
ghost, and fluttered into the forest.

He passed the same spot when he
went away to work on the railroad, but
by this time the world — natural or su-
pernatural— no longer held any terrors
for him. He was a full-grown man with
a purpose and a determination to carry
it out. He scorned the usual weak-
nesses of youth. Grading-camps are not
usually the best place for country boys
cf fifteen; but, so far as Robert Lovett
was concerned, there were no tempta-
tions.

The railroad through which he found
a way out into the world was only, 232
miles long when completed. It extend-
ed from Houston across the line into
Louisiana, ending at the quiet river town
of Shreveport.

It was built by Paul Bremond, a rich
Houston citizen, in the time of individ-
ual financing. He used his own money
on the enterprise. Work was begun on
it in 1871, but it was not until 1875 that
the grading - crews reached San Jacinto
County. It was then that Robert Lovett

did the first piece of work outside his
own home. The road has long since be-
come part of the Southern Pacific system,
and it is now one of the least of the
holdings over which Judge Lovett has
control. Through it he rose to fame
and fortune, and now, in turn, its fame
is derived from him.

He did nothing but manual labor dur-
ing the first year. When . he returned
from his year's schooling in Houston,
driven back by the lack of money, he
went to work as a clerk in the store of
E. P. Smith at Shepard, on the line of
the railroad. After he had been there
a short time, his proclivities toward the
railroad business secured for him the'
position of station-master.-

There he learned another important
side of the business, which many men
high in the railroad world have found
valuable. He gave up the clerkship,
but continued in Smith's employ as book-
keeper, doing the work at night. His
day was from seven in the morning until

HUNTED FROM THE TIME HE WAS BIG ENOUGH
TO POINT A RIFLE.

410

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

THE GHOST WAS VOUCHED FOR BY THE NEGROES.

midnight. At this he continued a year,
and saved several hundred dollar's.

This was enough to give him further
opportunity to acquire an education ;
but by this time, being seventeen years
old, he considered himself capable of
deciding on his own curriculum. That
provided by the high school Tn Houston
had in it much that he could see no use
for, so he did not return; but hired a
tutor, who taught him just the things he
wanted to know. Latin, in particular,
seemed to him a necessity for a lawyer,
so he mastered that language.

He did not wish to be again interrupt-
ed in his studies for lack of money, so
he secured the position of night bill-
clerk in the Houston office of the Hous-
ton, East and West Texas. This paid
him forty dollars a month, and, after his
savings gave out, he lived on that in-
come, and paid for a tutor.

Men who have to work so hard for
an education fully appreciate it. At
night the work usually lasted until
eleven or twelve o'clock, but when there
w-as a rush of business he had not always
finished the way-bills when the new day
broke. Many a morning he sat down to
his serious purpose of study gauntr with
lack of sleep.

At the age of twenty-two, or after
five years of this trying life, he was ad-
mitted to the bar. But even then he did

not feel thoroughly fitted for his life-
work, and continued his studies another
year before attempting to pjractise his
profession.

His career did not go unnoticed. The
other men in the office and those of the
rank above knew of him. When he an-
nounced that he intended going back to
Cold Springs to practise law, the rail-
road officials offered him the local attor-
neyship. They knew the caliber of the
man.

Moreover, they did not forget him.
The cases he had to argue at first were
chiefly matters pertaining to the cow-
catching tendency of trains, but he gave "
these his serious attention. His reward
came in less than a year, when he was
removed to Nacogdoches, where he car-
ried on the railroad's business over a •
much larger territory.

This took all his time, and he soon
became known for the number of cases
. he won. At the end of the second year,
he was sent to Houston and made the
general attorney for the road. When it-
went into the hands of a receiver, a little
later, he was already known as one of
the best railroad lawyers in the State ;

HE HELD THE SIX-SHOOTER COCKED.

LOVETT— HARRIMAN'S SUCCESSOR.

411

and the Texas and Pacific, at that time
the most important road in the South-
west, made him an offer. He went to
Dallas as assistant general attorney, and
when he was twenty-nine he was made
general attorney.

Jay Gould owned the line, and was
in the habit at that time of his life of
going down to Texas in January and re-
maining until April. He spent most of
the intervening months in Dallas, where
he found the company of the young law-
yer agreeable. Unconsciously, during
many meetings, he imparted to Lovett's
all - grasping mind much that he knew
about railroads.

He had a good position, one with
which most men would be content. But
he aspired to a more general practise.
He had, in fact, absorbed all that there
was to be learned where he was, and was
anxious for a wider field of activity.

After he had been four years with the
Texas and Pacific, an offer was made to
him to become a partner in the firm of
Baker, Botts & Baker, then an important
law firm. The two older members re-
tired with his entrance, leaving all the
work of a large clientele on the shoul-
ders of Captain Baker and the new-
partner.

Among other clients were the Mis-
souri, Kansas and Texas and the South-
ern Pacific railroads. The railroad end
of the business naturally fell to Lovett.
He could not escape it, if he had desired.
Here another big railroad man, Collis
P. Huntington, sought his advice.

Texas was beginning to legislate se-
verely against the railroads, and Lovett's
work for Huntington was important.
He won many legal battles, and in the
conferences with Huntington absorbed
another great mass of railroad knowl-
edge. The two men were early on a
basis of friendship, which continued until
Huntington's death.

When Harriman appeared as control-
ling genius of the Southern Pacific, he
looked over the system and learned it
completely. He sought information
everywhere available.

He also knew much about railroads,
and could tell whether he was being— ac-
curately informed. In Texas, he found
that the most reliable information he re-
ceived was from Judge Lovett. As a

consequence, when the system was reor-
ganized,- he retained Judge Lovett as the
legal representative in Texas.

During the next three years the rail-

HIS DAY WAS FROM SEVEN IN THE MORNING
UNTIL MIDNIGHT.

road's business occasionally demanded
Judge Lovett's presence in New York,
and once in a while Harriman went to
Texas. Harriman's respect for Judge
Lovett's opinion grew with each meeting.

Meanwhile, Harriman was perfecting
his system. He created the administra-
tive -positions occupied by Kruttschnitt
and Stubbs, and he needed a third man —
the best legal adviser he could find.
Looking over the field, he decided on
Judge Lovett, and sent for him to come
to New York. The two men worked
admirably together, and gradually Har-
riman shifted more and more of the de-
tails upon the shoulders of his able col-
league. During the last year almost all
the work fell to Judge Lovett.

In fairness to father and son, it should
1101 Ik1 forgotten that they made up their
quarrel years ago ; and the father, once
recognizing that: his son was right, let
him 20 lii> own trait.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

BY JOHN MACK STONE.

A Captain Is lNot Always Commander On
His Own Ship, and That Means Mutiny.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

ROLAND BURKE is a young boy sight-seeing in San Francisco during a visit to his
uncle, Richard Engle, a famous explorer. While standing on the dock he is
alarmed by a crowd of struggling men rushing down the street, evidently pursued by the
police, and in his astonishment is bustled into the boat for whicbvthey are making. One
of the men, who is struggling with the others, is kidnaped onto a .vessel, and Roland,
though unobserved, is also unable to escape. The ship puts out, defying the forts. On
the boat he is discovered by Ruth Holland, who also seems to be there against he'r will,
and who seems quite familiar with Richard Engle, though there seems to be some mis-
understanding between them. In her cabin Ruth is annoyed by. a man named Welch, who
seems to have seme power among the cutthroats. Engle interferes.

CHAPTER V.

A Villain Turns Pirate.

"^OR a moment we stood
thus, no one speaking, my
uncle and Frederic Welch
breathing hard. I expect-
ed to see Miss Holland
in tears, but I was much
surprised. Her face was white and her
lips were trembling, yet there was some-
thing in the look she gave Uncle Dick
that made me glad I had betrayed my-
self to help her.

" Leave the cabin ! " Uncle Dick com-
manded Welch.

Welch sneered, straightened his collar,
and started to walk across the room.
Uncle Dick remained standing beside
the door, watching every movement.

His manner told me that he suspected
treachery. But Welch made no attempt
at violence. He slipped into the passage
and went into one of the cabins. Uncle
Dick slammed the door shut.

" Something must be done at once,"
Miss Holland cried. " He'll tell them
that the boy is here."

" Roland must leave this cabin," Uncle
Dick said.

^ " Where are you going to take him?
They will search your cabin, too."

" My cabin will not be safe."

" Then — "

" We must find a hiding-place."

Uncle Dick went out, and presently
returned and beckoned me to follow.

" Be careful," Miss Holland warned.

We went outside, and s carted to go on
deck. Half-way up we heard some one
approaching. We ran down quickly, and
went into Uncle Dick's cabin; and' when
the sailor had visited Captain Hawson's
cabin, and had. gone back to the deck,
we slipped out, and made the deck in
safety. *-

I crawled beneath a lot of sail-cloth
and rope, and Uncle Dick went forward.
The sea was not so calm, and the ship was
tossing like a cork on the water. I heard
several men go below and come up again,
but could not see who they were. Finally
I heard Welch's voice. He was talking
to another man within a few feet of my
hiding-place.

" I tell you the boy is aboard," I
heard him say. " They have hidden him
somewhere, but it ought to be an easy
matter to find him. When you do — "

" It will be an easy matter to cut his
throat," the other man answered.

Began in the November Railroad Man's Magazine. Single Copies, 10 cents.

4I2

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

413

" I do not want his throat cut," Welch
replied. " I want him to live. There
are worse deaths than that which comes
by cutting the throat."

" Ah ! You want him to die with the
others? "

" Exactly," Welch replied. " If the
crew finds him here, he'll be thrown
overboard in an instant. He must live
to reach the island. I have certain plans
which must be. carried out."

" What do you want me to do, then? "

"If you find the boy, pretend to be
his friend, get into his confidence, make
him believe you are hiding him to save
him, and so keep him out of sight of the
rest of the crew. When we get to the
island I'll play my hand."

" Very good," the man replied, and
then they went forward.

For the hundredth time I caught my-
self wondering, what it all meant. I
was glad that I had overheard, for now
I could be on my guard. The man
would be serving a double purpose — ■
my uncle's as well as Welch's — by se-
creting me from the crew. Perhaps, in
the end, he would serve my uncle's pur-
pose best.

Welch had said he wanted me to die
with the others. Who were the others?
My uncle was one of them, I supposed,
but was Miss Holland the other?

Why had those men acted so pecu-
liarly in her cabin? What was it she
refused to do at their bidding? What
part was Welch playing in this game of
which I knew nothing?

It was suffocating beneath the pile of
sail-cloth, and I determined to leave -the
place and find another. It was an easy
matter to slip away in the darkness and
make my way forward toward the fore-
castle. There were all manners of
hiding-places there that would serve un-
til daylight.

Far up near the bowsprit I crawled
behind a mass of rope. From my posi-
tion I could look over all the deck ;
could even see the man at the wheel.
Captain Hawson was pacing back ani
forth near the rail, with his hands be-
hind bis back. Three or four members
of the crew were going about their work.

After a time I saw Uncle Dick come
forward and speak to Captain Hawson.
At first I could not hear what thev said.

because of the rushing wind, but pres-
ently they walked toward me, and came
to a stop directly beneath, sheltered from
the wind and spray.

" I suppose money would not do it? "
I heard my uncle say.

" It will not," Captain Hawson re-
plied.

"I thought you'd do anything for
money? "

" Most things," the captain admitted.
" But this is different. I made an agree-
ment with them to capture you and take
you over. If I had failed to capture you,
it would have made no difference. But
since you have been captured, since the
crew knows you are here, things are
changed.

"It would be as much as my life is
worth to let you go now. They would
hunt me like a dog from one end of the
earth to the other, as they have hunted
you. I would be safe, nowhere. I'd die
some day — as you are going to die.

" Then, there is another thing. I
couldn't do it if I wanted to. The crew
is watching me. You forget they belong
to the island. The moment I started to
turn back they'd seize the ship, throw
me overboard, and run the chances."

"Then there is no hope?" my uncle
said.

" I've heard a great deal of you," the
captain answered ; " and I always under-
stood you were a brave man. I suppose
it is different now that you are staring
death in the face."

" I have stared death in the face many
times without flinching," Uncle Dick re-
plied. " There is, perhaps, another rea-
son why I wish to escape."

"A woman?" questioned the captain.

" No — a boy."

"Your son? "

" My sister's son. Do not ask how
this affects him, but it does."

" You speak as if he were with you,
doomed to a death like the one that is
to be yours."

" You do not understand," my uncle
said. "Then, nothing can be done?"

" Nothing."

" Have you no heart, that you capture
people and deliver them up to execu-
tioners? "

Captain Hawson's voice changed. " Per-
haps, in this case, I think vou merit

414

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

the execution," he said. " I have been a
tough customer in my time, but have
little respect for a man who would de-
spoil— "

" Stop ! " Uncle Dick cried. " You
have gone far enough — that lie "has trav-
eled far enough ! I was not the despoiler.
I'll go to my death swearing it."

" You'll never convince me of that,"
said Captain Hawson. " I say it was
you who despoiled—"

My uncle was at his throat before he
could finish the sentence. Captain Haw-

■ son screamed as they clinched ; then they
fought back and forth across the deck
like mad beasts.

Members of the crew ran toward them,
fell upon them, tore them apart. Angry
though he was, the breath half choked

■ out of him, Captain Hawson's first words
were to the men who held my uncle
prisoner, telling them to set him free.

" Stay by me when Mr. Engle is near,"
the captain instructed one of the crew.
"He presumes upon the knowledge that
no harm must befall him to use vio-
lence."

" I fight no man who cannot fight
back," Uncle Dick retorted; "yet there
are some insinuations that cannot go
unpunished."

Captain Hawson made no reply. He

remained standing near the rail, waiting

to see what Uncle Dick was going to

do. I saw Welch come forward then,

.and look upon the scene.

" Having a little trouble with the
chivalrous despoiler, Captain Hawson?"
he sneered.

The captain whirled upon him. " Mr.
Welch," he said, " only a coward insults
a man who is down. There are reasons
why there can be no violence between
Mr. Engle and myself, but I know Of
no reason why there should be no vio-
lence between Mr. Engle and you.

"If you insult him again, I trust he
will give you the thrashing you deserve.
If he does not, I'll have you in irons.
No man shall insult a passenger I have
instructions to treat with every courtesy."

"Do you know to whom you are
speaking?" Welch cried.

" Most certainly."

"If you know what is good for you,
you'll keep a civil tongue in your head."

" Tf you know what is crood for yon."

the captain replied, " you'll go below
immediately."

"You'll regret your words, "sir!"
Welch thundered.

" Will you go below, or shall I send
you? "

"Neither!" Welch screamed. "You
have forgotten yourself, it seems. You
shall know who is master here. You are
but a puppet hired for certain work. I
am the one who rules."

Captain Hawson stepped toward him
threateningly.

" Go below instantly! " he cried.

Welch laughed. " Send me!" he said.

" I'll take you," the captain answered,
and sprang upon him.

Welch dodged to one side, and called
something in that foreign tongue to
those of the crew who were standing
near. They rushed in immediately, and
grasped their captain.

" Captain Hawson," Welch said,
" things have arrived at the stage where
I find it necessary to take things into my
own hands."

" This is mutiny — piracy ! " the cap-
tain cried.

" Under ordinary circumstances it
would be," Welch replied. - " But these
are not ordinary circumstances. First of
all things, is to carry out the commands
of one who shall be unnamed here. If
mutiny is necessary to do this — "

" Seize him ! Put him in irons ! " Cap-
tain Hawson cried.

None of the crew moved to obey.

" You see ? " Welch said. " They know
whom to obey."

"You are taking command of this
ship?" the captain demanded.

" I am." \

" And what will you say when our
destination is reached?"

" I'll say that you bargained with
Engle to turn back, as I just heard you
doing."

"You lie! "

" I heard you — no one else. I'll say
it was necessary to take command of this
ship to execute our enterprise success-
fully. I'll mention that such an act is
mutiny, and will cause certain people
trouble if the knowledge gets out. And
then, perhaps, the knowledge will never
get out. for a dead man tells no tales."

He spoke roldlv and cruelly.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

415

" That is what comes of treating
Frederic Welch without courtesy," he
ended.

" You cur ! " Captain Hawson cried.

" Take him below and put him in
irons," Welch commanded the men.

Captain Hawson tore himself loose,
and was at Welch's throat in the twink-
ling of an eye. They went down to-
gether on the deck. I saw Uncle Dick
rush toward them, but he was too late,
for the members of the crew, uttering
cries in their peculiar tongue, tore the
belligerents apart, lifted Welch from the
deck, and made Hawson prisoner again.

"Take him below! Put1 him in
irons!" Welch commanded again.

" You'll do nothing of the sort," said
a voice behind them.

All turned to look. Ruth Holland
had stepped from behind the mast, into
the circle cast by the smoking lamp. She
held her revolver in her hand, and it
covered Frederic Welch !

CHAPTER VI.

I Touch the Aitu.

""FREDERIC WELCH," she com-
■^ manded, " have Captain Hawson
released this minute and allow him to
take command of his ship."

" I issue orders here," said Welch
boldly.

'.' We will leave it to the men," she
said.

One of them, the one who had been
spokesman in her cabin during their
midnight call, stepped forward, between
the girl and Welch.

" We do not understand this," he said.
" Why should the master and the most
exalted one differ? "

" Will you obey me instantly? " Welch
screamed. " Do you want me to report
upon our arrival that you raised your
hand against me? "

The. man made a gesture of despair.

" We are to carry out the proper com-
mands," he said. " If the master wishes
it, this man shall go below in irons."

Welch smiled at Miss Holland, but
was not outdone. She walked quickly
toward them across the sloping deck.

" You are supposed to honor me, are
you not? " she asked.

" We honor you deeply, most exalted
one," the man replied.

" Do you honor me by refusing to
obey the first wish I have ever expressed
to you? This man you call master is
doing a wrong. Captain Hawson should
command the ship. Release him in-
stantly ! "

The man looked from her to Welch,
uncertain what to do.

" Enough of this ! " Welch cried.
" Do as I command! I am your master;
is it not so? You were told to obey me
in all things pertaining to your land.
Above all else, we were to secure pos-
session of this man Engle and return
him alive and well to the island. Is
not that so?

"Now I learn that Captain Hawson
is not to be trusted; that to trust him is
to run the risk of never getting this man
to the island. You know what failure
means !

" This woman who faces you has a
woman's heart and does not like violence.
She pleads for the captain because she
thinks he is^being wronged. She does
not understand as I do.

" Carry out my . commands without
further delay, and I will assume all the
risk and responsibility when the island
is reached. Refuse to carry them out,
and I'll report you for a lot of unbeliev-
ing dogs to the one you most fear ! "

The man hesitated a moment, then
turned toward Captain Hawson.

" He goes below — in irons," the man
said.

" Stop ! " Ruth Holland commanded
again.

The man stepped before her. " We
must obey the commands of the man we
are told to call master," he said. " The
most exalted one will not attempt to
hinder us? "

Miss Holland stepped before Welch.

"What is it you intend to do?" she
asked.

" Command this ship until the voyage
is over."

" And after that—? "

" It is none of your business."

" You know what I mean ! What will
you say when you sail into the harbor
with Captain Hawson a prisoner?"

" Don't let that annoy you. I shall
have some fitting story, believe me."

416

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" A story that will cost the captain
his life?"

"Perhaps; he insulted me a short
time since."

" You cur ! "

"Beware! Some curs bite!" Welch
exclaimed.

Ruth stepped back toward' the light
again.

" When you start to take Captain
Hawson below, I begin firing," she said.

" At the poor men who are carrying
out orders, I presume."

" No," she said, " at you ! "

" Do you dare oppose me in this? I
have greater power here than you have ! "

He motioned for the men to take the
captain below. From my place up near
the bowsprit I watched carefully, won-
dering how this scene was to end. Ruth
Holland raised the revolver and pointed
it at Welch.

" Tell them to stop ! " she ordered.

The men went on. Her finger pressed
the trigger.

" Stop ! " Welch commanded.

" Have the captain released! " she or-
dered.

".No!"

" Have him released ! "

There was no mistaking the meaning
in her voice. Welch motioned for the
men to release Captain Hawson.

" Are you satisfied now? " he asked.

" No; you must go below! "

" Very well ! "

The alacrity with which he started to
comply should have warned her. It did
warn Uncle Dick and the captain, for.
they cried out words of caution at the
same time. But it was too late.

As he neared her, Welch turned upon
her suddenly and grasped her right arm
at the wrist. One shot went wild. The
next instant Welch had her revolver in
his hands.

Uncle Dick and the captain sprang
forward. But at Welch's command the
crew fell upon them, thrust Uncle Dick
back against the rail and made Captain
Hawson prisoner again.

" Take him away ! " Welch ordered.

Two of the men led the captain aft.
The others remained.

" Miss Holland," Welch said, " I find
it necessary to order you to remain in
your cabin for the present."

" And if I refuse? "

" Do not forget that I command this
ship ! "

" And do not forget," cried my uncle,
springing toward them, " that your act
in seizing this ship is piracy. Accord-
ing to the law, any law-abiding man is
privileged to deal with a pirate in an at-
tempt to regain a ship for its com-
mander ! "

Welch laughed. " You expect to make
the attempt?" he asked.

" If I should, the law is on my side."

" The men aboard this ship recognize
another law, of which I am the present
representative," Welch replied. "If you
conduct yourself properly, you shall
have every courtesy, sir. If you "make a
move to thwart me, it may be otherwise."

" You expect a man to stand by idly
and be carried to his death?" my uncle
demanded.

" Leave the deck! " said Welch.

He motioned for two of the men.

" Conduct Mr. Engle and Miss Hol-
land to their cabins," he said.

My uncle started to walk aft. Ruth
Holland stood still beneath the light.
Both of them seemed to realize that the
present was no time for violence. They
would have to wait.

Uncle Dick stopped when he came up
with Miss Holland, and motioned for
her to go first.

"Of our own differences we will not
speak at present," he said, " but allow
me to say that I respect all' womankind
enough to guard even a woman who has
caused me untold harm."

"What do you mean?" Welch cried.

" I mean it is not safe for a lady to
remain alone in the presence of a man
who insults women," my uncle said.

Miss Holland bowed and walked ahead
of Uncle Dick. Welch did not reply,
but the sneer was upon his lips as he
watched them disappear.

I wondered what would happen next.
It would be daylight in another hour, and
I would be discovered if I remained
where I was. It was necessary to find
another hiding-place.

Welch remained on deck; several of
the men near him. He issued orders,
much the same as Captain Hawson had
done, and it was evident that he knew
how to handle a ship.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

417

After a time he went aft, toward the
wheel. I watched my chance, and
slipped down among the ropes and
gained the deck. Keeping in the
shadows I crept back, past the men on
deck, behind ' the mast. There I waited
for several minutes, crouching in the
dark.

After a time Welch went forward
again. Then I made my way aft as
swiftly as possible, and reached my old
hiding-place in the pile of sail-cloth. It
seemed that no one was below in the pas-
sage. I grew bolder after a time and
started to descend.

Before I could reach my uncle's cabin,
I heard steps on deck. There was a
door at my right, and no light came from
beneath it. I tried it ; it opened. I
stepped inside, and closed the door again.

Some one walked along the passage
-and entered the next cabin. I could not
see in the cabin I had entered, and was
afraid to strike a match. I remained
standing near the door, listening. Voices
came to me from the next room.

" Unless they are made prisoners in
their cabins, they will recapture the ship,"
Welch was saying.

" But it is forbidden to mistreat Mr.
Engle, and no one dares lay hands upon
the woman," replied the voice of the
man who had been spokesman for the
crew.

" It is necessary," Welch declared.
" Suppose the god says it should be
done? "

" What the aitu commands shall be
executed," was the reply.

" Shall we implore the aitu?"

" If you say so, master."

" At once, then ! "

There was no time in which to explore.
I slipped behind the draperies, and
found myself at the foot of a flight of
steps. I crept up as far as I could, and
my hands came in contact with some-
thing of metal — something shaped pe-
culiarly.

At the same instant I heard them open
the door.

" Some one else must be present, mas-
ter ; it is the law," the man told Welch.

" Call Captain Hawson, Mr. Engle,
and the woman," Welch replied.

The man went out. I heard Welch
strike a match. The draperies were so
3 R R

heavy that no light filtered through. I
hoped that my place of concealment
would not be discovered. There was a
babel of voices.

" We are going to consult the aitu on a
matter of importance," I heard Welch
say. " The law, as you know, says that
some one other than the two parties to
the controversy shall be present. I have
asked you to be here."

" If you are working on the belief of
these fanatics to further your own des-
picable ends — " began Uncle Dick.

"Silence!" Welch commanded.

He spoke some words to the man in
that strange tongue, and the other's
voice was raised in a chant. Suddenly
I felt the draperies before me give way
with a jerk, and the next instant was
almost blinded by the light.

I looked down at the group before
me ; a group of terror-stricken faces.
Quickly I looked about me. At the
head of the flight of steps was a great
idol of metal, an evil, grinning face, a
head surmounted by a crown of jewels.
My arm had been resting. upon its shoul-
der.

Cries from those below made me turn
toward them- quickly. The man who
had accompanied Welch to the cabin
stood before me, his hands shaking.
Uncle Dick's face was white; so was
'Miss Holland's. There was surprise in
Captain Hawson's, for he did not dream
that I was in existence or on his ship.*

" He is doomed, whoever he is," I
heard the captain say.

Uncle Dick was screaming something
at me. Miss Holland had begun to
weep. Welch was cursing to himself.
But above them all I heard the wail of
the man who posed as spokesman for the
crew, a wail that cut into my heart and
filled me with dread.

" He has touched the aitu ! He has
touched the aitu ! " he cried. " He has
defiled the god! And so he must die!"

CHAPTER VII.

Uncle Dick Turns Coward.

TNSTINCT caused me to reach in my
■*■ pocket for the revolver that was
there. I held it gripped in my hand,
but did not remove it from the pocket.

418

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" Who is this boy? How did he come
aboard?" Captain Hawson demanded.

" He is my nephew," Uncle Dick said.
" His presence aboard is an accident. I
discovered him some hours ago, and
have been trying to keep him hidden."

" Did any one else see him aboard and
fail to report the matter?" Hawson de-
manded.

"I knew he was here," Miss Holland'
said.

" You know what I mean," replied
Captain Hawson. " I was not speaking
of you, but of .those who believe. The
boy is" an outsider. He has no right on
this ship. If any one saw him, and
failed to report it — "

" Mr. Welch knew I was aboard,
sir ! " I cried down to him.

"It is a lie!" Welch screamed.
" Had I known it, I should have report-
ed it at once, that the law might have
been upheld."

" He found me in Miss Holland's
cabin," I went on, " and afterward I
heard him talking with one of the men,
telling him to make friends with me and
keep me hidden from the others. "

"Is this true, Mr. Welch?" the cap-
tain demanded.

" It is not true ! " he replied. " And
by what right do you question me ? I
command the Faraway at present, sir."

Captain Hawson cor fronted him, his
eyes blazing. " Mr. Welch," he said,
1 'things I have heard and seen within
the past few hours have "convinced me
that you are not a true believer, but are
working upon superstition and fanaticism
to further certain ends of your own.

" I'll have nothing to do with the
rest of it ! I tell you now to your face-
that I will regain possession of this ship
and put back to San Francisco, or go to
death attempting it."

Welch turned upon him in a rage,
crying orders in that foreign tongue.
On the deck overhead was the patter of
bare feet, and soon the doorway was
crowded with swarthy faces.

" Seize these people and make them
prisoners," Welch commanded.

Captain Hawson whirled around, and
ran to the foot of the steps. Miss Hol-
land crouched at one side of the cabin,
holding her hands before her face.

It took but an instant for Uncle Dick

to hurl Welch to one side and dash after
the captain. And there, at the foot of
the flight of steps which led to the idol,
the captain and my uncle prepared for
defense.

They had no weapons, and the others
had, but could not use them. It was
not a part of Welch's scheme to have
my uncle murdered, and though I be-
lieve he would have seen the captain
die Avithout a bit of regret, it would not
have been diplomatic at the time.

"Seize them! Put them in irons!
They are trying treacheryj " he cried.

The men sprang forward to obey,
and then the battle began. Back and
forth across the floor they fought, every
one at a disadvantage in the small cabin.
Repeatedly, Uncle Dick was made
prisoner and fought himself free, and it
was the same with the captain.

Finally, hard pressed, they mounted
the steps, one by one, fighting the others
back. At the door, Welch screamed for
his men to hurry with their work. Ruth
Holland still stood against the wall, but
her hands were no longer before her eyes,
for she was watching the combat.

" Seize them all — the boy, too ! "
Welch screamed. " He has touched the
aitu — he must die ! "

I stepped behind the idol, and peered
around it. One of the men had Uncle
Dick by the throat, choking him into
submission. Without hesifation, I raised
the revolver and fired. The man gave
a scream, toppled over backward, and
crashed down the steps to the cabin floor.

The smoke from the revolver filled
the cabin. All of the men were scream-
ing, some of them trying to get out at
the door, and Welch was trying tov pre-
vent it, calling to them that they were
' cowards.

They rushed the steps, half a dozen
of them, brushing Uncle Dick and the
captain aside. I fired again, and one
of them went down. The others fell
back down the steps.

" After him ! Cowards ! " Welch was
screaming.

But they had no heart for such fi-'r-
ing. With terror in their hearts they
rushed to the door and fled through it in. to
the passage. They were brave men.
frenzied fighters, but they could not face
a weapon with no chance to retaliate.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

419

Uncle Dick and the captain rushed
down the steps and fought with Welch
and the one man who remained. I fol-
lowed them, wondering what the next
move would be.

It took less than a minute for them to
conquer Welch and his man, and then
the captain grasped me by the arm, Uncle
Dick helped Ruth Holland, and we ran
into the passage and through ' it to the
end. v

There the captain burst open a door,
and we entered a tiny room, crept through
another dark passage, and finally reached
the deck forward.

The captain led us up near the bow-
sprit, where I had been hiding earlier in
the night. It was a natural barricade,
and commanded the deck.

" We'll fight it out here," the captain
said.

Day was breaking in the east, and thus
we faced a new- danger. Our discovery
was but a question of an hour or so.
And, indeed, it was a matter of less time
than that, for it was scarcely half an
hour before we were tracked to our hid-
ing-place and Welch stood down on the
deck before us, sneering.

"Shall I fire at him, sir?" I asked
Uncle Dick.

"No — no!" Hawson cried. "Shoot
him down and these fanatics will rush
into Hades itself to capture us and torture
us 'to death. Do not waste cartridges —
wait ! "

Welch stood out where we could see
him plainly in the gathering day. " Will
you come down and surrender if I allow
you the freedom of the ship?" he asked.

" No," replied the captain promptly.

" I am not speaking to you, sir,"
Welch said. " I am speaking to Mr.
Engle. He is to be treated with every
courtesy. So is the boy, now that he is
doomed.

" It goes without saying that Miss
Holland may be sure of every' kind at-
tention. Will you come down, Mr. En-
gle, with Miss Holland and the boy, and
take the freedom of the ship?"

Uncle Dick turned to Ruth Holland
and questioned with his eyes. What he
read there caused him to turn toward
Welch quickly and reply.

" We'll take our chances up here,
sir," he said.

Welch called the men to him. They
were armed with revolvers.

" I am giving you a last chance," he
said. " Will you come down and take
the freedom of the ship, or shall I have
my men fire upon you? "

" You'll scarcely do that, I think," my
uncle said.

" Do not presume too much ! " Welch
cried. " There is less censure in taking
a dead man to the island than in allow-
ing a live one to escape. For the last
time— will you come down?"

My uncle hesitated; then — '

" Yes ! " he said.

Captain Hawson uttered an oath. My
surprise was so great that I could not
speak. Ruth Holland's cheeks flamed,
and she gave my uncle a look of scorn
such as I never saw before. Uncle Dick
looked her bravely in the eyes.

" You do not understand," he said.

Her cry must have been like a knife
in his heart :

" You coward ! "

CHAPTER VIII.

Uncle Dick's Return.

T JNCLE DICK stood on his feet and
*~^ looked back at her. Then he
stepped nearer to me.

" You will remain here, Roland," he
said.

Then I understood, and would have
spoken, but he motioned for me to keep
silent. He sprang forward and made
his way to the deck and walked up to
Welch.

" I am to have the freedom of the
ship, remember," he said. " If I am to
die, my last days shall be~ comfortable
ones at any event."

" I have nothing against you, sir,"
Welch replied. " I have forgotten the
little trouble we had in Miss Holland's
cabin. I am glad that you take matters
so sensibly.'

He turned toward us again. " Are
the rest of you going to avail yourselves
of my offer?" he cried.

" I, for one, am not ! " replied Cap-
tain Hawson.

" Will you come down, Miss Hol-
land?"

"I'd rather remain here and take my

420

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

chances with a brave man and a boy,"
she answered.

Welch cursed, and turned to his men
as though to give an order, but Uncle
Dick stepped forward again.

"Do not get yourself into trouble by
firing upon them," he said. " There is
an easier way than that."

" What is it? "

" Starve them out," my uncle said.

" That might serve for a time," said
Welch.

He posted two men to guard usy then
gave his attention to handling the ship.
I crawled across to Miss Holland's side.

" You must not think ill of my
uncle," I said.

"How can I think otherwise?" she
demanded. " He has shown himself to
be a coward ! "

" Perhaps," I ventured, " he is not a
coward after all. Just before he went
on deck he whispered to me that I was
to remain behind."

" What do you mean? " Captain Haw-
son demanded.

" I think," I answered, " that Uncle
Dick has some plan. Perhaps he hopes
to get weapons and return with them, or
to get food."

" Let us hope such is the case," said
the captain.

"If I have wronged him — " Ruth
Holland began.

" I am sure you have," I interrupted.
" Uncle Dick is not the man to be a
coward."

" Welch will make some move soon,"
the captain said. " It isn't like him to
allow us to remain here without annoy-
ance."

" I wish you'd explain all this," I
said. " What was there wrong in touch-
ing that idol? "

" You will understand before long,"
Ruth Holland said.

" But I'd like to know now."

" Not now," she replied. " It is too
terrible. You poor boy!"

" I don't like, being called a boy," I
said.. " What are the men doing now?"

They were arranging themselves in a
semicircle on the deck, facing the rising
sun. As we watched, one of them be-
gan a chant, and the others chimed in.

" It is a religious ceremony," Miss
Holland said.

The chant ceased, and the spokesman
stepped before them and looked up at
us.

" Most exalted one," he said, " what
is your answer? ' —

" It is . * No ! No ! ' " Miss Holland
cried in reply.

" We ask you to consider again."
" My answer shall always be the
same," she said.

They chanted some more, and then
went about their duties. I noticed that
the spokesman held a little idol in his
hand, such a one as he had placed on
the table in Miss Holland's cabin that
night, a tiny counterpart of the great
god in the cabin below.

" What is it they want you to an-
swer?" I asked Miss Holland.

" That, too, you must not know for
the present," she replied.

We remained there for an hour, with-
out anything of importance happening.
Captain Hawson piled rope and sail-
cloth before us, to make the barricade
better, and took my revolver.

" There are only three cartridges
left," he said. "We must save one for
Welch."

"You are going to shoot him?" I
asked.

" Only as a last resort," Captain Haw-
son replied. " Let us hope that your
uncle is indeed trying to do something to
help us, and that he did not desert us
through cowardice."

" Mr. Engle is back on deck," Cap-
tain Hawson said.

I looked down; Uncle Dick had in-
deed come back on deck, and was walk-
ing forward. I saw the men who were
guarding us stop him, and prevent him
from coming up to us. Welch came
running forward.

" What do you want to do? " he asked
my uncle.

" I want to get the boy," he said.

" Call him, then. Don't go up
there ! "

" He will not come unless I go up."

" Call him," Welch said.

Uncle Dick looked up -at us. " Ro-
land ! " he called.

" Yes, sir," I answered.

" You'd better come down here with
me, don't you think?"

I hesitated. Did mv uncle really want

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

421

me to come down, or was it a ruse? Had
he told Welch that story in an attempt
to get back to us?

"Are you coming?" he asked.

" I think I'd better remain here, sir,"
I replied, hoping that I was doing right.

I saw by the look in my uncle's eyes
that I had done right. He faced Welch
again.

" You see, the" boy will not come down
unless I go up for- him," he said. "He
is frightened."

" I'll go up for him," Welch said.

He started to come up. My heart was
pounding at my ribs again. I knew that
-Uncle Dick wanted me to remain where
I was. It was Captain Hawson who
came to my rescue. ' .

" Welch," he cried, " if you come up
here, I'll fire upon you.'1

" Scarcely," he replied, laughing.
''' You know what would happen, do you
not?"

" I'll take my chances," the captain
replied. " Remain where you are ! "

"I'm coming up!" Welch , answered,
and began to climb.

I was watching my uncle as he crept
upon the two guards, who were now
standing together watching Welch. And
then I understood, and whispered quick-
ly to the captain.

He raised the revolver. Welch's head
and shoulders showed.

" Go back ! " the captain commanded.

Welch laughed, and started to climb
on up.

The captain sprang forward and
grappled with him. In a flash the two
guards had started to Welch's assistance.
It was the moment for which my uncle
seemed to have' been waiting. He hurled
one of the guards to one side, securing
his revolver as he did so, and in an in-
stant was upon the back of the other,
hammering him over the head with the
butt of the captured gun. .

The men were screaming, and others
of the crew were hurrying forward.
Captain Hawson picked Welch up bod-
ily and threw him down upon the deck.
He crashed against it, and lay still, and
Uncle Dick sprang up to us, the two
revolvers in his possession.

" We have weapons now," he said.

Ruth Holland plucked at his sleeve.
"Can you forgive me?" she asked.

"For doubting my courage, yes; for
the other, no," he replied.

" You'll' always believe — that of me? "

" Until I know differently," he an-
swered.

" Perhaps you'll know differently some
day," she told him.

Captain Hawson interrupted them.

"Eyes open! Here they come!" he
cried.

Even as he spoke, his revolver spoke,
too. The first man of the crew to at-
tempt to reach us fell back upon the
deck senseless. Others dashed toward
us, trying to climb to where we were.
Uncle Dick's revolver spoke, then the
captain fired again. And then the men
on deck, rage -seizing them, opened fire
upon us, and the bullets whistled by and
fell about us like hail.

I do not know how it happened, for
I did not feel it at the time. I only
know that while I was working the re-
volver to send my last shot into the
midst of the men below my arm grew
numb suddenly and the weapon slipped
from my hand.

I grasped my right arm with my left
hand, and saw that it was covered with
blood. Then everything grew black be-
fore me, and with the shouts and shots
and curses ringing in my ears I crashed
to the deck.

CHAPTER IX.

The Last Cartridge.

"Vf^HEN I regained consciousness I
* * found myself on one of the bunks
in a cabin. My arm was bandaged, and
paining terribly.

It was dark in the cabin, but whether
it was night I could not tell; for, as I
gradually discovered, the one porthole
was closed, and there was a heavy por-
tiere before it.

I lay still for some time, allowing my
eyes tq>.grow accustomed to the darkness.
Then I saw a table in the middle of the
cabin, with two heavy chairs near it, and
that was all.

At first I heard no sound except the
washing of the waves and the creaking
of rigging, but after a time I heard
shouts and curses and the reports of gun-
fire. I wondered whether my uncle and

422

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Captain Hawson had been really con-
quered.

The sounds of battle grew louder. It
was evident that the combat raged on
the deck over the cabin in which I was
a prisoner. I crawled from the bunk
and, steadying myself against the table
and chairSj made my way to the door and
turned the knob.

The door was locked. I searched the
cabin carefully, but found no wreapon.
The fight on deck raged fiercely. If I
remained in the cabin my fate depended
upon the outcome of the fight. I would
rather be an eye-witness, I decided, and
in event of the combat turning against
my interests tried to find some hiding-
place that would serve my purpose.

Again I tried the door, but it was
fastened securely. Just as I Avas at the
point of giving up in despair there were
steps in the passage, some one fumbled
at the door, and the next instant it was
thrown open, and Ruth Holland stood
just within it.

"You have recaptured the 'ship?" I
asked.

" You poor boy," she said by way of
answer, and held me for a moment in
her arms.

" Tell me what happened," I implored.

" Your uncle and the captain fought
them back," she said, " and we left our
protection in an effort to secure control -
of the deck. But the men only got fresh
arms and ammunition and renewed the
fight. Your uncle and the captain are
making a stand on deck, trying to pre-
vent the men from driving them below."

"But you came here for me?"

" I am going to take you into my
cabin," she said. " You'll be safe there,
at least until we reach our 'destination.
These men dare not harm me."

" But Uncle Dick — and the captain? "

" We can only hope for the best," she
said.

She put her arm around my shoulders,
and helped me out of the cabin and down
the passage. I could hear the shots and
cries plainly now, and wanted to go on
deck, but she would not allow it. She
took me to her cabin, and made me com-
fortable on the bunk. Then she went
out and closed the door.

A short time after that I could hear

(To be co

the fighting drawing nearer, and realized
that my uncle and the captain had been
forced below, and were defending^ the
passage. Then, suddenly, .the firing
ceased entirely, and all was still.

"Roland!" I heard Uncle Dick
calling.

" Here, sir," I answered.

He threw open the door and entered.
His clothing was in shreds, there was
dirt on his face and hands, and blood
mixed with the dirt. One great gash
was across his forehead.

"What has happened?" I asked.

" They crove us down," he said, " and
have made us prisoners."

" You mean they control the ship? "

" Yes, they command the ship. We
are like rats in a trap down here."

"Where is Miss Holland?" I asked.

" They detained her on deck."

" What will they do now? "

" I don't know," he said.

Captain Hawson came into the cabin
then, and he was as sorry a picture as
Uncle Dick.

" We settled a few scores anyway,"
he said.

" But they'll make us pay dearly for
it," replied Uncle Dick. " I don't care
for myself — I always expected it. And
I don't suppose you are afraid of death,
captain. But the woman, and the boy — "

" We may be able to save them 3ret,"
the captain replied.

For several minutes nothing happened.
Then a streak of light came into the
passage, and there was the noise of a
door slamming.

Some one is coming down," the cap-
tain said.

He opened the door cautiously and
peered out. It was Welch who came
along the passage, accompanied by one
of the men. Captain Hawson raised his
revolver.

" Stop where you are! " he commanded.

Welch laughed. "Why should I?"
he asked. There are no shells in your
revolver, nor in Mr. Engle's. The fight
was not so swift that I didn't take time
to count the shots you fired."

" Then you made a mistake in your
counting, for I have at least one left,"
the captain said. " I have saved it for
you."
n t i nued .)

Making the Lightning Hustle.

BY CHARLTON G. ANDREWS

THE need of an intermediate means of communication between the
telegraph and the mail is a long recognized one. It has baffled
organizers to give any such service that would be adequate. The
special-delivery letter was one reply to the demand, but no mere acceleration
of old methods could solve the problem, and organizers have had to wait for
inventors to give them the materials. Many have been the attempts — all
futile— until Mr. Delany came along with his wonderful invention, which
he named the telepost, and by means of which an average of three thousand
words a minute can be transmitted cheaply. This article is an untechriical
description of the telepost and its method of working its miracle.

A System by Which Your Stenographer Can Send Your Telegrams

Direct, Without the Obscurity of the Gut-a-Word

and Save-a-Cent Method.

PREAD out the morning paper
so that you can comprehend at
a single glance the quantity of
matter in small type on the
first page, which, if it is an
average metropolitan daily
without display advertising,
will be somewhere near eight thousand
words. Next look at your watch while
the tiny hand at the bottom of the dial
makes the circuit which marks the flight
of sixty seconds, and try to imagine the
entire contents of that newspaper page
being transmitted from New York to
Buffalo over a single wire while those
sixty seconds are being ticked off. If
you can do that, perhaps it may help you
to appreciate the automatic telegraph
system invented by Patrick B. Delany,
of East Orange and Nantucket.

It may also help in appraising De-
lany's endeavors to bring the telegraph
up to date to contrast this speed of eight
thousand words a minute with nine words
a minute, which is the rate at which the
average speed of the average operator
figures out, according to a statement

made by the president of the Western
Union, in April, 1907.

To be sure, what may be called the
official record of Delany's automatic
telegraph is only twelve hundred words
a minute. Delany contents himself with
a claim of a beggarly thousand words a
minute when talking for publication, but
the eight thousand words have been sent
in one minute over a line having an arti-
ficial resistance equivalent to that in a
line between Buffalo and New York.
What has been done once can be done
again, no doubt.

Chasing Lightning.

Even a thousand words a minute is
one hundred and eleven times as fast as
an average operator can send ; and, be it
remembered, ninety-eight and a half per
cent of the telegrams transmitted in the
United States to-day are sent in the same
old primitive way that Morse taught.

Delany does not have to depend upon
any flimsy testimony to prove that he can
send messages at this incredible speed.

423

424

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

In the first place, he has the Elliott Cres-
son gold medal, conferred upon him by
that venerable and distinguished scientific
body, the Franklin _ Institute, of Phila-
delphia, in recognition of his achievement.
He has also a report of the Committee
on Science and Arts, signed by the chair-
man of the committee and the president
and secretary of the institute, and bear-
ing its seal certifying that the committee,
after due investigation, found the appa-
ratus capable of transmitting and re-
ceiving over a single wire twelve hundred
words a minute.

Any one unwilling to accept this docu-
ment as conclusive may find Delany's
instruments in daily use in Boston, Low-
ell, Lawrence, and Haverhill, Massachu-
setts ; Exeter, Portsmouth, and Dover,
New Hampshire ; Biddeford, Saco, Old
Orchard, and Portland, Maine ; St. Louis
and Sedalia, Missouri ; Springfield, Ill-
inois, and Terre Haute, Indiana, where
they may make observations and verify
them on their own account to their hearts'
content.

Beginning of a Revolution.

Lines now in use between these various
cities are the beginning of a system which
will soon reach from Boston by way of
New York, Chicago, St. Louis, and Kan-
sas City to San Francisco, and ultimately
throughout the entire country ; but the
new company isn't saying much about
its proposed routes. Like many another
corporation, it has learned to its cost that
the value of a right of way increases as
the square of its desire to purchase.

This new telegraph company, organ-
ized with a capital of eighteen million
dollars, is known as the " Telepost," be-
cause it has been the dream of Delany's
life to combine the swift transmission of
the ideal telegraph wire with the well-
organized delivery service of the United
States post-office for correspondence.
Service will at all times be quick, and
when desired it can be quicker.

For the quick-method messages -gath-
ered by messengers or otherwise are to
be sent over the wires, to be delivered at
the other end by mail. Thus handled it
is a " telepost " passage. If that isn't
speedy enough the message is sent by
Avire and delivered bv messengar as a

telegram. In either case the charge is a
quarter, no matter whether the telepost
or telegram is from New Y»rk to Tren-
ton or New York to San Francisco. The
only difference is that in a telegram the
sender is restricted to twenty-five words
and a very limited distance for his quar-
ter ; while if he is satisfied with a telepost
he can expand his thoughts into fifty
words for the money.

More for Less.

If he is willing to prepare his .own
message for transmission in the form of
a " teletape," and let the addresses tran-
scribe it from Morse characters, -he can
send a little monograph of a hundred
words for the quarter. Additional words
are charged for at proportional rates.

A ten-word message can be sent by-
wire and delivered by mail written on a
postal-card for ten cents. The difference
between a twenty-five word telegram
from New York to San Francisco for
twenty-five cents and a ten-word message
for a dollar, the present rate, can be
worked out by any one with a head for
figures.

The first telepost line was opened be-
tween Boston and Portland, Maine, and
intermediate points October 15, 1908.
The service made a hit at once, and since
then the system has been expanding
stealthily, whenever the company could
buy a place to set a pole without appear-
ing to want to do so.

Some Foreign Usages.

France looked upon the idea and found
it good. Fifty-three days after the first
telepost line was opened in America the
Ministry of Posts and Telegraphs an-
nounced that " letter telegrams " for
transmission between any two points in
France would be received at the uniform
rate of a fifth of a cent per word re-
gardless of distance, the minimum charge
being ten cents. These letter telegrams
are received at any time after 7 p.m. up
to midnight, to be sent by telegraph dur-
ing the night when the wires are near-
ly idle, and delivered by mail in the
morning.

Rumania, too. has the craze for cheap
telegrams, and lots of them. Not beinc:

MAKING THE LIGHTNING HUSTLE.

425

able to think of any better scheme, the
Rumanian sends telegraphic visiting-
cards, which are inlaid telegrams con-
taining the sender's name and address
and nothing else, that can be sent any-
where for the uniform charge of five
cents. In the year ending June 30, 190S,
three hundred and twenty-two thousand
telegraphic visiting-cards were sent.

Millions of Dollars Spent.

Such things may do for Europe ; but
in America, where everybody, like a
woman, wants the first word and the last,
they never would meet the requirements.
Although we spent $184,461,747 on tele-
phone messages in 1907, the telephone
is too slow. On a line a thousand miles
long sixty words a minute is all a tele-
phone wire will carry.

This makes five dollars for three min-
utes, about as low a charge as the traffic
will bear, and that is too high for any
but the most important messages. What
is needed is a telegraph system of un-
limited capacity. Such a system must
necessarily be automatic.

The discovery of this need cannot be
claimed by Delany. As long ago as
1846 the first automatic telegraph was
invented, and millions of dollars have
been spent in trying to develop the scores
of automatic systems that have since been
patented in every civilized nation. Yet
the best that could be done in America
before Delany appeared was the Barclay
printing telegraph,, which sends about
forty words a minute, and the Rowland
automatic telegraph, which sends at the
same speed.

Some Foreign Systems.

The Baudot system, used to some ex-
tent in France, can send one hundred and
ten words a minute. The Murray sys-
tem, used on trunk lines like those be-
tween London and Dublin and Berlin
and Hamburg, can send a hundred words
a minute. By the Buckingham system
nine thousand one hundred and twenty-
six words were sent from Chicago to
New York in one hour, thirty-one min-
utes and eighteen seconds without an
error.

In another test six thousand and sev-

enty-three words were sent over the same
line in one hour and thirteen seconds.
The Siemens and Halske chemical auto-
matic system, brought out in Germany
in 1904, transmitted four hundred aver-
age words a minute in a laboratory test.

The Pollak-Virag chemical automatic
telegraph, in a test conducted by the
Hungarian postal department, sent forty-
five thousand words over a line one hun-
dred and thirty-five miles long in one
hour. In another test between Berlin
and Konigsberg, a distance of four hun-
dred and forty miles, forty thousand
words were sent in an hour.

The essential feature of the Delany
system is the use of the perforated tape,
which can be prepared by any number
of operators and fed through the auto-
matic sending-machine at a very high
speed. This device, nearly as old as the
telegraph itself, has been worn thread-
bare by the hosts of inventors who have
made use of it. Yet Delany gave this
hackneyed idea a new twist.

Old Ideas Simplified.

Instead of pounding the message into
the tape with pile-driver blows, as is done
in the Wheatstone system, still used in
England, the operator writes on the De-
lany tape on a machine with a keyboard
exactly like that of a typewriter, and he
doesn't hit the keys any harder than he
would those of a typewriter. Thus any
typewriter girl is a ready-made telegraph
operator, who can prepare messages to be
sent to a telepost office ready for the
transmitting machine.

At the telepost office the tape is run
between some little brass wheels on the
side of a polished mahogany box, about
as big as an encyclopedia volume set on
edge. Bits of iron wire are kept in con-
tact with the tape by springs. These
drop through the perforations, closing
an electric circuit and sending an im-
pulse over the wire.

The perforations are in a double row.
Two side by side send a dot ; when the
two are at an angle they make a dash.
A fifty- word message shoots through the
machine with a " zip " while the spec-
tator is getting ready to watch it.

At the receiving end the message is
automatically recorded on another tape,

426

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

either in Morse dots and dashes or in
perforations. In the former case the
tape is moistened with a chemical solu-
tion. Every electric impulse hrings an
iron wire in contact with the wet tape,
and makes an indelible blue mark which
will not blur or run into its neighbors.

If the message is to be transcribed by
an old-time Morse operator, he can have
the tape punched, to be fed later through
an auxiliary machine, which will click it
off to him in the old familiar clatter at
any speed he chooses, whenever he is
ready, and which will stop for him to
light his cigarette or repeat a word as
often as he likes without a protest.

The difficulty that has tripped up so
many inventors of automatic telegraphs
was the " static charge," or " capacity,"
or " retardation." By way of explana-
tion it may be said that sending a mes-
sage over a wire is just like sending a
stream of water through a long garden
hose. The water does not stop and start
the instant the tap is opened and closed,
b~.t in gradually increasing and decreas-
ing gushes.

The Rebel Harnessed.

This additional current leaves a record
on the receiving-tape in all other systems,
and makes the message illegible. This
difficulty increases with the length of the
line, as the " capacity " is- proportionate
to the wire surface.

Delany, instead of allowing himself
to be beaten by the static charge, simply
harnessed it and made it help, do the
work of his machine, thus practically
eliminating speed lhhits.

The scheme is covered by United
States patent No. 720,004. Only dots
are sent over the- wire by the Delany
instrument. Immediately after the dot
signal is sent a reverse current is sent

from the opposite pole of the battery,
which neutralizes the static charge on
the line so that it does not trail nor delay
the succeeding signal.

If a dash is wanted the reverse current
is held back long enough to allow the
static charge to make a long mark on
the receiving tape. Thus Delany catches
this disturbing element coming and going,
and keeps it so busy it never gets time
to interfere with the speed.

Stimulating the Line.

As a free horse can be- ridden to death,
so even a static charge may be over-
loaded. If a long circuit has not the
strength to produce a dash, condensers
or a parallel circuit are introduced to
help out to any> extent required, so that
the chemical tape may be- used on lines
of any length. So long as any current
reaches the receiving station the tape will
record it.

Electric and magnetic storms, bad in-
sulation and other things that interrupt
the ordinary electro-magnetic telegraph
system have no terrors for Delany. His
system works serenely on in perfect con-
dition so long as it is possible to get
intelligible Morse signals oyer it.

A newspaper that is in a hurry to get
to press can run the tape right to the
linotype operator and let him set up the
matter right from the tape — that is, if
he can read Morse. If he cannot, an
attachment for the linotype, on -which
Delany is now working, will take per-
forated tape and grind out the contents
in type without the intervention of a
printer.

A single wire will keep eighty-two
persons busy with the Delany system,
for.ty perforating messages for transmis-
sion, forty others transcribing them by
typewriter, and two attending machines.

By ike
Ligki of
the l^&ntern

Questions
Answered
for
Railroad Men

ASK US !

WE like to be as useful to our readers as we can; but, because of the great~popu!arity
of this department, we are forced to impose certain restrictions. In future, we
shall be compelled to limit its scope to the answering of questions of an inform-
ative, technical, or historical nature only.
We receive dozens of queries in regard to the right person to apply to for certain
classes of employment. If the writers will pause for a moment to consider, the tijtle of
the proper official will readily occur to them, and in any case the information can be
obtained by application to the headquarters of the company involved, much more quickly
than we can publish it.

WOULD it be considered an emergency
application if the engineer's brake-
valve was put - in emergency posi-
tion after a service application without re-
lease and recharge, or would it be necessary
to release and recharge, , excepting the high
speed equipment?

(2) Where is the largest locomotive in
the United States, and what does it weigh?

(3) What is the weight of a Pullman
sleeper?

C. T. S., Union Bay, Canada.

(1) No; with the "old style" equipment
it would not be an emergency application
under the conditions which you cite. A
sudden reduction must be made and extend
to the first quick-action triple to set them
all with emergency. If the reduction is so
gradual when it affects the triple that the
graduating valve can let air into the brake-
cylinder and reduce auxiliary pressure as

fast as train-pipe pressure is reduced, it
will not work the emergency on the train.

To show how light a reduction will
operate the quick-action, provided it is sud-
den, shut the angle-cocks next to a quick-
action triple valve, let the air out of the
hose, couple them up again and open angle-
cock suddenly. Just what air goes into the
empty hose from the rear end of the train
will work the quick-action. If this angle-
cock is opened very slowly it will not do it.

In regard to the action of the-emergency
in connection with the " ET " equipment,
so far as the locomotive is concerned, see
answer to " J. C. C." in the November
number.

(2) The largest locomotive in the world
is the new Mallet articulated compound,
built at the Baldwin Locomotive Works,
this year, for the Southern Pacific Com-
pany. The total weight of the engine is

427

428

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

425,900 pounds, of which 395,150 pounds is
on the driving-wheels. The total length
of the engine is 56 feet 7 inches, and of the
engine and tender, 83 feet 6 inches. The
diameter of the high-pressure cylinder is
26 inches, and that of the. low-pressure 40
inches. The total heating surface is 6,393
square feet, and the steam pressure 200
pounds per square inch. For a comparison
between this engine and one of the trio of
articulated compounds on the Erie Railroad,
Nos. 2600, 2601, 2602, see answer to " G.
D." in the October number.

(3) The weight of a modern Pullman
sleeper is from 135,000 tQ 145,000 pounds.

WC..A., Hinton, West Virginia.— The
• information which you seek rela-
tive to the course to be pursued in qualify-
ing for the position of locomotive engineer
has been given many times in this depart-
ment and in the special articles which have
appeared in The Railroad Man's Maga-
zine during the past three years.

Read "The Making of an Engineer" in
the August, 1907, issue ; and consult this de-
partment in recent numbers of the maga-
zine. In regard to this employment on the
Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis
address any of its master mechanics, or
apply to Mr. W. Garstang, superintendent
of motive power, Indianapolis, Indiana.

WHICH is best on a locomotive, an
electric headlight or the ordinary
type consuming oil?

(2) How far does an oil lamp throw a
light on the track?

(3) About how many electric headlights
are in use compared with oil?

H. M. K, Chicago, 111.

(1) The electric headlight is, of course,
far superior to the other from the stand-
point of illumination; but, while it is in
use upon many roads, it has a long way to
go before being 'generally adopted. Two
arguments operate against its use : first, be-
cause it is claimed that the powerful beam
of light is extremely disagreeable to the eyes
of an engineer approaching on the other
track, in the instance of a double-track road.

The impression of this beam on the eyes
is retained for some time, and it is said
that this might give rise to a false reading
of the signal lights, and you will note that
electric headlights are generally encoun-
tered on single-track roads.

Second, excessive cost of maintenance. In
a roundhouse where engines are all equipped
with electric headlights, or even if only a
dozen engines, it is necessary to carry an

electrician to keep them trimmed and take
proper care of the dynamo.

(2) No reliable data. Unless the re-
flector is in very good condition the oil
light is almost valueless to the engineer be-
hind it, so far as indicating where he is go-
ing is concerned. Its main value is to indi-
cate to others the approach of the train or
engine.

(3) There are no tabulated statistics, but
at the most not more than fifteen per cent
of all locomotives in this country are so
equipped.

JM. C, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. — You
• mention that you are to be promoted
on your own road to the position of con-
ductor, therefore the book of rules which
you now hold is sufficient for all necessary
instruction regafding your future routine
duties. The book of rules issued by some
roads embodies much detail on the subject
of train orders, and if this is the case in
your instance, a study of this would be of
more benefit probably than what might be
gained from the published matter on the
subject, as your book represents the local
conditions under which your future work
will be done. You can, however, secure
any book printed on the handling of trains,
under the standard code, by addressing
Railway and Locomotive Engineering, New
York City, New York.

GS, McGill, Nevada.— Mr. H. S. Twi-
• ning is district Pullman Company
superintendent in Salt Lake City, Utah.

\? T., Hastings, Nebraska. — No doubt, if
A • your patent proves appealing, some
such arrangement as you mention might be
made with a patent attorney. For obvious
reasons we cannot give the addresses of
such firms in this department. Refer to the
advertising pages of the railroad technical
journals for the list.

IF you have a steam-gage under test
on a Crosby testing machine, and the
gage being tested shows two pounds
out at 75 pounds, and correct at the allowed
pressure, 160 pounds, would you certify
to its being correct?

C. T. R., Richmond, Va.

It is close enough to be certified to, espe-
cially as the required boiler-pressure indica-
tion is correct. It is best when using Cros-
by gage-tester to add the weights, one by
one, and make a record of increasing pres-
sure to the boiler-pressure indication, and
then make a record of decreasing pressure

BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN.

429

from 160 pounds, in this case, to the zero
mark. It will generally "be found that when
the gage you are testing is correct at zero,
and also at the boiler-pressure indication,
that it will vary slightly half-way between
these extreme points.

GE. T., Norfolk, Virginia. — A fireman
• of two or more years' experience
should stand a good chance for employment
under ordinary business conditions. The de-
sire on the part of railroads is to give
preference to experienced men, because all
of them have had more or less trouble in
breaking in green hands, the large per cent
of whom will never learn. We would in-
fer from the outlook that your section of
the country should be as good as any for
this employment.

KC, Chicago, Illinois. — Apply to any di-
• vision engineer.

(2) Too many division points in Idaho to
quote the entire list here. The master me-
chanic or road foreman of engines is the
proper official to whom application should
be made.

(3) New firemen have their first actual
experience in freight service.

AG. C, Missouri Valley, Iowa. — Better
• * submit your proposition to the West-
inghouse Air-Brake Company, Wilmerding,
Pennsylvania, and they will advise you if
the scheme which you outline has any real
merit.

HOW many miles from Mobile to Jack-
son, Tennessee?

(2) Does the Mobile and Ohio
use the 4-6-0 type engine all the way from
Mobile to Jackson, Tennessee, as regular
freight engines? If not, what style is used?
(3) How much can be 'made firing on
that line ?

M. C. H., High Point, Texas.

(1) Three hundred and sixty-two miles.

(2) All regular freight-engines between
points mentioned, 4-6-0 type.

(3) Rates of pay for firemen in^through
freight service, 2.52 cents per mile; pas-
senger service, 2.08 cents per mile.

Enginemen do not run through from Mo-,
bile to Jackson, and average per month
for extra men cannot be computed between
these points. *

HG., Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, and G
• H., Victoria, British Columbia. —
Railroad police and detectives form an im-

portant adjunct to any railroad, and this de-
partment is, as a rule, well organized and
thoroughly efficient, in the instance of the
large lines, at least. The duties of the indi-
vidual members, that is, the local detectives
about yards and stations, are such as may
be assigned them by their superior officers ;
but there -is, of course, much daily routine
work.

All large freight-yards must be policed
to safeguard the contents of cars, and to
prevent unauthorized persons from riding
on passenger and freight-trains. Some of
the work done by the men would rank with
that of many special investigators of inter-
national reputation. Full details regarding
form in which application should be made
to enter this branch of the service can be
secured from the general manager of any
railroad.

-«*

AS., South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. —
• There is no reason why a letter prop-
erly addressed should have failed to reach
the official to whom we referred you. Per-
haps a communication addressed to Mr. W.
E. Boland, assistant signal engineer, South-
ern Pacific Company, would be more pro-
ductive of results. Mr. J. A. Peabody, Chi-
cago, Illinois, looks after these matters on
the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad.

GV, Mayview, Washington. — Address
• Mr. S. H. Draper, general air-brake
inspector, Northern Pacific Railroad, St.
Paul, Minnesota.

EL. L., Cincinnati, Ohio. — You will find
• many isolated telegraph stations such
as you describe on the Southern Pacific and
Santa Fe roads ; in fact, on practically all
of the far Western lines. As a rule, the
prospects for employment on any of them
are quite bright, and your case should be
particularly to the point, your wife being
also an operator. Apply to the superintend-
ent of telegraph of either road mentioned :
C. H. Gaunt, on Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe, at Topeka, Kansas, and S. F.
Rawlins, on Southern Pacific, at San Fran-
cisco, California.

AB. D., Warren, Ohio.— Apply to J. B.
• Fisher, superintendent of telegraph,
Pennsylvania Railroad, Broad Street Sta-
tion, Philadelphia, for information desired.
3

HOW is the tractive force of a loco-
motive obtained? For instance, take
an ordinary 4-4-0 type like engine
201 r, N. Y„ N. H. and H. R. R. Her cylin-
ders are 15 x 24; diameter of drivers 69

430

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

inches, steam pressure 160 pounds; weight
on drivers 50,000 pounds. In the classifi-
cation issued by the motive power depart-
ment of that road her tractive force is 12,110.
A. A. B., North Abington, Mass.

It is often desired to ascertain the amount
of tractive power developed by a certain
size of cylinder with a given diameter of
driving-wheel, irrespective of boiler pressure.
This is found by the following formula: -

C2xS

_ =Tractive power per pound mean

D effective pressure.

In which C equals diameter of cylinder in
inches, squared ; S equals length of stroke in
inches; and D equals diameter of driving-
wheel in inches. We will now apply this
to the dimensions quoted in relation to the
engine in your question, and find values of
formula to be :

(i6)2x24

= 89.04

69
That is, the tractive effort is 89.04 for each
pound mean effective pressure. Your ques-
tion gives boiler pressure at 160 pounds.
The mean effective pressure is generally
computed at 85 per cent of boiler pressure,
which, calculated in this instance, yields 136
pounds. Therefore, 89.04 x 136 = 12109.44,
or practically 121 10 is the total tractive ef-
fort. You will thus note the close approxi-
mation between the results derived from the
formula and the figures quoted by the New
Haven road. To simplify the above for-
mula to work out the total tractive effort
instead of tractive effort per pound mean
effective pressure :

C2 x S x P

= T

D
In which C equals diameter of cylinder in
inches; S equals stroke of piston in inches;
P equals main effective pressure in pounds
(85 per cent boiler pressure) ; D equals
diameter of. driving-wheels in inches; T
equals tractive power in pounds.
Therefore, we obtain the following:

256 x 24 x 136
. =12109 tractive power.

69
The draw-bar pull, which is frequently
quoted in connection with locomotive effi-
ciency rating is the tractive power, minus
the power required to move the locomotive
itself.

GO. D., Jr., Brooklyn, New York.— The
• list of roads using red, or Eastlake
color, for passenger equipment is too long
for reproduction here. Sufficient to say, it

is represented in at least seventy-five per
cent of all passenger-cars.

(2) The Delaware, Lackawanna and
Western Railroad is not electrified, and this
project has not even been under considera-
tion, so far as we can learn.

(3) Saginaw and Flint Railway.

(4) The Chicago address of the Pullman
Company is the Pullman Building; the New
York address is 15 Broad Street.

BP. S., Hancock, Missouri. — For the dif-
• ferent steam-whistle signals, see reply
to " E. McC." in November number.

WHAT are the different kinds of ccal
which can be burned in locomotive
or other boilers?
(2) Can you give chemical composition
of petroleum, and what is the objection to
its use in locomotives?

M. A. Y., Roxbury, Massachusetts.

(1) They may be separated for the sake
of this reply into five varieties: (a) anthra-
cite, which is practically pure carbon. It
requires a strong draft, high temperature,
and much attention. In communities where
smoke is seriously objected to, it has con-
siderable value, as it burns without flames or
smoke ; (b) cannel coal, containing 70 to
85 per cent carbon; (c) dry bituminous
coal, containing 55 to 75 per cent carbon;
(d) bituminous coking coal, containing 50
to 60 per cent carbon. All bituminous coals
burn freely. They have a higher heating
value than anthracite. Coke made from bi-
tuminous coal, after the volatile components
of the latter have been removed, has been
used for locomotive fuel with varying suc-
cess. One particular reason for this use is
that it is smokeless; (e) lignite, which is
incomplete coal, containing 55 to 75 per
cent carbon. It is not a very valuable fuel.

(2) The chemical composition of petro-
leum is approximately as follows :

Carbon -. 847

Hydrogen , .131

Oxygen .022

The objections to the use of this fuel are:
loss by evaporation, danger of explosion,
and high price.

HC. R., Trenton, New Jersey. — Would
• say that the classification or desig-
nation of the transformer depends entirely
upon the number of turns in coil as placed
around pole " C," in the sketch you sent.
If the coil on pole " C" has more than sixty
turns the sketch would indicate a " step-up

BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN.

431

transformer"; if less than sixty turns, vice
versa. The coils placed on pole " C " have
no effect on current in pole " A," provided
the winding-in coil on pole " C " is open
circuited.

The voltage of the transformer is propor-
tional to the number of turns in each coil;
that is, if you had forty turns on secondary
coil, the voltage would be two-thirds that
of the impressed voltage in the case. The
matter of ten coils placed over pole " C "
should be considered as separate coils, as
they will not have any effect on current in
pole "A," unless, as mentioned above, the
ends of the winding are connected.

IF a passenger train running at very high
speed should require to be stopped at
the —earliest possible moment what
would be the procedure of the engineer?

(2) What is " the type regarded as the
most modern and up-to-date passenger, and
where can a chart of it be secured?

E. W. B., Murray, Ohio.

(1) Put the handle of the engineer's
valve in emergency position by a clean, deci-
sive movement and let it stay there, start
the sand running, and close the throttle.

(2) The Pacific, or 4-6-2 type. Such a
chart as you mention can be secured from
Railway and Locomotive Engineering Pub-
lishing Company, New York, New York.

JH. M., Mingo Junction, Ohio.— The
• Conway yard on Pennsylvania Rail-
road, just west of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
is the largest of which we have any record.
The question of the largest roundhouse has
been discussed in both this and the editorial
department, and several instances cited of
those claimed to contain the largest number
of tracks or pits. We will include a list
in this department in the next number.

EP. M., Cedar/ Wisconsin. — Write Rail-
• way and Locomotive Engineering,
New York, N. Y., telling them .the book
you want, and they will secure it for you.

BL. S., Fostoria, Ohio. — Application for
• the position of Pullman conductor
should be made to the nearest district super-
intendent, which in your case would be
J. E. Hill, Cleveland, Ohio, who will for-
ward all necessary information.

JK., Brooklyn, New York. — We would be
• pleased to be of assistance to you in
the matter which you mention, but, as we
have before mentioned, when we do hear

of positions open, the information is of no
value to our readers, in view of the length
of time required for it to reach them.

GW. C, Baltimore, Maryland.— Which
• is the larger locomotive, No. 4000
of the Southern Pacific or No. 21 17
of the Baltimore and Ohio? Please de-
scribe both locomotives, as I have a heavy
wager on this.

There is no comparison between the two
engines. They are of a different type, The
4000 of the -Southern Pacific is very much
larger in every way. It is, in reality, the
heaviest locomotive in the world, which you
will appreciate from its total weight of
425,900 pounds, although it is exceeded in
tractive effort by No. 2600, of the Erie. The
following table shows the comparative sizes
of the two engines :

COMPARISON BETWEEN SOUTHERN PACIFIC NO.
4000 AND BALTIMORE AND OHIO NO. 21 17.

Name of road

Sou. Pac.

B. &O.

[Excess

4000

2117

size of

Baldwin

Amer.

No.4000

1909

1906

indicated

Simple or compound , . .

Compound

Simple

by*]

94v640

35,020

*59,620

Total weight, lbs

425.900

229,000

*196,900

Weight on drivers, lbs. . . .

394,150

150,500

*243,660

Weight on trucks, lbs. . . .

14,500

40,500

26,000

Weight on trailer, lbs. . . .

17.250

38,500

21,250

Weight tender loaded, lbs.

170,100

147,C00

*23,100

Wheel base, driving . . .

39' 4"

13' 2"

*26' 2"

Wheel base, engine ....

56' 7"

34' 3^"

*22' 3?^*

Wheel base, engine and tender

83' 6"

66' 3M"

*17' 2%v

Diameter of drivers ....

57"

74"

17"

Cylinders, number ....

*2"

Cylinders, diameter ....

26" x 40"

22"

*4it

Cylinders, stroke ....

30"

28"

*2"

Valve gear, type ....

Wals.

Steph.

Steam pressure, lbs

200

225

Straight

Boiler, smallest diameter . .

84"

72"

*12"

Boiler, height center . , .

120"

112"

*8"

Heating surface, tubes, sq. ft. .

4,941

3,234.6

*1.707

Heating surface, fire-box, sq. ft.

232

179.4

*52.8

Heating surface, total, sq. ft. .

6,393

3,414

*2,979

Grate area, sq. ft

68.4

56.24

*12

126"

108/s"

*17%"

78%"

75K"

Oil

Bit. Coal

Total number fire tubes . .

1 401' *

276

*125

Diameter of tubes ....

&■

83*1

21'

20'

Tender coal capacity, tons

2,850 gals.oil

Tender water capacity, gals. .

9,000

7,000

*2,000

WHAT is the proper side of a fire tube
boiler on which to place a patch ?
I have read that it should be iuside,
as it has the weight and pressure against
it. The crack to be patched is three inches
long.

J. McM., Quebec, Canada.

It would be impracticable to place the
patch within the water legs of a locomotive

432

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

type boiler as ordinarily constructed. It
might be applied to the inner side of the
shell, on an occasion when a new fire-box
was put in, but it is extremely doubtful if a
good job would result.

You would of a necessity make a calking
edge, and as all patches, due to peculiari-
ties in expansion, etc., are liable to leakage,
this calking edge must be accessible to re-
pairs. So far as applying the patch to the
inner side of a fire-box sheet, it would be
very difficult, as it could not be introduced
within the boiler leg.

A short crack which you mentioned might
be satisfactorily repaired by " sewing" it to-
gether with plugs. The extreme end plugs
should drill the crack out, and all plugs
introduced between them should be thread-
ed or knit into one another.

One and one-half or two threads should
be left above the sheet, and then all of the
plugs' should be fullered or flattened down
and edges trimmed and calked. In the long
run, it is always best to use a patch.

AG. R., Monclova, Mexico. — The moment
• the light engine is specified as the
first section, or any other section of a pas-
senger or first-class train it becomes en-
dowed with all the rights of that train. In
this case the assignment of light engine
" 109 " as first section, abrogates the special
order defining the speed which these engines
must rim when operating as extras or in
freight service; that is, so far as this par-
ticular engine " 109 " is concerned.

<#.

RS. L., Whitman, Massachusetts. — See
• Lantern department in The Railroad
Man's Magazine for May, 1909, answer to
" P. M.," Havre, Montana, for method of
setting valves on locomotives equipped with
Walschaert gear. In regard to setting the
ordinary slide valve, see answer to "L. T. K."

in the March, 1909, number. Both of the
above answers referred to are quite lengthy,
and space limits forbid reproduction here.

It is pretty hard to say just where the
weakest point is in 'a locomotive-boiler. It
is all designed with five as a factor of
safety; that is, to withstand strains five
times greater than the alloted steam pres-
sure. There was one purposely bursted by
hydraulic pressure on one occasion for a
test, and it is said to have given way on one
of the cylindrical courses.

This may give you some information. If
you merely . desire an opinion, we would
think that it would let go first along the
mud-ring ; but the probability of any such
thing occurring in any portion of the boiler
is extremely remote with good inspection
and proper care.

GC. B., Abilene, Texas. — The sketch of
• the switch you have patented has
been examined with interest, and we have
consulted at least one railroad supervisor in
regard to it. He has no doubt that the
switch will operate as you claim, but thinks
that the high rails which will be necessary
will prove an obstacle to low pilots. These
latter are supposed to clear the rails four
inches at the heel and five inches at the
point but they don't always do so.

You need have no concern in regard to
the brake-beams, as they will clear. Our
own opinion is that it will likely prove a
rough-riding switch at high speed, if indeed
high speed will be practicable over it.

Take the idea to the chief engineer of any
railroad ; or, failing to reach him, to any
division engineer, and try to secure an ex-
pression of approval. Thereupon you should
endeavor to interest some manufacturer of
patent switches and crossings, whose ad-
vertisements you will find in the Railroad
Age-Gazette and other railway technical
publications.

A TROLLEY MASCOT.

" T>RINCE" is said to be the only trolley
A dog in the United States. The
emergency men of the Richmond Light and
Railroad Company believe that Prince is the
smartest trolley- dog in existence.
, Prince was picked up by Calvin O'Brien,
stationed at the company's barns at Tomp-
kinsville, Staten Island.

The horses of the outfit and Prince seem
to feel that they are fellow workers. Ac-
cording to the doubtless veracious news-
paper report from which we take this story:
"The two horses used in the emergency

wagon of the trolley company are great
friends of Prince. If O'Brien asks Prince
where is Paddy and Kitty, he will immedi-
ately jump off the car, run over to the stable
door, stand upon his hind legs and remain
in that position until the door is opened,
when he will run into the stable, go over to
Paddy, who will lower his head so that
Prince can touch his snout with his paws,
as if to say, 'All right. I am with you.'

" Kitty will do likewise. Kitty is a bay
mare that was once the property of Thomas
F. Ryan, the financier."

JIMMY COLLINS AND THE 442.

BY A. E. GOOLEY.

When He and the Old Switcher Did One
Noble Stunt He Cut Out the Booze.

O one knew just how

Jimmy Collins got into

Rosedale. Ask him, and

he'll tell you he didn't

know himself. Anyway,

Big Bill Bennett found

him asleep one night, after No. 4 had

pulled out, outside the baggage - room

door and brought him up to me.

It was a bitter cold night, the mer-
cury was crowding the bottom of the
glass.

It had been snowing for two days, the
yard was full of freights, and every pas-
senger that went out had a plow and
Hanger-car on ahead. We asked the
crew of No. 4, when they came back the
next day, if any of them had seen Col-
lins ; but, as no one seemed to recall see-
ing him on the train, we concluded he
had come in " blind baggage " from
somewhere east.

I was trainmaster at Rosedale then ;
and, on account of the weather and to
help the despatcher out, I was staying
down at the station that night. One
despatcher was laid up with the fever,

Bennett brought Collins into my of-
fice. I had been sitting in at the key
from six until ten, which left the other
two boys with a ten-hour trick instead of
eight. Davis had just relieved me, and
as I went into my office Bennett came in
with Collins.

We thawed him out after a time. It's
pretty hard to thaw out a man full of
whisky that had started to freeze, but
we did it — and found he was only a boy
instead of a man.

He slept on the lounge in my office
that night, and the next morning hit me
for a job and the price of a breakfast
at the same time.

" There's no room on this division for
a man who drinks," I told him, " We've
too many of that kind here now."

He tried all the heads, but no one
would take him on after they heard the
story. No one really wants a man who
drinks, and this is particularly true on
the railroad. That didn't seem to feeze'
Collins any, for every one who turned
him down for a job lent him enough
money for a feed and a bed, and that

and when a man was sick then we had" kept him going until EdsStimson finally
to double up and get along the best way gave him a job handling freight
we could.

It was just after the strike, and we
were short of men. Some of the strikers
we had taken back ; others we had not,
it seemed a good opportunity to get rid
of some of the deadwood. Things had
not been running as they should, for you
can't have a strike and with a lot of new
men keep the same schedules as with
the old ones. The repair - shops were
crowded to the roof, with only half a
working force inside, and most of them
new men at that.
4 R R

After a time Charlie Root, the yard-
master, gave him a job in the yard, and
from there he got into the roundhouse,
wiping. He was a railroad man, all
right ; we could all see that at a glance,
and every time he saw Dave Sanders, the
division master mechanic, he'd ask him
for a place somewhere on the motive-
power. His talk was all to the point — ■
railroad a yard wide and a foot thick.

" Why, I was fed on railroad when I
was a kid," he'd say. " I rode in an
engine-cab instead of a go-cart, and the

433

434

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

only plaything I ever had was. a railroad
spike."

After Sanders had turned him down
several times, he'd get a little mad and
say to him :

"All right, Sanders; I was running
an engine when you was in the ditch
with a pick and shovel, and when I get
up I'll put you back where you belong."

"That may be, Collins; but I've got
the engine now, and you're in the ditch,"
Sanders would answer, " and if I was
fool enough to give you an engine, I'd
belong in the ditch."

He stayed wiping for six months ; but,
on promising Sanders to cut out the
drink, he put him on firing for Adam
Crosby. But what's the promise of a
man that drinks? He wants to get away
from it, all right ; but he can't do it nine
times out of ten. That was the way
with Collins — he wanted to quit, but
couldn't. First he used to "drink on the
sly, carried a bottle' around on his hip ;
then, when he found he wasn't pulling
the wool over any one's eyes, he got it
openly over the bar at Bat_ Murphy's.

But, drunk or sober, he got down and
fired his engine all day, and Crosby used
to say he'd rather have Collins fire for
him when he was dead drunk than any
other man when he was dead sober —
and Crosby was the hardest engineer to
fire for on the division.

Collins lived with Mrs. McMullen
and her daughter, Katie. When Mc-
Mullen went down in the Cedar Flats
wreck, Mrs. McMullen took a little
house near the station with the money she
got from his benefit and rented rooms
and gave meals to a few single railroad
men.

Rosedale - wasn't exactly what you
might call a growing town ; it grew in
one way — small ; but that isn't the kind
of growing that makes a good lively
town or induces the real-estate agents to
invest in trotting horses.

When the mines were opened at Pay-
down most of the floating population
went there ; only a few railroad men aftd
storekeepers that had business there re-
mained,.

In the first place, Rosedale had only
one excuse, or perhaps two, for being on
the map at all. One was the railroad,
and the other the river. It seemed a

logical place for a division. When the
road went through, the town started off
with a boom ; but the boom soon gave
out, and left Rosedale high and dry on
the desert. The people couldn't stand
the sage-brush and alkali. Most of them
came from where there was green grass
and trees, and when they saved enough
money they went home.

The road was run up the canon of
Eagle River; and at the foot of the
mountains, where it turns abruptly to-
ward the south, it is joined by Porcupine
Creek. The creek flows along quietly in
its narrow bed for the greater part of
the year ; but when the soft Chinook
blows through the mountain passes, the
spring sun mounts higher in the sky, and
the warm rains come ; then the snow
melts like a stick of candy in a boy's
mouth, and the Porcupine becomes a
swollen, yellow torrent, overflowing the
flats and lapping the very doors of Rose-
dale itself.

Eagle River, 'during countless ages,
has chiseled for itself out of the soft
limestone rock a deep canon, into which
the Porcupine drops with a graceful fall
of sixty feet. Down the almost perpen-
dicular walls the enterprising youth of
Rosedale, during its leisure hours, has
cut a series of steps leading to a bench
carved out- of the solid rock.

Barring Katie McMullen, it is the one
beautiful thing in Rosedale.

The first bridge over the Porcupine
lasted six months, for it was completed
late in the year. When the first spring
thaws came and the snow-bound country
broke loose, almost in a single night, the
rushing water, carrying trees and boul-
ders embedded in blocks of ice weighing
a ton or more, came tearing down the
creek with an irresistible force, and the
bridge- went out like a house of cards.

A heavy freight special, coming east
that night, rounded the curve three hun-
dred yards above, and thundered down
the grade for a plunge into the icy waters
of the creek — and took it, too.

The engineer saw the broken track,
threw the air, whistled the alarm, and
shouted for the fireman to jump." With
the brake-shoes spitting fire from every
wheel, the engine and heavy train
plunged into the muddy, boiling water
below.

JIMMY COLLINS AND THE 442.

435

When the water went down, a week
after, we found the engineer with his
hand on the throttle, his head on his
arm — asleep.

But this is all changed. The Porcu-
pine has as good a bridge over it as any
on the division. When the water flows
back up the mountain then this bridge
will go out — perhaps.

collectively and individually, had
themselves at her feet.

Katie had her own ideas of a wedding,
however, and one by one they had given
her up to find consolation, or otherwise,
in some lesser light of Rosedale. It
was different with Collins, though; he
never gave anything up. You may call
it nerve or just plain, natural, dogged

BIG BILL BENNETT FOUND HIM ASLEEP ONE NIGHT, AFTER NO. 4 HAD PULLED OUT.

Collins, like many another good man,
was his own worst enemy. His heart
was in the right place, and as big as his
whole body ; and there wasn't a man on
the division whom he couldn't call his
friend. Drunk or sober, he was always
good - natured ; and if a yardman got
pinched or a car-tink was laid .up with
rheumatism, he was right there with the
goods.

Katie McMullen was nineteen years
old then, with hair as black as an Egyp-
tian night, a complexion as brown as a
russet apple, eyes as limpid as a moun-
tain lake, and with a figure like a Greek
goddess.

Those eyes had been the undoing of
almost every boy on the division who,

persistence, or anything you like, but
I've noticed that, the man that gets the
thing he wants is the man that camps on
its trail.

Collins certainly camped on her trail ;
and when he'd get his check and pay his
board for two weeks back and two weeks
ahead, as he always did, it generally car-,
ried with it a proposal to Katie. She
couldn't see it in that light, however, and
Collins would have to seek consolation
in Bat Murphy's fire-water.

In spite of his habits, Collins won
Sanders over ; and he gave him the
switcher when Dan Payton had to give
her up on account of blindness. She
was an old tub — no one would deny that.
Her many trips to the repair-shop had

436

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

left scarcely an original piece of iron in
her frame, and almost always at critical
places she would be sure to break some-
thing.

She steamed badly at all times, re-
fused to work at all on some occasions,
and it would break the back of any ordi-
nary fireman to keep the steam- dial at a
hundred and seventy.

Some engineers couldn't do anything
with her at all ; but Collins, from the
first day he climbed into her cab, had
an influence over her such as some people
have over an animal. She did his bid-
ding with hardly a groan of protest.

Collins was by no means a careful
man at the throttle; but, somehow, he
managed to escape any serious accident.
A green lamp meant to him only that he
should keep a sharp lookout; and with
a clear track in sight he would run past
a dozen horizontal semaphores, only to
bring his engine up with a jerk right at
the point of danger. Sanders warned
him many a time about this.

" You'll do that once too often, Col-
lins ; and as sure as you break anything
in this yard, back you'll go to wiping."

" You're always knocking, Sanders.
Wait until I smash something, and then
you can make all the row you want to."

Literally, every wind that blew that
/spring brought us some trouble. North,
the narrow-gage, tapping the mines up
Pisgah Mountain, was buried under tons
of dirt and shale by a landslide. On
the Caxton spur, east, there was a cloud-
burst above Buffalo Flats, and a quarter
of a mile of track and fill went to the
boneyard.

South, the trestle tover Dry Sand
Creek burned, tying up the main line for
two days; and west, a fast freight and
the Pacific Limited, our swell train,
came together head on in Pulpit Canon
west of Paydown, sending two of our
best engines to the scrap-heap.'

To make it worse, some changes were
made at headquarters at this time. A
new general manager was installed, and
economy was preached from the division
superintendent down to the car - tinks.
Economy, with the motive-power fit for
the hospital and the road-bed hardly fit
to run a trolley over, to say nothing
of the heavy through passengers and
freights.

Material for construction or repairs
was not to be had, and a requisition for
a steel rail took weeks instead of days to
go through. Sam Higgins,' the road-
master, said you might as well ask for
a double track through Eagle Canon
as for an extra section-gang, and we
were using sweepers for firemen and
hoboes for switching-crews.

The new general manager was report-
ed to know his business down to the
ground; but to us -he was an unknown
quantity, both as to work and appear-
ance, for we had never seen him or heard
anything about him until he came on
our line.

" Some easy-chair railroad man from
a swell road in the East, where they have
four tracks, silver-plated telegraph-keys,
and the men have nothing to do, and
six men to help them do it. When he
sees this division he'll wish he had stayed
there," Charlie Root said._

Rumor of his coming was a daily oc-
currence at our division headquarters,
but he seemed to be cleaning up nearer
his end and did not get so far West.
If what we heard was true, I guess they
needed it there. Official heads had been
dropping in the basket nearer home, and
some of us trembled in our boots for our
jobs when he should see the condition
of the Red Rock division; but we did
the best we could under the circum-
stances.

We had put some " hunkies " grading
on the spur -out of Paydown, in place of
some Italians who had struck. . They
didn't have any real grievance; but a
boss they had, knowing we were hard
put and wanted to get the track laid,
thought it would be a good opportunity
to squeeze the company a little, so they
went out.

The company had built a shack for
the " dagoes " about two miles out of
Paydown; and, as they had it and
seemed disposed to keep it, we didn't
have a place to put the " hunkies," so
Ave would bring them down to Rosedale
at night and run them back in the morn-
ing.

The " dagoes " had made us a little,
trouble ; but nothing sefious, and we ex-
pected to get rid of them without any
disturbance.

Rosedale lies in a vallev, with the

JIMMY- COLLINS AND THE 442.

487

Wapiti Hills on the west and the Elk and Micky O'Keefe was put in to shovel

River range on the east. There is a the diamonds. He was a sweeper in the

grade down the Eagle River Canon of roundhouse, and as green a hoy as ever

something over a hundred and fifty feet came out of Ireland,

to the mile. From Rosedale the road He knew the difference between a

stretches away east for three miles on draw-bar and a steam-chest, and well —

almost a dead level ; then runs into the that was about all, He had fired on a

HE WANTED TO QUIT, BUT COULDN T.

foot-hills of the Elk River 'range with
the worst grade on the division, takes a
little dip into Willow Park, then runs
around the middle of Turtle. Mountain
on a track blasted out of the face of the
cliff.

MacArthur was marked up that night
to help a freight over the grade to Pay-
down and bring back the " hunkies."
His fireman had reported sick that day,

steam-roller in New York for six months
when he first came over here ; and one
day, when the engineer was absent for
a few moments, he backed the roller
over a fire-alarm post and made a good
attempt to climb into a millinery estab-
lishment by way of the plate-glass win-
dow. After that the contractor let him
go, and he came out West to learn the
railroad business.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

MacArthur coupled on an old smoker,
then used for a work-car, and helped
push the freight up the grade to Pay-
down. The striking " dagoes," thinking
they were getting the worst of it, had
been rowing and worrying the " hun-
kies " all day ; and, as they crowded into
the car, glad to get away from them, the
" dagoes " started to rush them.

MacArthur had stepped into the sta-
tion for a few moments to see if there
were any orders ; and O'Keefe, thinking
he would shake the " dagoes " off by
pulling down the track a piece and then
come back for MacArthur, opened the
throttle a notch or so and latched it up.

As he did so, the leader of the
"dagoes" jumped into the -cab and

grabbed him. They clinched, and both
rolled out of the cab onto the ground.
Before O'Keefe could disentangle him-
self and get on his feet the. engine was
on the grade, gaining speed with every
revolution of the drivers. Some of the
" hunkies," seeing what had happened,
jumped, but the majority stayed in the
car. There were about seventy-five left.
It was. about seven o'clock and just
getting dark. Root and I were in the
division superintendent's office, listening
to Taylor,- an old miner, tell of a winter
he spent in the Canadian Rockies, when
a messenger entered and -handed Whitney
two tissues. With an exclamation, he
jumped to his feet, thrust the despatches
into my hand, and ran from the room. I

ALWAYS CARRIED WITH IT A PROPOSAL TO KATIE.

JIMMY COLLINS AND THE 442.

439

looked at them.
read :

One

YOU won't n

AND

General Manager
Hanchett and party, .
Special No. 18, leav-
ing Caxton at 7.02
rights to Rosedale.

The other was from
the operator at Paydown,
and said :

MacArthur's en-

■ gine, with car of

" h u n k i e s " running

wild ; no one in cab.

Out at 6.58.

I looked at my watch.
It was just 7.05. Toss-
ing the tissues at Root, I
followed Whitney into
the despatcher's office.

Roberts had the night
trick then, from six until
two, and he was trying
to get Birchwood as I
came in. That was the ■
only station between Caxton and Rose-
dale where there was a night operator,
and he usually left the office at seven
o'clock for his supper. Whitney was
standing over the ' sounder, his face
drawn and pale as it clicked, BD, BD,
BD, followed by the despatcher's call —
three long dashes.

( Before we in the office had hardly
realized the situation, it was known out-
side that a wild engine was against a
special, and the boys began to file into
the office. The clock ticking off the
seconds seemed like hours while we wait-
ed breathlessly for an answer from
Birchwood.

None came ; and Roberts, with beads
of perspiration standing out on his face
like drops of dew on the grass, his hands
shaking as with the palsy, looked from
one to the other with a silent appeal in
his eyes.

At this moment, Collins, fairly drunk,
pushed through the crowd to the little
group around the despatcher's desk, and
in a loud voice asked: "What's all this
excitement about? "

Some one caught him by the coat-tails
and pulled him over to one side, tilling
him that MacArthur's engine was run-

EED THE WRECKER
CREW."

ning wild against the
general manager's spe-
cial.

" Where's MacAr-
thur's engine now?" he
asked, coining over to-
ward the desk again.

"It was out of Pay-
down at 6.58," Root an-
swered, looking at his
watch, " and, if she
stays on the rails, she
will be here in ten min-
utes."

" Plug the round-
house and order an en-
gine ! Call Anderson
and have him get his
crew ready ! ■ Send some
one for all the doctors
that can be found, and
then try Birchwood
again ! " Whitney said
rapidly.

Roberts called the
roundhouse captain and
ordered an engine. A
crew-caller was sent after Anderson, and
then Roberts tried Birchwood again.
" BD, BD, BD," clicked the instrument. .
" II, BD," instantly came the answer,
and we thought for a moment we had
them cornered.

"Flag Special No. 18, quick!" Rob-
erts fired at him with lightning speed.

Every man in the room, whether he
could read the dots and dashes or not,
leaned forward to get the answer. It
came slowly, terribly slow ; and when
Roberts did get it, he uttered a groan,
for the message he received was only :

Send slower; could not get mes-
sage.

"Flag Special No. 18, quick!" he
sent slower, and then leaned forward, as
if to help him get the red light out.
After an instant's pause, Birchwood sent
again.

" Special No. 18 — " Then the wires
went wrong, the relay spluttered in an
undistinguishable mass of dots and
dashes ; and we, like the good railroad
men we were, drew a full breath and
cursed the wires at the same time.

Whether he had held Special No. 18,

440

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

or whether she had gone by, left us in a
terrible state of doubt.

" Here it is," Roberts said, as the
wires came right again :

Special No. 18 went through here at
7-03-

Some one suggested throwing a switch
and sending the wild engine into a string

As he passed through he turned his head
and called over his shoulder :

" You won't need the wrecker! "
No one paid any attention to him ;
but I watched him as he walked un-
steadily over to the truck, take two cans
of machine-oil consigned to the mines at
Paydown, and swing onto his engine.
Collins tried the air, opened the cyl-

11/ 'flfyji ih'lM/fW. i.fdh

of flats that was on the siding. But to
send a wild engine into a string of flats
was one thing, and to send the same —
plus a car-load of human beings into
the empties — was -quite another.

Collins's engine stood on the siding
just opposite the station, with her nose
to the east ; the fireman was dozing on
the box, and on the platform stood a
truck-load of express matter.

Collins pushed through the crowd
again and hurried over toward the door.

I FIND YOU HAVEN'T IMPROVED ANY
OUT HERE."

inder-cocks, pulled open the throttle with
a jerk, and old 442, coughing and wheez-
ing, pounded across the switch onto the
main line.

Whitney came to and saw what had
happened. He rushed out on the plat-
form, waving his arms and shouting like
a madman ; but he was too late. Collins
and his engine were several hundred
yards down the stretch, and, as we filed
out after Whitney, his tail-lights disap-
peared around the curve.

" Collins is either drunk or crazy —
most likely both," said Root.

The wind brought the faint roar of
Mac Arthur's engine coming down the
gorge, and we all turned our eyes to
catch the first glimpse of her. As she
poked her nose through the granite walls,
Whitney turned around. He made for

JIMMY COLLINS AND THE 442.

441

the switch target, a couple of hundred
feet up the platform. He. unlocked the
switch as the train came into full view.
Raising the bar, he hesitated ; then let it
drop, and came running toward us.

" I couldn't do it," he said. " They
will have to take their chances on the
grade."

With a rush of wind and whirling
alkali-dust, the engine flew by us at a
mile-a-minute clip and disappeared down
the track after Collins.

The engine, with the derrick and
wrecking-car, puffed up to the platform
on a side-track, and the men began to
pile in the tools. Whitney waited ten
minutes, and was just swinging on, ready
to give the signal to pull out, when we
heard a long, loud whistle from the east.

" That's 442 ! I'll bet my life on it ! "
Whitney said, swinging down and giving
orders for the main-line switch to be re-
set. The whistle sounded again, a head-
light -appeared around the curve ; and
Collins, his head out of the cab-window,
the whistle tooting, pushing MacAr-
thur's engine and the car of " hunkies,"
pulled into the station.

" Give me the roundhouse track ! " he
shouted as he sped by. ^

Whitney gave the orders for the switch,
and just then another whistle sounded
from the east. In two minutes more,
Special No. 18 pulled in.

As the engineer swung down from his
cab, he said to me :

" There's something wrong with the
track just this side of Summit Cut. I put
on the air there for the grade, and we
slid along for a hundred yards or more."

Two hours earlier every railroad man
in Rosedale would have wanted to see
the general manager ; but two hours had
passed, and every man wanted to see
Jimmy Collins — but he had disap-
peared. His fireman, Patsy Connors,
was coming down from the roundhouse,
though, surrounded by an admiring
group of- yardmen, wipers, and brake-
men. As I joined them, Connors was
saying :

" When Collins came aboard I
thought he had some orders. I didn't
know nothing about the wild engine.
He pulled like mad up to the twelve-
mile post. I never thought 442 would
stand the pace.

" Right on the worst of the Elk River
grade he pulled up, and said : ' Patsy,
the 1016 is running wild behind us with
the car-load of " hunkies." Take this
can of oil and some waste and soap the
track good for a hundred yards.'

" He took one rail and me the other ;
and if a fly had lit on that track for a
hundred yards, he'd have broken his
neck.

" Jimmy pulled up for a couple of
hundred yards and walked back to where
I was, to wait for the 1016. We didn't
have long to wait. She took the grade,
blowing and puffing like a porpoise, and
as soon as she hit that oil her drivers
spun like a dollar on Bat Murphy's bar.
Collins climbed aboard and choked the
steam, and hollered :

" ' She's ail right, Patsy ; but a little
short of water! Draw the fire, and I'll
come down for you! Hustle now, for
the general manager is coming west — ■
special — and ought to be along here ! ' "

Whitney was explaining it all to Gen-
eral Manager Hanchett in the office.

" Collins, did you say his name was?
Jimmy Collins — red-headed and has a
mole on his face? I think I know him.
Send for him to come up."

A caller found Jimmy in Murphy's.

" Well, Collins," said Hanchett, " I
guess you remember me? This is the
second time you have saved me from a
smash - up. You remember the other
time back on the C. and R.? I had to
discharge you afterward for drinking ;
and I find you haven't improved any out
here, so I'll have to do it again. You
can get your time right now."

Collins never said a word, and started
for the door.

"Just a moment, Collins," Hanchett
said, holding out his hand. " I told you
we couldn't have a man on this line that
drinks, and I meant it. But we can't
afford to lose a man like you, either.
You come around in the morning, and
Mr. Whitney will give you an engine ;
of course, you will have to tell him you
are a teetotaler. No pledge or anything
like that, just your word."

Collins was too much astonished to
thank him. He backed out of the room,
bowing and twirling his cap in his hands.

Three months after Jimmy married
Katie McMullen. And he kept his word.

Fighting the Ticket-Scalpers.

BY H. A. KOACH,

Assistant Chairman, Railway Ticket Protective Bureau.

IT is an axiom in law and philosophy that a matter is never settled until
it is settled right. The ticket-scalpers won many temporary victories,
and their dealings in corruption of employees and legislative fights were
not always unsuccessful, but the end was certain. The incorruptible court
that represents the last word of the nation could not be hoodwinked into
perpetuating a " business " whose main asset was brazen dishonesty, and
the only thing left for wonder is the audacity which would make the United
States Supreme Court a court of appeal to protect unscrupulousness.

The

Unrele'nting Industry of the Railway Ticket Protective Bureau
Brings About the Waterloo of a Parasitic and
Fraudulent Business.

THIRD ARTICLE.

HILE it took consid-
erable time to edu-
cate the public" con-
science to the cupidity
of the scalpers, the
constant and repeat-
ed arrests and the exposing of their _
methods resulted in a rapidly waning
public confidence. The public mind
was shocked when it began to realize
that transactions with ticket - scalpers
involved participation to a greater or
less degree in frauds upon railroads.

Reputable commercial houses were en-
lightened as to the unlawful practises of
the scalpers, and they no longer regarded
them as conducting honest business.
Numerous firms, who formerly sent their
traveling men to scalpers' offices to pur-
chase railway transportation, withdrew
their patronage.

The activities of the Ticket Protective
Bureau, were called upon in many in-
stances to aid in the detection of scalpers

Scries began in October Railroad Man

who were known to have corrupted clerks
and other employees of the membership
lines, this being one of the most serious
menaces to the railways.

Painstaking Corruption.

The scalper made himself known to
each individual with whom his customer
came in contact. The ticket-clerk, the
station and baggage agent, the gateman,
the conductor — even the trainmen and
newsboys — were well known to him. and
were often under personal obligations to
him for drinks, cigars, loans of -money.
and payments for services, past and
future.

Once he had gained a foothold, his
power over them was complete, and he
required of them the most devoted and
profitable servitude.

The fear of detection and denuncia-
tion kept them his tools and accomplices
in robbing the companies who paid their

' • Magazine. Single copies, 10 ctnti.

442

FIGHTING THE TICKET - SCALPERS.

443

salaries. In this way the tickets which
he manipulated often safely passed the
hands of those who should have been
the first to detect the frauds.

Many promising careers of young
railroad employees were ruined by their
acquaintance with these scalpers. Only
recently a former railway employee was
convicted of the robbery of a number of
railroad stations. After his conviction
he admitted to the writer that the sug-
gestion to rob these stations first came
from a scalper, who promised him rich
rewards for the tickets secured in this
manner.

A Try-On That Missed.

Through the sources of information
possessed by the bureau, these stolen
tickets were recovered from the scalper
in question and returned to the railroad
from which they were stolen. The
young man who committed the robbery
was sentenced to an indeterminate sen-
tence of from ten to twenty years in the
penitentiary.

Not long ago a conductor with whom
I was riding told me of an experience
he had about two years ago, when one
of the scalpers called on him and offered
to pay him one dollar for each ticket he
would pass, without questioning the pas-
senger holding it, stating that he would
mark the ticket in such a way that the
conductor would know it came from his
office.

After listening quietly to the scheme,
the conductor asked the scalper which
window he would prefer to be thrown
from, and promptly reported the over-
tures made him to his superior officers.
It is to be regretted that many employees
did not have this sense of loyalty, but
listened to the siren song of " easy
money," only to be exposed by the very
men with whom they were in collusion
when it was to their advantage so to. do.

Giving the Countersigns.

That their patrons should carry proper
means of identification, in case they were
questioned by conductors, was an impor-
tant item with the scalpers, and they
went to considerable expense and trouble
in providing such identification. They

would send to each other through the
mails envelopes addressed lightly in lead-
pencil. This original address would be
erased and the name desired would be
substituted in ink.

The passenger, on being questioned by
the conductor, would pull out a number
of these envelopes purporting to contain
letters received by him from various
parts of the country as proof that he was
the party in question, or present fake
business - cards which had been printed
by the scalper. After they had passed
the scrutiny of the conductor, they would
be returned to the scalper, who would
send them out with the next passenger
in the same way.

It was generally believed by the rail-
roads that the introduction of what was
known as " safety paper " for their
tickets would solve the problem and pre-
vent alterations. While it is true that
this safety paper could not be purchased
excepting at printing - offices authorized
by the railroad lines, it was not proof
against manipulation by acids or erasures,
and it could easily be recolored. Its only
safety was that it could not be purchased
and used by unauthorized persons, hence
no complete issue of forged tickets could
be placed on the market.

More recently, however, after consid-
erable time and expense had been in-
curred in experiments, a more reliable
safety paper has been manufactured and
adopted by the railway lines, which will
aid considerably in preventing alteration
of tickets by acids and erasures.

Cumbersome Preventives.

The introduction of what was known
as iron-clad signature form of tickets,
non - transferable, requiring the original
purchaser to re-sign the ticket in the
presence of the agent before the ticket
could be used for the return journey,
and the validation of these tickets by the
railroad agent, was also believed to be
a protective feature which would pre-
vent the tickets from falling into the
hands of the scalpers.

But these validating offices not only
incurred an expense to the railroads, but
considerable annoyance to the traveling
public, and did not prevent the scalpers
from dealing in this form of tickets.

444

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Facsimile validation stamps, agents' sig-
natures, punches, and all the parapher-
nalia used by the regular validating
agents, were promptly duplicated by the
scalpers ; and the validation of tickets,
when needed, was easily accomplished
with the aid of this forged outfit.

Even when the validation stamps were
changed daily by the railroads, pace was
kept by the scalper with forged stamps;
and it was customary for many of them
to employ an engraver, who went from
city to city, working solely for these
crooks, making such stamps.

Indefatigable Crooks.

With a few simple tools — such as car-
bon-paper for tracing, fine pens, and
regular printers' ink — the printing, and
even the validation stamps on a ticket,
could be perfectly imitated, and the al-
terations became an art in fine pen-and-
ink work and careful tracing on the part
of the scalpers.

It became an incessant, continual daily
battle between the railroad agents and
the scalpers ; and as quick as a new
safety device was found by the railroads,
a new method of overcoming it was in-
vented by the scalpers.

To guard against successful search of
their offices when raids were made, the
scalpers changed their methods, and
would not permit the alteration "of tickets
on their own premises, securing rooms in
near-by hotels where the work was done,
or having rooms directly over their
ticket-offices, to which entrance could be
gained only through a trap - door by
means of a ladder which could be
pulled up.

Tickets Fixed to Order.

In these rooms, which were connected
with the regular scalping-office by pri-
vate telephone, tickets were "fixed" to
order. When a customer wished to pur-
chase a ticket the proprietor or clerk
would step to his telephone and ostensi-
bly call up the railroad company over
whose road the passenger wished to
travel, requesting that a ticket, by that
line be sent to his office in time, say, for
the five o'clock train.

Of course, the unsuspecting passenger

believed that the transaction was straight
and would pay his money, being asked to
return for his ticket about' four-thirty.
In the meantime, the " fixer •" in the
upper' room would prepare a ticket which
would be delivered when called for, and
which, of course, was forged or altered
to suit the case.

Relied on Human Nature.

About all the dishonest scalper cared
for was to get the ticket fixed so it
would pass inspection at the gate and
permit the holder to board the train, not
caring if the deception was discovered
later and the^ passenger forced to pay
full fare or be put off the train. Usually
the man or woman who buys a ticket
from a scalper and gets into trouble
never comes back.

Country publications were religiously
canvassed for editorial transportation.
by means of circular letters, which is
better explained by the letter below, sent
out by a well-known Chicago scalper. I
cannot resist the temptation of giving
one vigorous reply received from the edi-
tor of a Texas publication.

Paying for Passes.

The scalper's communication read -as
follows, capitals and underscoring being
given exactly as in the original :

Dear Sir :

We take this liberty of addressing
you under the impression that you have
some Editorial Transportation to dis-
pose of.

We are credited with pa3ring the
highest market prices for this class of
stock, and having a large patronage of
first-class people accustomed to the
using of same, we are in a position to
handle any amount.

It might be well to add that our past
experience with Editorial Mileage and
T^rip Tickets has been a very successful
one. This is due to the fact that we are
very conservative and precautious in
disposing of same, as we never sell to
any but persons known to us.

Should you have any mileage. Trip
Tickets or Transportation of any na-
ture, or are in a position to procure
any, communicate with Us and We
Will offer you liberally and promptly.

FIGHTING THE TICKET - SCALPERS.

445

We have been established since
" 1872*" and all transactions of above
nature rest assured will be strictly con-
fidential. Yours respectfully.

The Editor's Wrath.

The reply to which I refer was as
follows :

Sirs :

I have your letter September 9.

You are evidently laboring under a
misapprehension.

This is a journal of opinion and a
legitimate publication. It does not fake
its business. Nor does it invite com-
munication with fakers.

I do not know why you should have
invited us to enter into partnership
with you in an effort to rob the railroad
companies, for if^we have ever missed
an opportunity to hold your business
up to the contempt of the honest public
we sincerely regret having done so.

I note with some regret your state-
ment that " your past experience with
editorial mileage and trip tickets has
been a very successful one." If this
statement be true I am forced to the
conclusion that there are as big
scoundrels in the newspaper business
as in yours.

In the hopes that the above state-
ments are sufficiently explicit to pene-
trate even your understanding, I am,
Very truly yours.

No Compromise.

After a careful study and investiga-
tion of the situation, the executive board
of the Railway Ticket Protective Bureau
came to the conclusion that there was
but one means of protection from the
impositions practised by the scalpers, and
that was their absolute elimination.

All other preventative measures were
found to be simply palliative. If these
scalpers who so adroitly pandered to the
public prejudice, who solicited and in-
cited betrayal of trust on the -part of
railway employees, and who seemed Nto
be, able to obtain the cooperation of a
considerable percentage of the traveling
public in the consummation of their im-
positions upon the railways, were driven
from their illegitimate vocation, there
would be no necessity for applying pro-
tective measures to the tickets.

The bureau was, therefore, obliged to
wage warfare against the entire business
of ticket-scalping, believing with the In-
terstate Commerce Commission, who in-
vestigated the business of ticket brokers
through a commission appointed in 1890,
and who stated their conclusions in their
annual report for that year, as'follows:

The Official Fraud.

In whatever aspect ticket - scalping
may be viewed, it is fraudulent alike in
its conception and in its operation.
. . . Fraud, therefore, Is the incen-
tive to the business. . . . One might
suppose that a practise of this character
could no more be defended than larceny
or forgery, but, strange as it may ap-
pear, it is defended before legislative
bodies and elsewhere, and the right to
carry it on unmolested is demanded.

The bureau has been effectual in se-
curing temporary restraining orders in
State and Federal courts, prohibiting
the scalpers from dealing in all non-
transferable tickets issued at less than
tariff rates on the occasion of some spe-
cial gathering, such as the meeting of
■the Grand Army of the Republic and
similar affairs.

These restraining orders were fol-
lowed by applications in both State and
Federal courts for permanent injunc-
tions, and whenever they have been
granted it has practically eliminated the
ticket-scalper, making his business so un-
profitable that he has been obliged to
abandon the field in a large measure.

Check Two.

Antiscalping laws were passed by a
number of States through the efforts of
the bureau, among them being the State
of Oregon. Notwithstanding this, a
number of scalpers endeavored to open
ticket-scalping offices in Portland during
the Lewis and Clarke Exposition in 1906.

The usual tactics were followed -by
the .scalpers when the bureau inaugurated
an aggressive campaign against them.
They questioned the constitutionality of
the antiscalping law. In his decision
Circuit Judge Frazer not only declared
that the antiscalping law represented a
due and proper exercise of the constitu-

446

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

tional authority of the State, but com-
mended the measure as justly and wisely
interdicting an illegitimate business.

The advertising columns of the daily
papers in many of the larger cities are
still used by them as a means of buying
stock and selling tickets. A few offices
are conducted openly in conjunction with
.other lines of business, the claim being
made by the scalper that he does not
handle any tickets which have been en-
joined by law, and nothing but such
full-fare tickets as the railroads com-
monly issue.

Mate in Two Moves.

- Applications for perpetual injunc-
tions which were broad enough to in-
clude all non-transferable tickets sold at
reduced rates, for all time, were hotly
contested by the scalpers. They admit-
ted that temporary injunctions covering
only tickets issued for a certain event
could be secured, and that they would
not contest such injunctions. This, how-
ever, would have necessitated the rail-
roads applying for injunctions daily.

Many of the district courts were sat-
isfied to grant these permanent injunc-
tions, but the entire question was finally
brought to a hearing before the United
States Supreme Court by the scalpers
themselves in a suit which was instituted
against one Bitterman and other scalpers
in New Orleans, enjoining them from
dealing in non-transferable reduced-fare
passenger tickets.

Checkmate.

The United States Circuit Court for
the eastern district of Louisiana decided
that, while the practise was wrong, legal
relief could be secured by a separate
action for every unlawful sale. The
case was taken to the United States Cir-
cuit Court of Appeals, its decision was
favorable to the railroads, the court
holding that the wrong-doing was of a
continuous nature and granting a per-
manent injunction. The scalpers then
appealed the case to the United States
Supreme Court, which was unanimous in
sustaining the decision of the United
States Circuit Court of Appeals.

(The

The New York Commercial comment-
ed on this decision in an editorial, from
which the following is quoted :

This ends one of the most vigor-
ously fought — one might almost say
viciously fought — legal battles itwthe
history of American transportation,
and it is a complete and crowning vic-
tory for the railroad companies. It is
one, also, in which the vast majority
of the public will share the satisfaction
of the railroads, albeit there is an al-
most universal^ disposition to buy any
commodity " in the cheapest market "
and the eyes of the average man or
woman are easily and conveniently
closed at the moment to any immorality
involved in accepting transportation
from a. carrier in return for a ticket
improperly acquired, still the average of
humankind has a keen perception of
exact justice, and will not defend or
commend this practice in the abstract;
and most travelers on American lines
will at least be heartily glad that the
standing temptation to them to " beat
the railroads " has at last been removed.
As " no man e'er felt the halter draw,
with good opinion of the law," it will
only be the scalpers themselves who
will protest that their rights have been
trodden upon, and that the " great and
powerful corporations " have beaten
them to a standstill.

This decision means, practically, that
a " scalped " railroad passenger ticket
is still the property of the original sel-
ler. The " scalper " consequently has
no rights, no standing, no business in
any court — state, territorial, or federal.
The whole army of them will have to
, go out of business; in fact, a business
that they have built up to enormous pro-
portions, its ramifications being through
every nook and corner of the country,
and its conduct entailing correspond-
ing enormous losses on the~ railroad
companies.

The decision frees the transportation
business of a huge parasite that has
been feeding on its vitals — its passenger
receipts — for years and years, and rids it
forever of an irritating and burden-
some class of litigation which consist-
ency, commercial judgment, and self-
respect, compelled the companies to
continually carry on. A business- that
finally " wins out " in a contest carried
on with such tremendous odds against
it is entitled to the sincere congratula-
tion of every other class and form pf
enterprise similarly subject to preda-
tory assault.

The courts, like the mills of the gods,
may grind slowly, but, in the end, the
grist is generally good, sound justice.
end.)

Spending a Railroad's Money.

BY T. S. DAYTON.

A DIGNIFIED, serious, hard-to-reach man — that, in brief, is a good
description of the treasurer of a great railroad system. His multi-
tudinous duties — collecting revenue from a hundred different points
to sending out $200,000 a day on the pay-car — give him a prestige enjoyed
by no other official.

Every young man entering the railroad business likes to get into the
treasurer's office. If he " makes good," the chances are that he will work
up the ladder and get " fixed " for life, for the positions are filled by sys-
tematic promotion. Three great elements are required, however — honesty,
ability, and — more honesty.

The Sources from Which a Railroad Corporation Receives Its Money.

How It Is Collected, Kept Safe, and Paid Out,

and the Men Responsible for It.

IGURES and facts shall be
the background of this
article. The treasuries
of the railroads of this
country received during
the year 1907, $2,731,-
000,000. When the year's books were
closed, there remained of this vast sum
$173,000,000 as a surplus to be divided
among shareholders or to be used for
future needs. The rest had been paid
out for wages, supplies, materials, inter-
est dividends, improvements, and a num-
ber of smaller items.

I mention the year 1907, because it is
the latest for available statistics.

The sources from which this money
comes, how it is taken care of before it
is paid out, and what becomes of it,
are among the most interesting but least
known about things — popularly speaking
— connected with the gigantic business
of railroading.

The traffic receipts of a railroad are
fully 95 per cent of its income. In
1907, the total traffic revenue was $2,-
602,757,503. Of this amount the trans-
portation of freight brought in more
than two-thirds, $1,825,061,858; and of
passengers, $574,718,578.

In addition to these, there were mis-
cellaneous traffic earnings from carrying

447

448

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

the mails, express matter, etc., amounting
to $202,977,067. The income of the
railroads from all other sources was but
$128,015,081— less than five per cent of
the total.

A railroad collects its pay from the
public, for services rendered, through its
station-agents. If it is for carrying
freight, the. receipt it gives is generally
in the form of an expense bill ; if it is
for the transportation of a passenger, it
is a ticket. These collections are almost
invariably made dn cash. When a firm
or individual is in receipt of consider-
able quantities of freight at regular in-
tervals, an agent may be authorized to
accept the consignee's checks, and to
balance accounts weekly or monthly.

At a certain time each day the agent
closes his books and "makes up" his
remittance. He gathers all the cash and
checks that he has received since the pre-
vious day, retaining only the 'amount of
currency he is authorized to keep on
hand for the transaction of business.
On his- remittanoe-slip, .which he sends
with the money, he lists the totals of
currency — bills, coin, and checks.

He places this remittance in a heavy
manila envelope especially designed for
the purpose, and after cording and seal-
ing' it, in accordance with certain estab-
lished rules, he delivers it to the express
messenger, for transmission to the treas-
urer of his road, or to some bank to
which he has been directed to remit. In
the latter case, he forwards the treasurer
a duplicate of his remittance-slip.

Collected by Banks.

Within the last three or four years,
especially on many of the larger lines,
the volume of money that is sent direct
to treasurers has been decreased over
two-thirds, and the labors of the treas-
urers' offices correspondingly lessened,
by having all agents and others, regular-
ly receiving money at points on the road,
send their funds each day direct to one
or more designated banks.

Before this custom was inaugurated,
the money flowed in from all points on
the line to the treasurer's office. It took,
approximately, on any large road, a
dozen heavily bonded clerks, at $75 each
a month, to check up these remittances,

count the money, and make the proper
entries.

The custom of having the agents and
others remit direct to one or more banks
in a financial center usually saves a rail-
road over $10,000 a year. The banks '
are only too glad to swell their average
daily balances by several hundreds of
thousands of dollars, and even to pay
interest on the deposits, besides assu-
ming the extra labor of taking care of
the hundreds of daily remittances. The
banks acknowledge receipt of the money
direct to the agents, also sending a du-
plicate slip to the cashier's department
of the treasurer's office.

Small Part in Cash.

This decrease in the volume of actual
money that the treasurer's office handles
from station-agents may be better appre-
ciated by stating that the New York
Central's traffic receipts average about
$600,000 a day. Over $400,000 of this
comes in from the stations and goes
direct to the banks. The other $200,000
is in checks. A good many of them are
in settlement of freight and passenger
balances from other roads, trackage, ren-
tals, etc. A very small portion of this
$200,000 is- in cash.

Traffic balances are caused in this
way; The New York Central, for in-
stance, receives a freight shipment whose
ultimate destination is Denver. On the
arrival of the merchandise at Denver,
the freight is paid by the consignee to
the road making delivery to him.

Each road which has had a part in
transporting the shipment is entitled to
its proportion of the total amount col-
lected, this division of earnings being
fixed by mutual agreement. On the
other hand, freight originating at Den-
ver is " also simultaneously being trans-
ported to New York and being collected
by the New Yo-rk Central.

With passengers, the line selling the
ticket is the one that receives the revenue.
At the end of each month, each road
renders a statement of amounts collected
from through freight and passenger traf-
fic, with a division of the earnings shown
thereon. These statements are checked
against each other, and it is ascertained
exactlv what balances are due.

SPENDING A RAILROAD'S MONEY.

449

The same plan, generally speaking, is
followed in car rentals. When an empty
car passes off the rails of the road that
owns it to those of another line, the road
that has possession of it has to pay a
certain specified rental every twenty- four
hours that it is off its own tracks.

As empty cars are in transit continu-
ally, the balances in this account are also
struck monthly and settled by checks.

Another traffic source of revenue is
from the rental of trackage rights or
other facilities to other lines. Some of
these leases bring in considerable sums,
but they are comparatively insignificant
when compared with the aggregate re-
ceipts.

Revenue from Waste.

Such are the principal traffic sources
of revenue. The income from other di-
rections — about five per cent of the
whole, as has been stated — is made up
of odds and ends. The sale of scrap
is one of these. Every railroad accumu-
lates large quantities of worn-out and
useless material — mostly metals.: — which
is sold periodically. Some of the great
systems receive over $2,000,000 a year
from this source.

The money derived by the railroads
from the sale of their capital stock and
from bond issues is not a current in-
come, and therefore cannot be included
in their revenues. Such funds, however,
come into the custody of the treasurer,
like all others. They are always used
for some specific purpose, such as the
building of new lines, permanent im-
provements, renewals of rolling stock,
etc.

Their amount varies from year to
year. The total capital stock of the
American railways in 1907 was nearly
$7,500,000,000, and their bonded indebt-
edness a little over $9,000,000,000.

The last few years the average in-
crease in capitalization has been about
$350,000,000. The bonded debts of all
the railways in this country was $1,192,-
178,506 larger in 1907 than the year
previous. During the nine years before
that, the average annual increase in
bonded indebtedness was $271,263,000.

A railroad's income is principally de-
rived, as has been shown, from one great

5 RR

source : traffic. Its outgo is in many and
varied directions, whose ultimate object
is to adequately take care of its business.

In 1907 there were 1,675,000 people
employed by 350 railroads of America.
They received in wages that year $1,075,-
000,000, or about forty per cent of all
the money that the railroads received.
The average daily wages for all classes
of workmen and- employees was $2.20.

The next greatest- item of expense was
for materials and supplies. This
amounted to about $860,000,000. The
remainder, after taking out the $173,-
000,000 surplus, amounted to nearly
$789,000,000. Of this amount there
was paid in interest on bonds $280,931,-
001, other interest $23,759,329, divi-
dends $247,258,219. Taxes took $74,-
253,245, rentals of all sorts $87,403,236,
and miscellaneous expenditures $75,176,-
725.

These figures do not include the pur-
chases of new rolling stock or all bet-
terments in track or other permanencies.
They do include, however, the mainte-
nance of the properties and all that
pertains thereto. " How these various
disbursements are made may be best de-
scribed by outlining the organization and
duties of the treasurer's department of
a large railroad.

The head of this department is the
person who is finally responsible for re-
ceiving, caring for, and disbursing all of
a railroad's money. He is the chief
financial officer, generally one of the
vice-presidents, and also a member of
the board of directors or even of the
executive committee, tie usually ranks
next to the president.

Treasurer Not a " Railroader."

He may be the direct representative
of some person or group of persons who
have a large or a controlling interest in
the road. It is generally recognized that
an able financier in the treasurer's chair
can do quite as much as any other officer
toward insuring a road's prosperity.
Therefore, a treasurer is frequently se-
lected more for his experience and abil-
ity in this line, which he may have
achieved in banking circles, than for his
familiarity with railroad routine.

In fact, he is the only executive who

450

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

need not be a " railroader." His salary
ranges from $5,000 to $20,000 a year,
according to the importance of the line
or the system.

A treasurer does no routine work him-
self. He does not hold himself aloof
from the public ; but he sees only a few
people, and those on business of moment.
He has less callers than any other of-
ficial.

It is a treasurer's task to plan so that
every contingency of the financial future
can be met adequately and at once, in
good times and in bad. In a word, he
must keep the road's finances so that
every debt can be paid the moment it
falls due.

Interest on Bonds.

As fast as the money comes in it must
be deposited where it will be safe and
immediately available when needed. It
must be placed where it will be earning
the highest practicable rate of interest.
The huge average daily balances of the
railroads with the banks are like great
call loans Avith such institutions, and are
very desirable on both sides.

It was the treasurer of an eastern road
who first devised and put into practise
the plan of having the statiomagents re-
mit directly to the banks, thus accom-
plishing two things that do not seem to
amount to much, but which really mean
a good many thousands a year in the
aggregate. One is cutting down ex-
penses, and the other is gaining a day's
interest on a large sum of money, say
$600,000, at two per cent a year.

Another important part of a treas-
urer's work is regulating judiciously the
disbursement of funds. A considerable
portion of the gross monthly receipts is
hot always available. Some is in transit,
some is liable to be called for unexpect-
edly on large contracts that are being
completed, and so on.

A treasurer has to keep a firm grasp
on the situation, and not only provide out
of current receipts for the payment of
wages and -sundry bills, but also to be
ready to meet the interest on bonds or
to pay the dividends on stocks whenever
they fall due.

The interest on a railroad's bonds has
to be paid either every six months or

annually. The amount of this periodical
disbursement is known exactly, and
funds must be provided for it no matter
what happens. Failure to pay this in-
terest is looked upon as a confession of
insolvency and is usually followed by
foreclosure on the part of the bond-
holders and the appointment of a re-
ceiver.

While these interest payments amount
to only about one-tenth of the gross
revenue of the average road, the other
payments for wages, supplies, material,
equipment, and a thousand and one
other things are so large that they have
to be carefully looked after and watched
over so that sufficient funds shall always
remain to meet the interest when it falls
due.

No important expenditure is even con-
templated without first consulting with
the treasurer and being assured that the
money will be available. With many
roads a portion of the revenue must be
set aside in what is called a sinking fund,
out of which a certain number of bonds
must be paid each year.

Needs a Keen Mind.

This is another burden in addition to
the annual interest charge. When money
has to be raised by the sale of bonds or
stock, it is one of the duties of the treas-
urer— in conjunction with the board of
directors or the president — to negotiate
the loans the bonds represent for the
length of time that may.be necessary.

His is also the hand on the helm when
stock is to be sold, and upon his astute-
ness depends, in a great degree, its reali-
zing the proper market-price.

The treasurer and his assistants and
their subordinates dwell continually in
the midst of alarms lest some mishap be-
fall the interests that they must safe-
guard conscientiously. From the highest
to the lowest, they are beset with the
vexations and worries that are the por-
tion of every man who is directlv or
indirectly the custodian of another's
money.

Yet, curiously enough, in no other de-
partment of a railway is there so much
eagerness to gain a foothold of employ-
ment and so few resignations. The men
who enter the treasurer's department as

SPENDING A RAILROAD'S MONEY.

451

youths almost invariably continue there
until they die or are retired as pensioners
after long and faithful service. _

On a big railroad the assistant treas-
urer is the one who handles, personally
and through his large staff of subordi-
nates, the tremendous volume of detail
work. In the organization of the New
York Central's treasury department,
which is typical of the high develop-
ment that has been attained in that
branch of a great railroad, the assistant
treasurer has five departments under
him.

The first is the voucher department,
where payments that have been author-
ized are made. The second is the stock
and bond department, where all the work
connected with the transfers of stock,
the payment of dividends, the issuance
of bonds, and the payment of interest
is taken care of. The third is the cash-
ier's department, where all money not
transmitted direct to the banks is re-
ceived. The fourth is the paymaster's
department, which concerns itself with
the payment of wages. The fifth is the
general clerical staff of the treasurer's
department.

Relatively speaking, a big railroad
like the Central sends out very few
checks. Instead, it makes its payments
by means of vouchers. These documents,
briefly described, show on their face for
what purpose the payment is to be made
and to whom. On the, back, for purposes
of distribution on the books of account,
is shown the heading under which it is
to be charged.

Sends Out Few Checks.

These vouchers are signed, counter-
signed, and approved by the various
heads of departments whose activities
•they touch ; and when they reach the
assistant treasurer, they lack only his
final approval before being changed into
paper that may be transmuted into cash.
After a voucher has been recorded, ex-
amined, and approved by the assistant
treasurer and his staff, that official stamps
it with an order on the bank, authorizing
that institution to pay to the person in
whose favor the voucher is issued, or to
his order, the amount named therein.

In this way the voucher does not re-

turn to the treasurer's department of
the railroad until it has been paid, and
then it is an absolutely complete record
of the transaction to its conclusion and
is ready for file with the voucher de-
partment. The object of paying by
voucher, instead of by check and voucher
combined, is obvious. It saves a great
deal of time, and the voucher is sure to
be returned duly receipted.

So yast and complicated are the trans-
actions of the treasurer's office, and so
essential is it that every transaction must
be absolutely complete, that effort toward
attaining these ends by the simplest
means and with the expenditure of the
least time is continually being made.
This voucher-payment system is coming
into general use throughout the country.

Paying the Bills.

A large portion of the money disbursed
through these vouchers is for the regular
running expenses and maintenance of
the road, which, in the ordinary course
of events, are paid out of its earnings.
The current supplies that a railroad
needs each month run into millions. The
maintenance of property, according to
Kirkman's " Science of Railways," is
38.62 per cent of all other operating ex-
penses. The locomotives alone repre-
sent an investment of nearly $700,000,-
000, the passenger-cars nearly half that
amount, and the freight-cars three times
that sum.

Even the battered work-cars total up
over $50,000,000. Half a billion dollars
is invested in ties alone, and nearly a
billion and a quarter in rails. Every
item of roadbed, right of way, and roll-
ing stock has to be kept in thorough re-
pair. It all wears out and has to be
renewed sooner or later.

The locomotive repair bills alone are
a big item. The Union Pacific had 1,088
engines last year on all its lines. During
the twelvemonth ending June 30, 1908,
it cost to keep them in running order
$3,221,699.41, which is rather below
"than above the average expenditure per
engine. The coal that these engines con-
sumed cost $6,587,582.87, but they
helped earn a revenue by hauling freight
and passengers that amounted to about
$53,000,000.

452

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

As an evidence of ownership, every
stockholder receives what is called a
stock-certificate. This document certi-
fies that he is the owner of so many
shares of such and such a kind of stock.
These certificates are inscribed with the
name of the owner. His name and ad-
dress are entered in the stock-record
books, where every change in ownership
is also set down.

Whenever a certificate is transferred,
the old one is taken up and canceled
and a new one issued. Under ordinary
circumstances, on a road like the New
York Central, whose stock is held largely
as a permanent investment, the new cer-
tificates average between fifty and one
hundred a day, although around June 30
and December 31 the number increases
to nearly a thousand daily. On roads
whose stock is very actively traded in
on the exchanges, the number of certifi-
cates issued daily is far greater.

When stock dividends are payable,
checks have to be sent to the stock-
holders of record on the date on which
the books close. This also is a huge
task, involving: in some companies like
the Pennsylvania, for instance, the ma-
king out, signing, and mailing of between
forty and fifty thousand checks.

Transferring Stock.

Every certificate that comes in for
transfer has to be carefully scrutinized.
While forged or spurious certificates are
rare, they are not unknown and must be
guarded against. The same is true in
regard to the payment of bonds at their
maturity or retirement.

When the interest on a bond falls due,
the claim for the money is made by the
presentation of a coupon. This is a bit
of paper about twice the size of a post-
age - stamp. The number of these at-
tached to each bond corresponds with
the total number of interest- payments
between the issue of the bond and its
maturity.

On each interest date one of these is
detached and presented at the treasurer's
office. After being verified and checked
off, it is paid either by currency or by
check.

On the days when interest is due, a
line of bank-runners rush up to the

cashier's window and toss in bundles of
coupons, worth perhaps $100,000 or
more, ticketed with the name of their
owners." They hurry on without an in-
stant's delay, to return for their checks
after the coupons have been counted.

The actual currency and checks re-
ceived are handled in the cashier's de-
partment. The checks that are sent out
are issued from that department. The
cashier of a railroad company, generally
speakirig, corresponds to the receiving-
teller of a bank. He is at one end of a
long room; and so definite and exacting
are his duties, that he knows less about
what is going on at the other end than
any one else in the office.

Spending Three Millions a Month.

The paymaster's department on a
road like the Central has the disbursing
of about $3,000,000 a month in cash
for wages of employees. There are two
men who do nothing else, and they have
a corps of assistants. In New York
State Avages of railroad employees have
to be paid in cash every two weeks. The
treasurer's office receives from the ac-
counting department every week a list
of the payments to be made and the gross
amount to be disbursed each day.

The necessary arrangements are made
before the pay-cars start out, so that so
many hundreds of thousands of dollars
may be turned over to each paymaster-
at certain cities along the line each day.
The money is not put in envelopes for
the employees2 but is counted out to each
one of them as he passes through the
pay-car.

The average amount that the pay-car
starts out with on its daily trip is $200,-
000, and it is out on the line every day.
The railroads whose eastern terminals
or docks are along the water-front of
New York generally take about two days
every fortnight to pay off their marine
and dock forces.

The general office force of the treas-
urer's department has charge of the
books of accounts controlling the opera-
tions of the departments, the correspond-
ence, and other details that are not
taken care of by the other parts of the
office.

On a large railroad the treasurer's

SPENDING A RAILROAD'S MONEY.

453

office will have perhaps 150 employees.
Every one of these is bonded in a greater
or less amount, no matter whether or
not he handles any cash. The smallest
bond is not less than $500. The treas-
urer himself is bonded from $100,000
to $200,000, and the bonds of the pay-
masters are about the same.

The other responsible heads of de-
partments, chief clerks, etc., are bonded
from $5,000 to $100,000 each. The
total amount of the bonds of all em-
ployees of the treasurer's office usually
runs into the millions on a big line where
vast sums are handled daily.

The salaries usually paid employees
of the treasurer's department of a great
railway are generally higher than those
in other departments. They are also in
excess of those paid in large banks for
the same class of labor.

The heads of departments receive
from $200 to $300 a month. An as-
sistant treasurer's salary may be any-
where between $4,000 and $7,500 per
annum. Paymasters draw from $150 to
$200 a month. There are a. number of
employees whose salaries range from $75
to $150 a month. Beginners start at
about $40 a month.

To the Beginner.

The easiest way to enter the treasurer's
department — as well as any other in the
railroad service — is by becoming an ex-
pert stenographer. In that case the in-
itial wage is at least $60 a month, and
frequently $80 a month. A stenographer
stands much better chance of quick pro-
motion, if he is apt and shows ability,
than any other of the minor class of
employees on account of his having un-
usual opportunities to familiarize him-
self with the workings, not only of his

own. department, but with those of all
the others.

The voucher department, in the roads
using that system, is usually considered
the most important of all, and its chief-
is generally next in line for promotion
to the post of. assistant treasurer. The
cashier in some roads stand next in the
order of promotion to the principal place
below that of the chief executive.

The treasurer's department is regarded
as one of the most desirable by many
young men who settle on railroad work
for their career. It does not offer so
many opportunities for advancement as
does the operating department, but there
seems to be a certain prestige about the
closely guarded, almost mysterious hand-
ling of great sums of money that make
a place in the treasurer's office much
coveted by beginners.

Once firmly settled there, an em-
ployee is almost certain, to stay indefi-
nitely, so long as he does his work well
and honestly. Promotions come slowly.
When some one ahead drops out, the
line moves up one almost automatically,
and the vacancy at the bottom is filled
by a new hand. In every long-estab-
lished treasurer's office it will be found
that nine-tenths of the employees started
in as boys at the bottom of the ladder.

The callers at the treasurer's depart-
ment are not the diversified lot with
which the traffic and operating depart-
ments are familiar. As a result, the
routine is rarely touched with sprightly
incidents. Almost without exception
every visitor has some definite errand.
that is quickly despatched. The nature
of the work performed by this depart-
ment demands the utmost care and con-
centration of attention on the matters in
hand ; therefore the employees are guard-
eel from interruption as much as possible.

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

BY STEPHEN CHALMERS,

Author of "The Cataclysm," "A Daughter of the Armada," etc.

Showing That Weapons Are Not Always What
They Seem, and There Is Danger in the Recoil.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

PHILIP SAND, being informed that he has a year before tuberculosis will claim him
as a victim, prepares to get the best out of the time. Being financially ruined, he
raises ten thousand dollars on his life-insurance policy of fifty thousand from a money-
lender named Merton Scragg, who opens up on the comfortable promise that Sand will
not be living that day a year. He charters a yacht to go treasure-hunting, sends the
yacht ahead, and himself goes down on the regular liner for Panama. On board he meets
Miss Verina Harding. They are wrecked. Sand finds himself on the only fruitful island
of a group. He finds pigs inhabiting a cave containing boxes, which turn out to be the
treasure-chests he is in search of. He builds a lean-to with the gold bars. He is startled
by the presence of Miss Harding, who has wandered from a camp of the shipwrecked
sailors in order to avoid the attentions of an American drummer.

CHAPTER IX.

Captain Howells Takes Charge.

TULIP could not help feeling
pleased with the turn affairs
had taken. As he walked
along the beach and through
the brush toward the eastern
end of the island, he thought
over the new situation. Before the com-
ing of Miss Harding he had had enough
to occupy his time — fishing, cooking, and
the difficulties attending both.

Something had to happen to keep the
adventure going, and something had hap-
pened. Miss Harding had turned up
just at the edge of boredom, and with the
news she brought of the landing of the
sailors there came a dozen lively possi-
bilities.

" A man gets used to anything," Phil-
ip said to the sea in his day-dreamy fash-
ion— he was almost forgetting his errand.
" Take me, for instance. I used to dab-
ble with Grampa Septimus's books and
papers, and I used to fish. Then I was
plunged to the other extreme — work.

Began in the October Railroad Man'

Well, I never did get used to work, but
in time, perhaps, I might have. They
do say a man gets used to it, but it must
require a lot of patience and practise.

" Then I was told to get my coffin
ready. I've been dying now for over a
month. I'm quite used to it now, per-
haps because I've practised dying so hard.
I've already been nearly dead by tubercu-
losis, drowning, and starvation, inside of
thirty days. I believe I could die to or-
der with hardly an effort — just a little
will power; but maybe practise has
served only to harden me.

" I wonder if there was ever a man
who practised dying so hard that he got
hardened and didn't die after all ? That's
an interesting thing to work out while I'm
fishing."

He suddenly woke up and laughed.

" Where was I? Oh, yes, I was think-,
ing about the changing scenes of life.
Fate certainly has its compensations.
When the victim is just tired of one con-
dition, along comes another, and so the
old play rolls on to the last curtain, and
even the finish is welcome as a change."

He came back by degrees to the pres-

Magazine. Single Copies, 10 cents.

454

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

455

ent condition. Now Miss Harding was
on the stage again, and the villain,
Higgs, and the supernumeraries, the
sailors — who, for all he knew, might be
the principals .before matters were
brought to a close.

If story-books were so closely related
to what usually happens in life, then
there was a likelihood that the sailors
would try to get possession of that treas-
ure if they knew of its existence. It was,
therefore, policy to hide the existence of
it as long as possible.

It was not difficult to reach the eastern
end of the island and find the camp of the
shipwrecked sailors. All Philip had to
do was to walk east and keep . near the
beach or on it. In about half an hour
he. caught a delicious whiff of cooking
food.

" That's pork ! " sighed Philip.
" There's no safety in numbers — for the
pigs. They must have cornered one or
two."

He presently came upon the camp. It
was in a bit of glade beneath a grove of
coconuts. Philip surveyed the scene be-
fore he made his entrance. There was a
good fire blazing in the middle of the
picture, and the air was full of the scent
of cooked flesh and cooked something
else which Philip could not identify, al-
though he confessed to himself that it
had a tempting odor.

Around the fire four or five men
sprawled, with their caps under their
heads for pillows. One man was dan-
gerously near the blaze. All at once
Philip Sand's peculiarly constituted brain
flashed back a few hundred years. He
smiled. It was just like the pirates' bar-
becue, and that man so near the fire was
Gibby's father. Presently he would be
awakened by the smell of his own flesh
burning and he would spit in the fire to
show his contempt for the entire proceed-
ings.

Down on the beach another man —
Philip recognized him as the mate, How-
ells — was pacing slowly up and clown
with lu's arms folded and his head sunk,
save when he lifted his eyes to the hori-
zon as lie turned on his promenade. Phil-
ip felt sorry for the man.

Presently one of the men by the fin
up and carefully placed in the lire one
of (lie large, green, globular fruits which

Philip had noticed that first day in the
jungle. When he had lodged it to his
satisfaction, he poked the embers in an-
other place, and presently speared and
brought out a big, black ball.

" Here y'are ! " he hailed. " Bread-
fruit served hot ! "

A grunt was all the thanks he got for
his labors as cook.

The men who sprawled arouiKl the
camp-fire were gorged with pork, roasted
breadfruit, and coconut milk. It was the
hour of siesta.

The cook presently lay down, after
thoughtfully spitting in the fire. Philip
emerged from the trees and crossed the
glade unnoticed, although he all but
s-tepped over one of the men. He made
straight for the mate, who was still prom-
enading on the beach.

"Captain Howells?" said he.

The disgraced man stopped short and
stared at him. He did not recognize
Philip as the man whom he had insulted
on the bridge that night. In fact, his
memory was quite hazy as to the details
of that night's affairs. He presumed,
however, that Philip was another sur-
vivor of the wreck — his wreck, as he men-
tally termed it.

"Where did you come from?" he in-
quired gruffly.

" Well," said Philip, smiling, "as I
was on the island before you arrived, the
question might come from me to you.
However, Miss Harding has told me your
story, and I have come over here to make
a suggestion."

" Well?"

" I presume that you are still in com-
mand ? "

" Sakes alive! " came from the vicinity
of the fire. " Look who's here ! "

The men woke up suddenly and sur-
veyed Philip with no little amazement.
Not that they recognized him, but the
presence of any stranger in their midst
partook of Crusoe's surprise when he
found the footsteps of Friday.

In a moment they were standing around
him, curious for information. Philip told
his story briefly, adding: "And for a
week I've been trying to catch a pig. In-
cidentally, would you mind telling me
what there is on this island that I may
safely eat? "

The men stared at him, then one of

456

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

them burst out in a loud, lazy guffaw ,and
turned to the fire. Presently he returned
with a handful of miscellaneous fruits of
the earth. He named each of them, and
told their merits as edibles. Again Phil-
ip cursed himself for a fool, but it was a
relief to knoAV that he would not have
to fish from dawn to dusk to feed the ex-
tra mouth.

The captain, in the meantime, had re-
sumed his uneasy and indifferent prom-
enade. Philip, however, brought him to
a standstill with a word.

" As I was saying, I have a suggestion
to offer — a proposition to make. You, as
captain — "

All at once the mate broke out in a
fury. It was like the sudden explosion
of a long-smoldering volcano.

"Don't call me captain!" he almost
screamed. " Don't call me captain.
I'm not captain. I've lost my ticket.
You know it. You're making game of
me. Stop it, or by — I'll kill you right
where you stand."

Then the man stood still in the sudden
silence that folloAved. His face was pur-
ple with rage, which, as it cooled down,
left him pale and trembling. In a mo-
ment he spun around on his heel and
walked up and down with the appearance
of an ashamed, broken man.

" That might be your misfortune as
much as your fault, captain," said, Philip
quietly.

Howells stopped again and looked at
Sand, apparently thunderstruck with sur-
prise. He seemed to be at a loss for words
to meet the unexpected remark. Finally
he blurted out:

"Thank you !" adding, as an after-
thought : " Thank you for nothing."

" Anyway," said Philip pleasantly,
" we are all in "the same boat — that is, on
the same island. There is a lady here,
too. If any of you are married, or have
— sisters, you will appreciate the delicacy
of her position."

" That's right," said the captain
gruffly.

" Sye ! " exclaimed one of the Sailors,
a cockney, " I wished I was married or
had that for a sister."

" Stow yer gab! " said a second sailor.
" Let the gentleman have his say fust."

" I was going to say," said Philip im-
perturbably, " that as I have employed

the week making myself snug, and as the
lady has turned up and accepted my hos-
pitality, all of us should agree to make
her as comfortable as possible, and I
think the best way to effect that is to give
her all the privacy that her sex and sta-
tion would indicate as her due."

" He talks like a schoolmaster," said
the cockney sailor.

Philip fixed the man with a stern eye.
The others turned upon the Englishman
as much as to say :

" Talk up. He's waiting for you."

The cockney, feeling that he was called
upon to make a remark, said, with a
knowing grin :

" 'E wants to put the chalk on us. 'E
wants to monopolize the fe-male sex."

" If I hear another word from you,"
said Philip steadily, " I'll make such a
monopoly of you that there won't be room
for a chalk mark. If you, or any one
here, offends that lady, either by speech'
or action, I will indicate my position to-
ward the lady more definitely."

"Oh, very well,"' said the impertinent
cockney. " Let's hear wot your position
is toward the "lyd y, and we'll tell ye wot
we thinks."

Philip flushed, but steadily answered :

" My position toward the lady is mere-
ly that which yours should be — that of a
man. I have given up the little house
I have made to her use, and I will berth
forward, if you can understand that. I
wiH ask for Captain Howells's coopera-
tion in keeping her portion of the island
safe from trespass.

" I had not meant to discuss this pos-
sible difficulty, and what may seem to re-
flect upon the other men is apologized
for. It is wholly and solely directed at
this Englishman with the nasty tongue.
Captain Howells," he added, turning
to the down-hearted promenader, " you
are still in command and responsible for
the welfare of your crew and the pas-
sengers. I ask that you enforce disci-
pline where and when it is required."

" 'E ain't capt'n!" said the cockney
seoffmgly. " 'E was capt'n for a night,
and never real capt'n, anyway. Least-
ways, there ain't no capt'ns ashore."

"Ain't there?" roared Howells, sud-
denly waking up. " Look here ! I've
been mooning long enough, and ye know
why. ' You've had something to eat. and

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

457

now you're just about ripe for trouble —
eh? Well, mark my words, I'm not go-
ing to make matters any worse'n I've
done. I'm captain, d'ye understand,
from this minute until we're taken off.
And there's going to be discipline, as this
gentleman says."

To prove that he meant what he was
saying, Howells walked right up to the
cockney and struck him between the eyes.
The Englishman went down on the sand,
but was up again in a moment. All his
national fighting blood was up. He
doubled his fists and charged the cap-
tain. They would have engaged had not
the other sailors come between them.

"Come on!" cried one derisively.
"What's the use of fighting? Ain't we
got all we want ? Come on ! Let's cook
some more pork ! "

- That's an excellent idea," said Phil-
ip. " I'll call again and get rations for
the passengers. Thank you very much;
Captain Howells."

The title was uttered without empha-
sis, but it conveyed something to How-
ells, who glanced gratefully at Philip,
grunted something, and saluted. Philip
returned. the courtesy and walked away. -

As he returned to the golden hut, Phil-
ip felt uneasy. But, so far, he had
achieved something. They would respect
Miss Harding, but — the treasure?/

When they learned of that, as they
must, sooner or later, what would be their
attitude ?

Philip doubted whether the wind-
mooded captain would be able to govern
their lust for gold. As Howells had said
himself, they had plenty to eat and little
to do, and they were about ripe for
trouble. Undisciplined sailors are the
most uncontrollable element in the world.

Also — And then Philip stopped and
wondered. Where was Higgs? He had
not been among the men in the camp. His
name had not been mentioned. Philip
hastened on to the hut, his uneasiness
growing with every step. When within
fifty yards of the little house of gold
bricks, he stopped again. He could hear
voices.

He advanced slowly, listening intent-
ly. At the edge of the brush he paused
and peeped through to the beach. Miss
Harding was there. So was Higgs.

The agent of the Kurve-Kut Korset

and the No-Kut Klip was standing be-
fore Miss Harding. His face — his eyes
and his mouth particularly — were moving
with passion, and he was talking rapidly
to Miss Harding.

" You must listen to me, dear," he
was saying. " I've been waiting this \
chance for two weeks. You ran away I
from me this morning, but that was !
natural bashfulness. I know you care,
so you needn't be bashful any more. I'd
make you happy, and, with a figure like
yours, I could make a fortune out of the
new corset."

He uttered another sentence — only '
one, and then Philip stepped out from
the brush. Miss Harding saw him first.
A look of glad relief mingled with the
anger of her crimson face.

" Now," she said to Higgs, pointing
to Philip Sand, " repeat what you said
— what you last said. Repeat it in the
presence of a gentleman."

Mr. Theodore Lliggs turned around
slowly. His face turned pale at sight
of the man who had once called him an
" unspeakable cad " in no indefinite
manner, but he seemed to believe that
defiant bluster would save the situation
and himself.

"What's he got to do with it?" he
protested. " This is a matter between
us — as it always is between two people.'!

" I'm afraid I stand in loco parentis
here," said Philip, still advancing, " or
in the light of an elder brother — or to
simplify matters, Mr. Higgs, as a man
and a gentleman."

With the last word, he brought the flat >
of his hand against Higgs's left cheek.
The corset agent staggered back, then
fell down as Philip administered a sim-
ilar slap on his right cheek. With a
gasp of weak fury, Higgs scrambled to
his feet and picked up a large stone.

"Look out!" cried Philip to Miss
Harding.

The stone whizzed past his own head J
and struck the wall of the hut. Philip '
stood on guard, awaiting a possible on-
slaught ; but just as Higgs was about
to throw another stone, he seemed to be-
come suddenly petrified.
• His eyes were staring past Philip
Sand, and were fixed on the wall of the
hut. Suddenly he dropped the stone
and walked rapidly into the brush.

458

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" What on earth—" exclaimed Philip.

Then he saw the cause of Higgs's
astonishment. The stone, in striking
the wall, had gored into the soft metal.
There was a rift of glittering yellow,
flashing purely in the sunlight.

" No wonder he was astonished ! "
said Philip to Miss Harding. To him-
self he added : " Now the murder's out.
what will they do about it?"

Miss Harding, with her face averted,
held out her hand to him. Without a
word, and haxdly knowing what he was
doing, he bent and kissed the delicate
fingers.

" I am glad I was of service, Miss
Harding. Let us forget about it,
please."

CHAPTER X.

The Girl or the Gold.

A/f ISS HARDING had more curios-
*■*■*• ity about the treasure than Philip
had. It was she who insisted that, for
the fun of the thing, if for no other
reason, they open all the boxes and
ascertain their contents.

In the twilight of that day he led her
to the cave where he had slept the first
nights of his- stay on the island. In
the box which he had previously opened,
they presently discovered a curious dag-
ger with a jeweled hilt. Its blade was
long and keen.

" As I am a lone woman," said Miss
Harding laughingly, " I will possess
myself of this — with your permission, of
course."

"Mine?" said Philip stupidly. "Oh,
yes." He suddenly remembered with a
curious mixture of feeling that he was
the sole possessor of this great wealth.

Miss Harding stuck the blade into her
belt, and posed for a moment in an ad-
venturess manner which emphasized her
sweetness.

" Watch you don't stick yourself,"
said Philip anxiously.

He pried open the second box, and
found its contents similar to those of
the first — images, plate, silks, strings of
precious stones, bracelets, brooches, and
all sorts of apparent loot. Miss Hard-
ing passed an hour trying them on in her
woman's way, while Philip dug into the

other boxes in search of some weapon of
defense.

His search was vain until he came to
the last box. — there were about six in all.
In this. he found a pair of very ancient
pistols, also a curious old sword.

The pistols were utterly useless ; but
they were in fair condition, and had a
particularly venomous look. He stowed
them away in his coat pockets. The
sword was a handy weapon, despite its
age. It had apparently seen active
service.

" I hope it won't see any more," said
Philip; "but I think I'll take it for
ornament. A man on a desert island
should have a belt full of weapons ;
don't you think so, Miss Harding?"

She, with the jeweled dagger stuck
in her waist-belt, could not but agree
that it was picturesque, if nothing else.

When it was dark he took her back
to the hut and left her there, saving
he would go to the camp for rations.

" We paid our passage-money, you
know', and we are entitled to pork at
least," said he.

" Come back quick," she said in a low
voice.

Philip wondered, as he walked to the
camp, just what her tone was. He could
understand that she was afraid to be
alone in the night ; yet, if he was to
sleep under cover at all, he must go to
the cave, and the cave was some dis-
tance from the hut.

At the sailors' camp he was received
with a silence which was significant.
Higgs was there. The men had been
talking volubly as Philip came up. but
the moment he entered the circle of
light, a hush fell, and it seemed to
Philip that they regarded him with looks
in which curiosity, slyness, and awe were
mingled. Lliggs muttered something,
but it escaped Philip.

" Is that pork ready? " he asked pleas-
antly.

One of the men handed Philip a side
of cooked pig wrapped in wild banana
leaves. Philip took it and turned' to go,
when the cockney spoke up.

" Ain't you goin' to pye for that?"

"Pay?" said Philip! "Why. cer-
tainly. Send in your bill."

As he walked away, Philip heard the
Englishman say to his companions :

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

459

" Them as 'as it ought to pye, is wot
I ses. 'E's got a monop'ly in tin, but
we've got a monopoly in pork. Fair is
as fair does, is wot — "

Philip passed out of hearing. He
came upon the captain on the beach.
Howells was walking up and down like
a madman, which Philip began to sus-
pect he was. At sight of the other,
Howells gave a great start. Then he
gave a grunt and walked away. But
Philip had seen a peculiar light in the
man's eyes — the light that comes when
a desperate man is seized with an idea
that may Avork out his salvation.

Philip returned to the hut. Miss
Harding was standing at the door, wait-
ing for him. In the clear, white moon-
light, she was startlingly beautiful.
Philip felt something thicken in his
throat. He knew what it was, but
sternly remembered a resolve which he
had made on the Revuelan the night be-
fore the wreck. Love was not for him,
or he for love.

" Pork chops," said he prosaically.
She turned her back on him. Philip
knelt down and began to hew the chops
apart with the old sword.

" Do you know, Miss Harding," said
he, determined to down his heart — " do
you know that I have no longer the
same overpowering ambition to slay a
pig?"

She did not answer. ■ Her back was
to him, and she was looking at the
moon. Perhaps she was thinking of the
fate of poor Miss Sharpe.

" Supper's ready," said Philip.
• After they had eaten, Philip got up
and held out his hand. She had not
spoken a word during the meal.

" Now I must bid you good night,"
he said.

She took the hand that was offered
her.

"Where are you going?" she asked
quickly.

" To the cave," he said. " You know,
where it is, if anything should go
wrong."

Their hands lingered in the light
clasp. All at once a truth — an intuitive
truth — flashed through Philip's con-
sciousness.

She was his ! She loved him as he
loved her! He had only to reach out

his arms and take her. He need only
let that little hand linger a moment
more, and the truth must be confessed
between them.

For a moment the air seemed to vi-
brate with the intensity of his soul's
struggle. Love was his if he cared to
take it. But his love was the right love,
and no man possesses love alone. It is
not love unless it is shared by one other.
In this case, Miss Harding was the
one other. They might accept what the
gods had given them, and be happy in
the circumstances into which the gods
had thrown them ; yet there were other
circumstances of which Miss Harding
was unaware. His would be the. brief
joy, hers the long sorrow. He was a
doomed man.

It all passed in a moment. He drew
his hand from hers and walked away.
She may have understood something of
what was passing in his mind ; she may
have intuitively realized that he loved
her, but that there was some obstacle
in the way of happiness ; for, as he went
away, she did not say " Good night "
even, but turned her back and looked
at the moonlit sea. Presently she en-
tered the hut and laid her head against
the cool gold of the wall.

Sand walked to the cave with his
heart and mind in a struggle for the
.mastery. His mind was made up, but
his heart refused to be in accord with
his reasoning.

He lay down in the shelter of the
cave and tried to sleep. But sleep was
impossible. He knew now that he had
loved Miss Flarding — Verina Harding —
since the day he had taken her away
from Higgs, aboard the Revuelan.
Never having admitted his love to him-
self, Miss Harding's supposed death
left love in abeyance. He had thought
of her many times in a troubled way —
as if her loss was a personal sorrow to
him — but that was all.

Now, her coming had touched the
spring of his heart. She had come in
the forenoon, and before the sun was
quite out of the west the stemmed emo-
tions of two weeks were clamoring for
expression. He loved her. He wanted
to tell her so. He dared not, could not,
would not ; and because confession was
impossible, love was greater.

460

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Their love was now a matter of mu-
tual knowledge. He dared not speak it ;
she could not utter the initiative word.
How hard it would be for them to hold
intercourse — especially under the pecul-
iar circumstances in which they were
thrown together — without crossing the
line !

Philip resolutely turned his thoughts
to the more practical questions of the
situation. Now that the men knew of
the treasure, what would they do ?
What was in the captain's mind? What
meant the attitude of the sailors, silent
save for the significant remark of the
English cockney?

" I'll hear from them to-morrow,"
Philip concluded.

Why not to-night ? Might they not
take advantage of the night to visit the
hut and verify Higgs's story, which
must have seemed a- wild tale when told
by him.

Yes, they might come to-night ! In
another minute Philip was going back
along the beach toward the hut. He
would stand guard, not over the gold,
but the dearer treasure within.

He slowed up as he neared the hut.
He did not wish to awaken Miss Hard-
ing— Verina — no, Miss Harding. He
did not wish her to think that he was
stealing around the hut, either. When
he came to the edge of the coconut
grove, to the west of the bluff against
which the hut was built, he stopped and
surveyed the surroundings.

The moon was clear. The sea was
lapping musically along the belt of
white, coral-powder sand. A light
breeze was whispering at intervals
among the coco fronds. Otherwise, the
scene was perfectly still.

So far, all was well. Philip sat down
under a coconut - palm and decided to
sleep with one eye open. He merely
wished to make sure that no one dis-
turbed Miss Harding.

He slept. He was awakened some
time later by a sound. The moon was
still shining. Conditions were exactly
the same. He could see no sign of a
human being. Nevertheless, he,- had
heard an unmistakable sound, as of a
branch being thrust aside and snap-
ping as it bent.

He tiptoed forward to. the side of the

hut and passed softly into the shadowy
.side of it. Presently he saw the figure
of a -man standing under a coconut-palm
with his face turned toward the hut.
Philip drew the ancient pistol from his
pocket, held it up before him, and
stepped into the moonlight and toward
the figure.

" Stand still," he said quietly.

The figure did not move. The man
must have noticed the weapon in the
other's hand, without being able to
recognize its useless character. When
Philip was within a few paces of the
figure, he stopped.

" Stand out and let me see you," he
said.

The man stepped defiantly into the
moonlight. It was Howells.

" I expected better of . you," said
Philip Sand. " What did you want at
this time of the night?"

" I wanted to see whether that Higgs
fellow was talking straight or not," said
Howells sullenly. " I see it's metal, all
right."

Out of the corner of his eye, Philip
caught a glint of metal shimmering in
the moonlight.

" Yes, it's metal. It's gold, if that is
what you want to know," said Philip.
" What of it?"

"What of it? What of it?" repeated
Howells quickly. " Good Heavens !
man — can't you understand? That's a
fortune. It's big enough to share. Can't
you see that if I have money I can
snap my fingers at 'em? They'll put
me on trial, and I'll lose my ticket. It's
lost already. I'm a ruined man unless
I have money and can snap my fingers
at 'em — snap my fingers at 'em!"

He repeated the phrase as if his mind
had become obsessed with the idea of
snapping his fingers at 'em.

"Well?"' said Philip.

" Look here," said Howells, moving
forward confidentially. " It's a fortune
for two of us — say three, for you'll want
the lady to be in on it. It won't mean
much if it is divided between the five
others and Higgs. I'll come over to
your side if you'll divide with me. I'll
protect you and the lady."

" And stir sides at the outset," said
Philip coolly. " No, you won't. The
treasure is nothing to me compared with

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

461

the safety of the lady. It is your duty
as captain to work to the same end. As
for the treasure, it can be divided into
nine lots, as far as I am concerned ; but
for the present, it is better left alone.
I would suggest, captain, that you go
back where you came from and do your
duty, which is to preserve discipline un-
til we can get this lady out of her present
dilemma. Will you go?"

" Look here," said the captain, after
a pause. " I'll be frank with you. I
need the money, and I'm going to get it.
I'm going to get as much of it as I can
lay hands on.

"It's my only chance to snap my fin-
gers at 'em. I can't afford to divide
it among nine. If you won't take me
in — I'll — I'll have to lay some other
plan."

" Meaning," said Philip, " that you
will turn four fairly decent men into
criminals and lead them against me?"

" I didn't go as far as that," said the
captain.

" But you will go as far as that if
I don't conspire with you to cheat your
men out of what is likely to be a fair
share and share alike."

There was silence. A breeze rustled
overhead in the fronds with a sound like
running water. The air became percep-
tibly cooler. The dawn was coming.

" Better go back where you came
from and think it over," said Philip,
with a little waye of the old pistol.
" I expect you will call to-morrow, any-
way."

Howells faced him for a moment.
"Is that your last word?" he asked.

" Not necessarily. "I suppose you will
talk to-morrow."

"Yes," said the captain, turning to
go. " I'll talk to-morrow."

When he had gone, Philip turned to
the east. The dawn was brightening
rapidly, and the moonlight was becom-
ing pale.

" I think I'll fish until — until she gets
up — and think this over."

He procured his jeweled fishing-line
without disturbing her, and went to the
barren rocks. He caught no fish, for he
was paying no attention to his line. He
was hammering out the problem of the
girl or the gold.

The gold meant nothing to him, yet

the commercial instinct of Philander
was anxious to fight for it. Verina's
safety meant everything to him. Truth
to tell, his unwillingness to give up the
treasure was -due to the fact that it
meant giving up Verina's bedroom to the
hands of vandals.

He knew nothing about her"save that
he loved her, that her name was Verina
Harding, that she was beautiful, and
that she had once been the guest of a
person called Merton Scragg, on a steam-
yacht called the Chameleon.

And she knew nothing of him — abso-
lutely nothing; and, particularly, she
did not know that he was a man who
had less than eleven months to live, and
that his life was mortgaged, anyway, to
one Merton Scragg.

But the present problem was whether
he should turn over the treasure to How-
ells and his gang, for the sake of peace,
or whether he should take Howells on
his side and fight for the gold. He
might have chosen the latter course but
he did not trust Howells.

The disgraced man was adrift on a
straw. He would clutch at anything
else .that seemed to offer' more stable
assurance of his future welfare. He
would trick Philip and Verina as read-
ily as he had proposed to trick his men.
He was fighting for self; Philip was
lighting for another.

" So far as I am concerned, they can
have the treasure, and welcome," Philip
told himself. " I've had the fun of find-
ing it, and building a house with it.
The only thing is, I hate to have them
tear down that house, especially now
that a lady owns it. I'll ask Verina."

" Mis-ter Sand!" cried a clear voice
down the beach.

He turned. There she was standing
in the doorway in the early sunlight.
His heart leaped, as it will do in a lover
when he sees his love of a morning. But
instantly the shadow came back, and he
said to himself :

"No! "

" My name," he remarked lightly, as
he came trudging through the sand to-
ward her, " is eminently apt. Coupled
with my commendable ambition to kill
a pig, you might call me Sand-Hog."

" Your other name is Philip, is it
not?" she inquired evenly.

462

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

''Yes — it's Philip," he said a little
unsteadily. " And your other name is
Verina, isn't it? "

" Yes — Verina."

" Well, I have decided to call you
Philip," she said quite steadily.

" I hope the decision was not arrived
at by any loss of sleep? " he said, laugh-
ing.

Then he was sorry he had said it. She
colored, and turned her eyes to the sea.

" You have been very good to me,"
she said. " I will be frank. I didn't
sleep. I heard every sound — every-
thing."

"Oh — did you?" he inquired stupid-
ly. " Then perhaps I need not say any
more. I thought somebody might come,
and somebody did."

" I know. I saw you under the tree — ■
and I was glad."

" Perhaps, Verina, you can tell me
what I should do. Should I let them
have the treasure or — " He stopped.
There was an amazed light in her eyes.

" No ! " she said abruptly. " That is
the one thing I did not understand.
Even if you were very rich, you would
be foolish to yield what is yours. Keep
it, Philip. Fight for it, if necessary."

He stood before her, confused.

" I am afraid you do not understand
my position," he began, but he was in-
terrupted by a crackling in the brush.
" Here' they come— already," he said.
" All right, Miss Harding, I won't give
up — until I have explained. Now for
trouble ! "

The five sailors came along the beach
at a half-run, headed by Mr. Higgs and
Captain Howells. Philip shoved a
hand into his right pocket, and let it
remain there suggestively while he
awaited the enemy.

CHAPTER XI.

The Treasure of the World.

A/f ISS HARDING stood in the door-
***■ way of the golden hut. Philip
stood out on the sand with his face to-
ward the oncoming party, and his hand
ostentatiously clutching something in the
right pocket of his coat.

" Well," said he to Captain Howells,
as the leader halted his men about twen-

ty^ paces from the defender. " I suppose
you've come to talk."

" That's about the size of it," said
Howells doggedly. " Irm a man that
likes to see things negotiated peaceably.
That was why I came to confer with
you this morning."

Philip smiled. The explanation was
obviously meant for the men.

" And what conclusion have you come
to, granting that I refuse to cheat — "

" Now, don't let's have any ill-feeling,
Mr. Sand," interrupted Howells loudly
and hastily. " We want to see fair do
and share and share alike of that treas-
ure. Ain't that so, boys?" he inquired,
turning to the men.

" That's what we want ! " came the
chorus, but Philip was observing closely
and a sly wink between Higgs and the
cockney sailor did not escape him.

" That's so — with a wink," said
Philip coolly. " Well, I agree, so the
wink was unnecessary, Mr. Higgs."

Higgs said nothing, but scowled at
Philip Sand from his stronghold of
numbers.

" You agreeing, then," said Howells,
" there is nothing more to be said, except
this: We — and we're the majority, Mr.
Sand — held council this morning, and
knowing the ways of sailors and trading
skippers, we came to the conclusion that
that treasure ain't safe standing up there
in full view ' of any ship that comes
along — and we certainly hope that a
ship will come along to pick us up."

" Well? " said Philip non-committally.

" What we propose is this, that we
remove the treasure to a safer place and
hide it, and there leave it, saying nothing
about it to the skipper that picks us up,
and coming back for it in a chartered
steamer."

" That sounds very practical," said
Philip. " Only the treasure cannot be
moved at present."

"And why not?" demanded Howells
aggressively.

" You will perhaps admit that I have
a prior right over this treasure. You
will perhaps not admit that any share
which may come to you is purely in the
nature of a gratuity from me. How-
ever. I have already stated my willing-
ness to divide the stuff into nine lots,
but I have no intention of doing this

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

463

until it suits my convenience, or, rather,
the convenience of the lady to whom I
have temporarily loaned the use of the
treasure as a house to live in."

" We can build another house," put
in Higgs promptly.

" I wish to hear nothing from you,
Mr. Higgs," said Philip. " In fact,
when it comes to the division of the
treasure I think I will divide your share
among decent men. What have you to
say, Captain Howells?"

" I take it upon me to repeat Mr.
Higgs's suggestion," said the captain.
" We will build another house for the
lady."

"No, thank you," said Philip. " The
lady is very comfortable where she is,
and has been tossed about enough
through you. She will stay where she is."

The reference to the captain's failings
was unfortunate, but Philip was angling
for the captain's trump card, which was
bound to come out sooner or later. It
came out with a burst of temper.

"All right, Mr. Sand. That settles,
your hash," said Howells coarsely.
" There's seven of us and only one and
a half of you. If you don't come to our
way of thinking, smart, and give up that
treasure to them as has the right of
majority, then we'll take- steps to take
it from you, and maybe then we won't
count you and your lady friend in on the
division, keeping it for expenses and
trouble incurred in litigation, as you
might say."

" That, of course, was what you had
your mind made up to," said Philip.
" Well," he added, twisting his hand
around in his right coat-pocket, " my
mind is made up, too. This treasure is
mine — do you understand? — mine! — and
you will hive a share of it only if you
behave yourselves.

" In the meantime, you are on proba-
tion, and my orders are that you get back
where you came from and spend your
days in hunting pigs and cooking them.
Also, I would suggest that you try for
fish. There, are some fine ones off that
pile of rocks. Now, go ! "

He accompanied the last peremptory
order with another suggestive movement
of his concealed right hand. The cap-
tain understood, and it was clear to
Philip that he had informed the others

of the existence of a pistol. Philip
blessed the light that had been too dim
for the captain to have seen the nature
of the old weapon.

" Very well," said Howells after a
pause. " We will give you from now
until to-morrow morning to decide what
it is going to be. If you are not out of
that hut by then, we will take it that
you mean fight, and you can abide by
the consequences."

" I agree-to that," said Philip. " Until
to-morrow morning at this time, Captain
Howells. Good morning ! "

The men turned to go at a signal from
Howells. Philip called after them:

" And, by the way, until to-morrow
morning, any man who comes within two
hundred yards of this spot, will be
shot! "

Howells half turned. He heard, but
made no reply. Philip watched the man
and his little band of underlings out of
sight, then turned to Miss Harding.

" I managed that scene very well,
don't you think? " he said with mock
modesty.

" Yes," she said, absently. " Oh,
what are we to do ? "

" I don't know," said Philip candidly.
" We are in a tight place, Verina."

" What would you do, Philip, if I were
not here, for I know — "

" Now I will explain," he said. " If
you were not here, I would let them
have the treasure and give them a bless-
ing with it."

Again she looked at him in a non-com-
prehending manner.

" Then give it to them," she said in
a disappointed way, " only — You see,
I — My father is very rich, Mr. Sand,
and my safety means more to him than
a ninth share of a treasure, which might
otherwise cost my life. But with you it
is — it may be different — "

" Yes," said Philip, " it is very dif-
ferent. I am very poor — poor in ways
that you do not know. I have no money
and—"

"What is it, Mr. Sand— Philip?
Don't you think it would be better if
you told me. I know there is some-
thing."

" I think it would be better," he said
slowly. " If I were a strong man and
had all life before me, this treasure would

464

THE RAILROAD MAX'S MAGAZINE.

mean everything to me — at least, it
would mean much and the rest would he
easy. I don't mean that being rich
would give me everything my heart de-
sired, but if the treasure were worth any-
thing to me, then nothing else- would be
in vain."

" I'm afraid this is a riddle," she said.

" I am afraid it is — to you," said
Philip, " but I somehow dislike telling
you the truth. . . . But I will.
. . . You see, Miss Harding — I am
not in very good health. In fact — "

He was looking straight at her. He
saw her start and become very agitated.
Her eyes sought his, then roamed over
his sun-tanned face and square shoulders.

"You?" she almost whispered.
•' Why, it is— absurd!"

" There is an absurd side to it, even
to me," he said. " But if an expert in
diagnosis knows his business, my life — "

" Don't ! " she cried. " Don't say it.
It is a lie — it isn't true ! "

" I am afraid it is true," said Philip.
" And even if it isn't, I — I have so
ordered my life that — I have ordered it
to fit the seeming fact."

He stopped. He could see that she
was laboring under a grievous hurt.
He feared to be a witness of her agita-
tion. It meant so much. He could not
fail to recognize openly what it meant,
if he continued to witness it. He turned
away for a little while. By and by he
heard her say:

"What is it— Philip?"

He told her in one word.

" Oh ! " she said, in, a dreary kind of

way.

His back was still toward her. There
was silence. Finally she said:

" Mr. Sand, you need not turn your
back on me like that. Look at me."

He slowly turned around and looked.
She was standing erect with her hands
clasped before her and her eyes were
brimming with unsuppressed tears. Philip
was shaken from head to foot. He came
forward and held out his hand. She
took it, holding it far out from her.

" I just want to say something," she
said, smiling through her tears. " You
are the bravest man I have ever met —
morally and — and physically, too, be-
cause you are not strong. I just w?anted
you to know that — what I think of you,

and — and this. We understand one an-
other, I think — don't we, Philip?"

" Yes, Verina, I think we do, but
don't let us speak about it. I am
afraid — " He stopped a moment — " I
am afraid I am not as strong or as brave
as you think."

He held her hand firmly for a moment,
then resolutely dropped it. Presently he
got his string of pearls with the hook on
it and said :

" Come and see me catch fish. We
have all day to think and talk about
what it is best to do."

She went with him. For hours they
sat in silence, more or less. She was
puzzling over something which he had
said. ^ If he had no money, then how
was it that he was able to charter such a
yacht as she knew the Chameleon to be.

As if in answer to her thought, he
said:

" How strange a thing Fate is. I
chartered the yacht Chameleon with the
idea of hunting for this very treasure
upon which I stumbled.

"If the treasure was of no use to you,
why did you propose to hunt for it? " she
asked.

" I wanted to enjoy life," said he sim-
ply, " and if there is anything of the boy
in you — and I think the boy spirit is in
every living thing, more or less — you
will understand why treasure-hunting ap-
pealed to a man who — "

"Yes, I see," she said- quickly. "But
the treasure would enable you to do so
much more in the way of traveling and
enjoying life — that is, taking it for
granted that is what you Avant and that
you are — not rich."

" I have about five thousand dollar?.''
said he frankly, " and then the yacht is
mine for a year. If the treasure had
failed, I should have turned the Chame-
leon into a filibuster, or a coconut-trader,
or something."

She was silent. She understood now.
Toward dusk they returned from the
fishing. While he built the fire she
prepared the- catch for a meal. He had
decided not to risk his life in the camp
of the enemy, and until matters were
settled they could forego pork.

" That, by the way, is a consideration
in favor of yielding to them," he said.
" We may have to return to a fish diet if

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

465

we don't, unless I should achieve my am-
bition."

Just as they were eating supper, a
whistle came from the beach to the east-
ward. Philip jumped to his feet. A
man stood near the pile of rocks. In his
right hand he carried and waved a stick
with a white rag tied to it.

" A flag of truce ! " JPhilip chuckled,
thinking of the harmless bit of old iron
which necessitated this precaution in ad-
vance.

He himself went out to meet the man,
one of the sailors. The fellow handed
him a folded paper, which bore on the
outside the imprint of the " Kurve-Kut
Korset " and the name and address of
Mr. Theodore Higgs.

The message was written on the inside
of the paper, which was a flattened-our
envelope. Philip read it aloud in a
jocular tone, so that Verina could hear:

" Caicos Island,
■ " August 14th, 19 — .
" Mr. Sand, Caicos Island.

" Dear Sir : — This letter is delivered
by our Mr. Svenson.

" You are our Mr. Svenson," said
Philip to the sailor.

" Ay tank so. I ban call Axel Sven-
son, sir."

Philip proceeded with the letter;
which was obviously the work of the
accomplished agent of the Kurve-Kut
Korset and the No-Kut Klip.

" Without any desire to appear dis-
courteous, our Mr. Svenson is author-
ized to confirm the following:

" (1) That if you will agree to
give up the treasure peaceably and
without resort to firearms, we will
agree to share and share alike, you
and the lady being entitled to a ninth
part of the treasure each, when the said
treasure is valued and converted into
money.

" (2) That if you do not agree to

this, to-morrow morning we will take

— possession of the treasure and eject the

present occupants of the house of

which the treasure is built.

" He got mixed that time," laughed
Philip, turning to Verina. He continued
from the note :

" Furthermore, we know that you

(To be continued.)
6 R R

have no ammunition for the revolver
which you carry, and the cartridges in
it won't go off, because they got wet
coming ashore."

" Very well, Mr. Svenson, tell Mr.
Higgs that his letter is so succinct and
comprehensive and his thoughts so deli-
cately expressed, that I found it un-
necessary to subject you to any cross-
examination."

Axel Svenson scratched his head and
was still scratching it as he disappeared
into the brush.

" Well," said Philip, " it is quite funny,
but now I think it is time we came to a
serious consideration of this — ultimatum.
What are we going to do?"

" Philip," said Verina, suddenly
grave, " I have been thinking. I don't
want any of the horrid stuff for myself.
So it is just you. If you don't need it
— I mean, want it, then let the old thing

go."

" Verina," said he, " I don't want it.
Your safety concerns me more than all
the treasure of the world. You know
that. Before you came, the pigs were
kicking these ingots and jewels with their
hoofs. Before you came I was fishing
for something to eat with a pearl-neck-
lace and a ruby pin. Now that you are
here, I am not going to place any ficti-
tious value upon the husks that the swine
did kick and the fish did eat, as against
your life."

" And your own? "

" Mine?"

" I'm sorry," she said quickly.

He laughed. " Don't mention it. It
isn't worth mentioning. Let's give 'em
the treasure, Verina, and — let me remind
you of something."

He came up to her and put his mouth
close to her ear. Her hair brushed his
lips, and all at once the playful spirit
had borne him into the depths of sweet
pain.

" There's more treasure — "

He meant to say that there was more
treasure in the cave to which they would
retreat, but his tongue stuck. All at
once he was only conscious of the near-
ness of her face. And to make matters
worse, she divined the cause of his
stopped utterance. She suddenly turned
and slipped her arms around his neck.

Christmas On a Flooded

Track.

BY CLARA MORRIS.

THE TRUE STORY SERIES. There are few situations in life
from which some comfort cannot be derived. Two full houses and
many things of Christmas cheer were waiting for Miss Morris, but
the flood was unrelenting. Only one consolation "remained, but the actress
made the best of it. She gathered what comforts she could about her, and —
she did not act.

When the Distinguished Actress Found Herself Far from the Applauding

Crowds That Paid to See Her, She Clothed Herself in Philosophy

and a Pink Wrapper and Had a Merry Christmas.

TRUE STORY, NUMBER THIRTY- NINE.

HRISTMAS Eve, and the
rain was falling. The per-
formance was over, and,
as we were to travel the
rest of the night, I hur-
ried back to my private car.
Two telegrams awaited me. One said :

A box and several parcels from the
East are awaiting you at Fresno.

Presents and letters from home, I
thought, and all the woman in me re-
joiced. The other telegram said :

Your houses are sold out for both
performances to-morrow.

All the actress in me was glad.
I awakened twice during the night.
Both times we were standing still, and

both times I remarked how very quiet
the station was, and that the rain was
falling. When, after a Greco - Roman
struggle with darkness, day dawned, the
rain was still falling, and the train was
just moving ; and, to my surprise, it was
going backward.

Even as I rang for my first coffee, we
came to a standstill. My waiter told me
that a bridge had been washed away, and
they were backing to strike another
branch road, and that we were exactly
on the same spur where our car had been
standing for two days past.

" Oh, no ! That can't be, Andrew, for
there was a good-sized tree in front of
my window, and there was a fence."

" Well, lady, the flood has carried
away the tree and the fences are atl uri-

Series begun in the October, 1906, Railroad Man's Magazine. Single Copies, 10 centt

466

CHRISTMAS ON A FLOODED TRACK.

467

der water and the river has overflowed
everywhere."

I started for the platform, and as I
went I muttered, " The wind blew and
the rain fell," but my black cook eag-
erly interrupted me with: "No, Miss
Clah, de wind didn't blow. De water
carried away decree and de bridge, too."

I stood and looked with amaze-
ment. Nothing but water. The
rain did not fall in lines either
straight or slanting. Literally,
it came down in sheets. No
earth — no sky — j ust water,
water, and an ark — I mean a
car.

The engineer came splashing
to us. In answer to my question
as to the cause of our halt, I
learned that the water had
drowned the engine, and that we
were helpless. The man was not
at the foot of his class in profan-
ity, for in telling this he
" cussed," with perfect impartial-
ity, the engine, the road, the pres-
ident, the flood, various parts of
his own body, introducing little
blasphemous trills of great orig-
inality.

Finally he growled in a lower
tone: " I wouldn't care so much,
if it wasn't for Mamie and the
kid. They've been countin' for
more than a month on my eatin'
Christmas dinner with 'em; and
now they'll have to sit down at
table alone, with a blankety-
blank big turkey, and do nothin'
but sniffle and worry, instead of
havin' fun."

My shock merged into pity for
Mamie and the kid.

Then I had a short, damp in- "joy
terview with my manager, in
which I learned something of
the wonderful elasticity of the human
countenance — when it is drawn down-
ward. Poor man ! How I sympathized
with him, for did we not both long for
the receipts of the " two houses that were
sold out "?

And still the rain fell and the flood
rose and the train moved not — hence
more long faces.

I began to understand that my Christ-
mas was to be passed here in this awful

loneliness of water. Well — all right !
I would make the best of it — which I
proceeded to do.

I had the two big lamps lit in my
stateroom. I read the lesson and the
prayers for the day. I pinned on my
pink flannel wrapper the jewel my hus-
band had presented me.

What, a jewel
on a flannel
wrapper ? Mais,
que voulez-vous?
It was Christ-
mas, in a car,
and the car in a
flood. I tied about
my little dog's
neck her new rib-
bon and bell. I
had a hot-water
bag at my slip-
pered feet, and a pile of pillows placed
at my head. Then I cuddled my morsel
of a dog close to my side, and opened
Balzac's " Cousine Bette." And, the dog
eating bonbons and I drinking coffee, I
passed Christmas Day without the sight
of a wreath or a tree, the scent of roast
turkey, or taste of plum pudding. But
— Allah is great, and Mohammed is his
prophet ! I had not acted, and that was
joy enough for me !

STRAINING OLD EAGLE-EYE'S NERVES.

Strong Men Get Pretty Badly Shaken Up by Accidents and the
Antics of Irresponsible Fools.

"TT gives a fellow a queer feeling to

A run into a man," said a locomotive
fireman. " Last summer we were coming
down past Barneveld, on the Rome, Water-
town and Ogdensburg line of the New
York Central, with a clear block before us.

" We were going at about forty miles an
hour, I should say, when all at once 1 saw
one of the milk-station men on a bicycle
shoot out in front of the engine. I ducked,
for I felt sure we were going to strike
him, and when an engine hits anything it's
just as well to get down out of the way of
flying splinters, glass, and whatever you
hit. But nothing happened. I bet the
pilot didn't miss him by two feet.

" It is curious how people will get right
in front of a train when it is coming down
upon them lickety-bang. We were ring-
ing our bell and had blown our whistle,
but this fellow thought he could get across
all right, and, as it happened, he did. You
may be sure, though, that he was limp and
shaky when he realized what a close call
he had.

" As I say, it makes a fellow feel queer
to kill a man. Some years ago we killed
one at Richfield Junction. I don't want
to remember the details. We killed another
near Sherburne. I was on the Delaware,
Lackawanna and Western then, and every
railroad man on that division knew that
this particular fellow was going to get

killed some day. He was a habitual drunk-
ard, and every day that we came along he
would be driving home and cross the track
in front of us.

" When he had crossed just in front of
the engine he would turn around and
laugh at us. It was hard on our nerves,
you may be sure, for we knew that some
day he would surely get it.

" Well, one day he did get it. He mis-
calculated the distance and speed and our
engine flung him a hundred feet. The
company didn't have to settle, for every
man on the line knew of his idiotic actions.

" But it is awful to kill a man. Engi-
neers lay off for months to recover their
lost nerve after they have run over some
one. Sometimes they never fully recover, and
might just as well give up their jobs, for
they will do more damage to the company
in the way of putting brakes out of busi-
ness and smashing cars than they can earn.

" When an engineer has once lost his
nerve every little thing scares him, and he
slams on the emergency brakes at every
shadow. They shake up passengers awful-
ly and are likely to injure them.

" The engineer with shattered nerves is
usually put on a slow freight, or on a
switching-engine. Sometimes in this way
they gradually get back to their normal
condition and are put on to passenger-trains
again."

RAILROAD OPERATED BY HORSES.

ONE of the smallest railroads in opera-
tion is the Fulton and Oswego Falls,
in New York. It is operated by horses.
Its length is one mile.

Its stock is valued at $15,000; it is mort-
gaged for $15,000.-

Last year its gross earnings were $2,602;
operating expenses, $2,689; deficit, exclusive

of taxes and fixed charges, $87; number of
employees, including officials, 3; aggregate
salaries and wages, $1,305.

The line extends from Fulton to Oswego
Falls, and its only new feature in years is
a new whisk-broom hanging in the single
car that is operated, presumably for the
convenience of passengers.

468

HE LOWERED HIS TAIL AND SPURNED THE
CINDERS WITH PRODIGIOUS LEAPS.

NOT ALWAYS TO THE SWIFT.

BY M. J, PHILLIPS

Telling of a Race That Was Run With-
out Cause and Won Without Glory.

ACING again, aren't they,
Timmie? "

" Yes ; and Jim's ahead,
I'll bet!"

Kathleen Donovan,
daughter of Widow Dono-
van, who runs the railroad-men's board-
ing-house at Antioch, and lame Timmie
Cassidy stood together on Washington
Street. Near by, separated by a scant
sixty feet, run the Chicago and Antioch
— better known as " Aunty " — and the
Chicago Great Divide.

Far down the tracks, from each swiftly
rushing train, came the long, single blast
of the station whistle. On its heels
echoed the crossing-signal of Barry Fox,
of the Aunty. Too-oo-oot, too-oo-oot,
toot-toot! Two long and two short, and
then, after an appreciable pause, a single
sharp Toot! That one was for Kathleen
Donovan's ears alone, and meant — she
knew what.

Jim McGuire, engineer on the Great
Divide train, blew for the crossing also.

469

He gave the signal, the prescribed four
blasts. But before completing the final
shrill note he eased up on the cord a bit,
and the screech became a tone lower.
The result was comically like a signal-
whistle of the village lad to his sweet-
heart. That was Jim's way of saying —
the same thing that Barry has said.

Grr-rr-rrammmm — sxmrr-rrr-rr ! They
had dashed over Washington Street neck
and neck in a cloud of" dust. Only ex-
perts like Kathleen and Timmie would
have noted that Jim had won the twenty-
mile brush by the length of his pilot.

The Great Divide line was on the
north, so Jim whizzed by within a few
feet of them, his left hand on the " air,"
his right forearm resting on the sill of
the window-cab. He swayed easily in his
seat as the big engine and its attend-
ant coaches rocked past amid swirl and
clatter.

Jim's blond head never turned, nor did
his glance waver from- the shining rib-
bons of steel. But he saw them. His

470

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

right hand came up in the semimilitary
salute of the railroad man. Timmie re-
sponded by yelling at the' top of his
voice and waving his crutch. Timmie's
dog Spot — a big, curly, black fellow,
with an irregular white patch on his side
— gamboled and barked.

As for Kathleen, she smiled non-com-
mittally. Before Jim's engine had shut
off the view, she had .seen Barry Fox
raise his hand in salute, too. Still smiling,
she turned and went into the house.

" Aunty " and the Great Divide have
the same terminal in Chicago, their trains
coming and going on neighboring tracks.
Outside the city they diverge, " Aunty "
swinging to the south, and the Divide to
the north.

At the widest point to this divergence
it is thirty miles from rail to rail, as the
crow flies. From there, however, they
gradually edge back, and at Tiverton
they come together again. Tiverton,
Owendale, Buckley, Antioch — the sta-
tions are scarcely a block apart in all
of those places, and the tracks lie side by
side for the whole twenty miles.

The passenger-trains which leave Chi-
cago at twelve o'clock, noon, on the rival
roads are due at Antioch at five o'clock
that same afternoon. Antioch is the first
division-point, one hundred and thirty
miles from the city. The running-time
between Tiverton and Antioch is identi-
cal. So, of course, they race.

Racing is strictly against the rules of
both roads. Orders condemning it are
issued at least one each year from head-
quarters. In theory everybody frowns
upon it ; in practise everybody secretly
approves of it. The train-crews, as they
take the curves on the inside wheels in
a mad endeavor to beat that thunderbolt
on the other track, will explain sturdily :

" We ain't racin'. We don't care any-
thing about them. But we got our own
time to make, ain't we? " And, of course,
that is unanswerable.

But conductor and brakemen hustle off
passengers, and the baggageman tosses
out baggage as though it burns his fin-
gers. The fireman hangs half-way out
the cab-window to catch the " Go-ahead "
signal the instant it's made. That is the
way they act between Tiverton and
Antioch.

Even a division superintendent has

been known to look at his watch twelve
times in the twenty miles, even though
he studiously avoided looking at the train
at his elbow. His handing the engineer
a cigar at Antioch had nothing to do, of
course, with their beating the other fel-
low two train-lengths to Washington
Street.

II.

Widow Doxovan^s boarding-house is
so close to the tracks that it shakes and
rattles to the hourly thunder of passing
trains. With ambitious firemen and griz-
zled engineers talking shop about her
table day after day, she knows more rail-
roading than a roadmaster. She was
peeling potatoes for supper when her
daughter entered.

"Racin' again, were they?" she que-
ried, as Kathleen laid down the brown-
paper parcel of beefsteak and began pre-
paring a " batch o' biscuits " for the
oven.

" Yes, and Jim McGuire won."

" They'll race themselves out of a job,
that pair," frowned the widow. " Dan
McGann says 'tis a touch of high-life to
ride after thim. He says the coaches do
be rockin' like a sea-goin' tug. If they
ever do pile up he says the whole thing
c'n be sold for toothpicks and horseshoe
nails."

" My, my, and Dan McGann himself
such a slowpoke ! Didn't he get thirty
days for scaring the new general manager
half to death with Nine-ninety-four?
Dan McGann, indeed!"

Mrs. Donovan made no reply to the
indignant query. Instead, she shoved
her steel-rimmed glasses high on her
forehead with the knuckle of her fore-
finger, and regarded her daughter fixedly.

" Kathleen," she said at last, " all this
racin' and whistlin' is on your account.
Why don't you marry either Jim Mc-
Guire or Barry Fox, and have done wid
it? Sure, they're both dead in earnest,
and dyin' for a chance to talk serious
to you."

Any normal-minded man would agree
that marriage would be a fascinating
question to discuss with Miss Kathleen.
She had the beautiful gray eyes of her
race, and her rippling hair was the color
of the horse-chestnut, newly released
from its husk.

NOT ALWAYS TO THE SWIFT.

471

Two or three
freckles perched
themselves near
the end of a pert
little nose. Her red
lips had the upward
quirk at the corners
which marks an op-
timistic nature and
a clear conscience.
She had bared her
plump white arms
nearly to the shoul-
ders. The elbows,
where they say an
ill - natured person
is betrayed by acute
angles, were as
dimpled as a baby's
cheek.

" Sure," smiled
Kathleen, as she
gave the dough a
final pat, prepara-
tory to cutting it
up, " neither has
asked me, and
it's three years to
leap year."

"If you'd give
one or the other a chance, they would,"
retorted her mother, more mixed on her
pronouns than her reasoning.

" They're both nice boys, and see how
bad one would feel if I -married the
other."

" See how bad they both feel now.
Sure, they sit and glare across the table,
scarce eatin' a mouthful. They race like
wild min three times a week, till I'm
afraid a train will come bouncin' off the
track and right through me house. You
should stop this shilly-shallyin' and
marry one of them."

Kathleen turned about and wagged a
floury finger impressively. ." Mother,"
she said, in a deep and measured voice,
" I will marry one of them before — be-
fore twenty years from to-day."

She laughed so roguishly at the at-
tentive face that her mother had turned
upon her that Mrs. Donovan smiled in
spite of herself. Then the widow said :
" Aw, go on wid you! " and attacked the
potatoes with renewed vigor.

Meanwhile, Timmie Cassidy and the
faithful Spot waited for the coming of

Jim McGuire. For
Jim was Timmie' s
hero.

Sometimes Barry
Fox tossed Timmie
a dime on pay-day.
But Jim was more
free with his
money. And, be-
sides, every other
evening, when the
engine was in the
roundhouse, the lit-
tle cripple was
hoisted to the engi-
neer's shoulder for
a ride to his own
door.

It was only a
step, to be sure.
He lived next to
Donovan's, and he
never went farther
than the tracks to
wait for Jim, but
an hour's ride in
the finest automo-
bile in Antioch
could not have
made him happier
than the brief journey on Jim's shoul-
der.

Really, it was quite an adventure.
Spot carried Timmie's crutch in his teeth,
and walked ahead of them with great
dignity. Timmie needed both his hands,
you see, to cling to his steed. One thin
little arm went round Jim's neck ; the
other clutched his head. Then, when he
had placed Jim's cap, much too big for
him,, on his own' head, Timmie would
order briefly, " Buck! "

And how he did buck ! It took con-
• siderable horsemanship to maintain his
place while Jim pitched and kicked and
snorted, to say nothing of tickling a
fellow in the ribs occasionally, which
surely no self-respecting saddler ever did
before.

-Those rides were bright spots in the
life of Timmie, who couldn't play ball
with the other boys on account of his
twisted limb. They made J'im chief
among Timmie's heroes.

Not that he didn't have other friends,
though. There was Kathleen, who w£s
always petting him ; and Mrs. Donovan,

WHY DON T YOU MARRY EITHER JIM MCGUIRE
OR BARRY FOX ? "

472

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

who had a way of inquiring gruffly if he
were hungry, and then stuffing him with
choice bits from the boarders' table.

And Spot! Why, he couldn't get
along without Spot. The dog always
listened with grave comprehension while
Timmie detailed at length what he in-
tended to do when the doctors fixed his
leg so he could run and skate like other
boys. Harnessed to a little red cart,
Spot drew him about for hours at a time,
and always slept at Timmie's feet at
night.

This evening Timmie's steed was
strangely docile. The
jouncing and tickling
that usually left him
helpless with laugh-
ter were missing. Al-
most in silence Jim
swung the crippled
lad to his shoulder,
and after a few half-
hearted bucks set
him down on his own
step. And Timmie,
with dark moods of
his own to live
through, understood
that something was
wrong, and asked no
questions.

III.

A good deal was
wrong. J im was
ashamed, and furious-
ly angry — ashamed of
himself, and angry
with Barry Fox.

The engineer of the " Aunty," smart-
ing under the defeat which Kathleen had
seen administered, waited outside the
Divide roundhouse on purpose to quar-
rel. And they had quarreled. No blows
were struck, because Barry, big as he
was, thought it best to speak no " fight-
ing " words. But he had badgered Jim
into a dispute over Kathleen.

That was why Jim was ashamed; that
the girl he loved should become, even
though not named, the subject -of bicker-
ing between them.

He felt that he was as much to blame
as Fox. He should have walked away
and refused to quarrel. Thus he ..would

NEITHER HAG ASKED ME.

have avoided the proposal Fox had made,
namely, that they race the three " out "
trips next week, Tiverton to Antioch, the
loser of two heats to change boarding-
place and relinquish all claim to Kath-
leen.

Not that Jim feared the outcome of
the race, but to bargain for dainty,
bright-eyed Kathleen seemed ignoble.

" It's a wonder he didn't want to shake
dice or play seven-up for her," growled
Jim to himself. " And I was so mad,
I'd been fool enough to take him up.
Racin' ! Racin' for as nice a little girl
as — as ever wore tan
shoes. Timmie Cassi-
dy's Spot has more
decency than that."

Barry did not come
home to supper. He
was taking the edge
off his feelings at the
corner saloon. Jim
ate about as much as
the canary, said
" Yes " and " No "
three times, and
slipped out of doors
without a look at
Kathleen. Whereat
Mrs. Donovan, put-
ting two and two to-
gether, turned re-
proachful eyes on
her daughter and
grumbled all the eve-
ning about " racin'."

It was Saturday
night, and, by tacit
consent, the rivals
kept out of each
other's way over Sunday. They avoided
opportunities to race going into Chicago
on the seven o'clock trains Monday morn-
ing. But each spent an extra two hours
at the roundhouse in the city Monday
afternoon, preparing for the first race
Tuesday.

For now that the bargain was made,
though his cheeks burned when he
thought of it, Jim did not dream of
repudiating it. That would not be the
way of a man with red blood in his veins.
He would make the race. That was the
thing to do. And if Fox beat him —
well, he'd have to go some, that's all.
McGuire did not underestimate his

NOT ALWAYS TO THE SWIFT.

473

rival, for Fox was a good engineer. He
was a dark, curly haired fellow, with
massive shoulders, and he understood his
engine as a good engineer should.

But McGuire, blond and boyish, was
also, in the idiom of the road, "some
engineer." He pulled . levers and tapped
valves with the loving delicacy of a mas-
ter drawing harmony from a violin, but
his locomotive ran like a scared deer.

The races were to be " luck o' the
road." That meant an even start out of
Tiverton, and take your chances from
there to Antioch. And luck, in so short
a series, would play a large part in the
final result.

Tuesday morning there was more care-
ful grooming in two smoky, noisy Chicago
roundhouses. Later, as each engine rat-
tled through the wilderness of tracks and
jolted over scores -of switchpoints to the
station, its driver smiled confidently.

They pulled out of Chicago on the
minute, and Fox whistled for Tiverton, a
trifle under four and a half hours later,
on the second. Then he waited ten
minutes, tinkering with a wedge and
making ingenious excuses to his con-
ductor, before the Divide train rolled in.
Jim had been compelled to pick up four
extra coaches down the line. They were
bound for the repair-shops at Antioch.

Jim made a game fight, but the extra
weight of the limping coaches was too
much for him. Barry beat him to Wash-
ington Street, although he almost ran
the wheels from under his cripples, and
tore into Antioch with three hot boxes
blazing.

IV.

That night, at supper, Fox was
flushed and in boisterous spirits. Tim-
mie had a famous ride, to judge by his
squeals of laughter, and McGuire came
in quiet but cheerful. Kathleen looked
at both of them queerly. Mrs. Donovan,
who had noted the hot boxes, shook her
head doubtfully.

Thursday's race was a hollow victory
for Jim. Barry could take small com-
fort from the fact that a show-troupe had
held him at Buckley. He would have
been beaten without that.

Came Saturday and the final heat.

Each pulled into Tiverton about five
minutes late, which was well. The regu-

lar schedule was likely to be too long
that day.

As the locomotives came to a panting
halt on each side of the old union sta-
tion— it has since been torn down — the
engineers were on the ground simulta-
neously. They oiled round, tightened a
nut here, felt a bearing there — girded the
loins of steel for the home-stretch.

The baggage was unloaded. The pas-
sengers streamed off and on. Joe Barry,
of the Divide, and Wish Sullivan, of the
" Aunty," came out of the depot with
their orders, chatting amiably together.
Each handed a yellow slip to his engi-
neer. Each looked at his watch, and
snapped it shut. Their warning call of
" All-11 . abo-oo-oard ! " blended. Each
right hand shot up in s'ignal. They were
off!

The passengers settled themselves in
their seats with pleased animation.
There was going to be a race, all right.
Ghuh, chuh, chuh, said the engines at
first ; then, as they gathered speed, chuh-
chuh, chuh-chuh, chuh-chuh!

The engineers " opened them up " a
little more, and the firemen in the rival
cabs watched the steam-gage anxiously.

Barry's load was a little the lighter,
and, besides, his engine picked it up
more quickly. He led during the three-
mile run to Owendale. Conductors and
brakemen were off at that hamlet before
the wheels stopped turning. Sam Hol-
lis, baggageman on the Divide, roared
terrifyingly, while the air brakes were still-
whistling, and shoved a big sample-trunk
at the agent before that astonished indi-
vidual could bring up a truck to re-
ceive' it.

The " Aunty " had one passenger to
alight, a little old lady. Now, little old
ladies are likely to be dim as to sight and
doubtful and hesitant as to car-steps.
Rather than see her waste precious sec-
onds, Wish Sullivan picked her up gently
as she stood on the platform, walked nim-
bly down the steps, and set her down on
the cinders. When she had caught her
breath sufficiently to say, " Well, sakes
alive ! " he was waving a smiling good-
by from the rear platform of the receding
train.

The five miles to Buckley was up
grade, and they thundered along, neck
and neck, every foot of the way. Mc-

474

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Guire managed to make up the two car-
lengths he had lost, but that was all. It
was a brief stop at Buckley, and again
the conductors waved "*Go ahead " at al-
most the same instant.

McGuire had a good fireman, and the
safety-valve was popping under a full
head of steam. Because his machine was
a slow starter, the blond engineer needed
every foot he could get. He turned on
the sand, and drew steadily backward on
the lever.

The big drivers spun round in the
sand, shooting sparks like a blacksmith's
forge. Then they bit into the rails, and
the train fairly leaped ahead. Fox got
no advantage in that start. Ahead were
twelve straight, level miles — and no stop
till Antioch !

Away they went, the smoke streaming
in tattered billows behind, the cinders
drumming on the roofs of the coaches
like hail. The two big locomotives
rocked and pitched as though they would
leap from the track.

The firemen, sweat streaming from
their faces, scattered coal craftily over the
globing furnace of the fire-box. A shov-
elful too much in any spot might mean
temporary smothering of the fire there
and consequent loss of time. And steam
was needed now.

Fifty - five, sixty — even sixty - five —
miles an hour, the flying wheels spurned
the steel pathway. And up on the right
side of each huge boiler sat a grim-faced
man, still " pounding 'er on the back," in
railroad vernacular — coaxing each ounce
of steam into play, each thrust of the
piston into more effective action.

Four miles were gone before condition
began to tell. McGuire's engine, han-
dled habitually with consideration, began
to creep ahead. It had never been racked
as Fox, in black fits of temper, had some-
times racked his by savage stops and
starts. Now Jim was repaid; his en-
gine steamed more easily.

Five miles, and Fox had lost a car-
length, despite the efforts of himself and
his fireman. Six miles, and he was two
car-lengths in the rear. Eight miles, and
his pilot was lapping the rear platform
of the Divide train. Ten miles, and he
had slipped back until he was pounding
along a hundred and fifty yards behind,
hopelessly beaten — -or so it seemed.

A mile out of Antioch, McGuire
reached for the whistle-cord. He lin-
gered on the long, single blast a moment
as he sighted a moving speck alongside
the track. A dog — a black dog, with a
white patch oh his side. Timmie Cassi-
dy's dog, of course.

Dogs do foolish things sometimes —
even as do their masters. Spot's evil
genius tempted him just then to a foolish
act. He looked over his shoulder, and
saw the flying train. As if challenging
it to a race, he leaped into the center of
the track and sped away homeward, a
living streak of black and white !

With an imprecation on the playful
Spot, the Divide engineer jerked the cord
viciously, sending out a volley' of short,
shrill toots. He knew that unless the
dog gave up this dangerous game he
would be overtaken and cut to pieces
within two hundred yards.

And Spot, every idea driven out of his
silly head by the urgent alarm, felt his
playfulness of a sudden changed to mad
panic. There was nothing to do but run
and run and run.

He lowered his tail, and spurned the
cinders with prodigious leaps. A single
bound sidewise in either direction would
have ' carried him to safety. But he
strove only for Washington Street — and
Timmie.

Jim McGuire ground his teeth and
strained his whistle-cord almost to the
breaking-point. Shutting off was out of
the question, of course. Barry Fox was
right at his heels.

The slightest reduction of speed meant
that the "Aunty" train would nose him
out of the race — and Kathleen. Spot
could be replaced — he would buy Timmie
another dog —

Then, quite of its own volition, a pic-
ture flashed into Jim's mind : Timmie
waiting at the crossing for his homeward
ride", the thin little face aglow, the thin
little arms uplifted, the pitiful, twisted
leg dangling, and Spot carrying the
crutch — Spot — Timmie' s dog !

With something between an oath and
a groan, he closed the throttle with a
snap, turned on the sand, and applied the
air. Bump ! The" train slackened with
a suddenness that almost threw the pas-
sengers from their seats. The cars
bucked and jumped. The rails squealed

NOT ALWAYS TO THE SWIFT.

475

evilly as the wheels slid along, clamped
by the whistling air-valves.

At that precise moment common sense
returned to Spot's addled brain. With
the pilot but a few yards from his tail,
he ^sprang far to
the right, and
rolled over and
over down the
steep grade — un-
hurt.

Instantly, the
blond engineer
threw everything
wide open again,
but it was too
late. The brief
loss of momen-
tum was fatal.
While Fox grinned
triu m p h antly
at McGuire's fire-
man, the "Aunty"
flashed by in a
cloud of dust and
smoke.

By ten o'clock
that night Mc-
Guire had com-
pleted his packing
and was ready to
.move. He had de- THE LITTLE CRIPPLE
cided to put off engineer's

the hour of em-
barrassing explanation as long as pos-
sible. It was necessary, too, to frame
up a plausible story against the coming
of that hour. There was no real hurry.
He would tell Mrs. Donovan Sunday
night, just before the wagon came for
his trunk.

The Donovan house has a veranda
around three sides of it, well screened by
wild-cucumber vines. When Jim came
down to get a breath of air — for the
night was warm — he gravitated by in-
stinct to the side next the railroad- His
sigh as he dropped into a rustic chair was
answered by a rustle from the hammock
in the darkest angle of the porch.

." Good evening," he ventured.

" Good evening, Mr. McGuire," came
a low voice in response.

The " mister " stung like a blow. It

had always been " Jim " before. Oh,
well, if she were going to rub it in — ■ He
arose.

" I didn't know there was any one

here," he said stiffly, showing his feelings.

But her next

words arrested his

footsteps :

" So you're go-
ing to leave us? "
Going to leave
them — how did
she know ? He
had told no one —
had not mentioned
the significance of
the race to a soul.
Had Barry asked
her already? And
been accepted?
They had laughed,
undoubtedly, over
the luck of the
road that had
beaten him. Well,
let them laugh !

" Yes," he said
shortly.

" Where to, if
you care to tell? "
" To — to Mrs.
Masterson's."

He hadn't real-
ly decided, and
that was the first
name that came to
him.
" Indeed ! " The tone was frigid.
Mrs. Masterson had a daughter — a girl
about Kathleen's own age. " Why are
you going there? " with the slightest pos-
sible accent on the '.' there."

" It's — it's nearer the roundhouse," he
stumbled.

" Yes — half a block. That's one rea-
son. Nellie Masterson is another, I sup-
pose. And you lost the race! "

She was sitting up in the hammock
now. Into her voice, during that last
sentence, had crept a new, thrilling tone.
Tt drove Jim to sit down again.

But when she continued, the thrill had
become buried beneath tons of ice.

" You raced for me — me, Jim Mc-
Guire, as though I was the ten-dollar bill
the company gives every month to the
man who saves the most coal. You and

WAS HOISTED ON THE
SHOULDER.

476

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Barry Fox ! Who gave you the right,
Jim McGuire? "

Her voice trembled and broke toward
the last. Jim writhed in his chair in
remorse and compassion. He opened his
mouth to speak, and closed it again fu-
tilely. It was all true, every word of
it. What was there to say in defense of
their conduct? Nothing!

" Barry Fox's fireman told me this
evening," she said, her voice under con-
trol again. " Barry boasted over his
' victory.' What must folks think of me,
Jim McGuire? Me so cheap that I must
be raced for by two of my mother's board-
ers ! "

He sprang to his feet again, clenching
and unclenching his hands. " For God's
sake, Kathleen," he implored, " don't

feel so bad about it. I'd give my life to
keep sorrow from you. I know I was a
fool ; but I didn't mean to hurt you."

She was crying softly now, and the
sound wrenched his heart-strings. He
dropped on his knees beside the ham-
mock.

" Kathleen, darling! " he pleaded.

Apparently the girl took no notice of
the endearment, the first he had ever ut-
tered to her.

" You might have found out," she said
in a small, forlorn voice, " wh-whether
it was n-necessary to — to race or not ! "

With a little cry of love Jim gathered
her into his arms.

- Barry Fox has been known to express,
on occasion, his amazement over the fact
that the race is not alwavs to the swift.

FRANCE'S FAMOUS RECORD RUNS.

How the Land of the Lily Has Made Marvelous Strides in Railway
Speed in the Past Few Years.

FRANCE has a law against the running
of trains at more than seventy-five
miles an hour in any part of the country,
but somehow this has not prevented the
French roads in very recent times from
breaking all previous European records.

Heretofore Great Britain has been con-
sidered the home of the fastest and safest
railroading, but France is rapidly winning
first place in the former respect, at least ;
and this notwithstanding the fact that down
to very recently the French railroads have
been notoriously slow, compared with Eng-
lish and American roads, and that the road-
beds were, and still are, in a poor con-
dition.

The sudden burst of speed on French
roads has come about through the, stub-
bornness of French manufacturers. Sure
of their home trade, they refused to enlarge
their plants or work overtime so as to
supply the , government railroads and the
Orleans Company with engines, and these
patrons immediately transferred their pat-
ronage by ordering locomotives of the At- j
lantic type from America. *

They had had their eyes on these engines
for a long time, envying their speed and
strength. A good and fast engine wants a
good and substantial road-bed, as well as
other important accompaniments. These

trifles the French thought they could over-
look, and the result was. a disaster, which
permanently curtailed the speed ambitions
of two roads, the Orleans and the Midi.

But within a year French roads were
going some. The Sud express, between
Bayonne and Dax, was averaging fifty-
seven miles an hour, the sixty-seven miles
between Morcoux and Bordeaux was tra-
versed in sixty-three minutes, and the whole
jburney, from Paris to Bayonne, was at an
average of fifty miles an hour.

The Paris-Lille express makes what is
said to be the fastest time for the distance
in the world, the hundred-and-twenty-mile
run from Paris to Arras being accom-
plished in one hundred and seventeen min-
utes, or at the average rate of sixty-one
and a half miles an hour.

Again, the Paris-Amiens train is the
fastest of its distance in the world, making
the eighty-one miles at the rate of sixty-
three and one-fifth miles an hour.

The Orleans-Tours does its seventy miles
in seventy-two minutes, the Tours Poictiers
cuts away sixty-three miles in sixty-eight
minutes, while the Poictiers-Angouleme
does seventy-one miles in seventy-four min-
utes, and the distance between Angouleme
and Bordeaux, eighty-seven miles, is covered
in ninety-one minutes.

Full Speed Ahead.

The Great Winter Rush Is On, and Orders Are Coming Down the

Line Like Competitive Roads Trying To Cop the

Mail Contract.

THE Vicksburg, Shreveport and Pacific
Railroad, a branch of the Queen and
Crescent route, will erect a passenger and
freight depot at Bossier, Louisiana.

THE Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault
Ste. Marie has awarded a contract
for building two freight-houses at Du-
luth, Minnesota, to McLeod and Smith, of
Duluth.

THE Chicago Great Western has ordered
2,000 steel underframe box cars, 250
steel center sill stock cars, and 200 Rodger
ballast cars from the American Car and
Foundry Company

THE Louisville and Nashville has pur-
chased some additioral land near Lee-
wood, east of Memphi", Tennessee, on
which it is reported the road plans to con-
struct freight-yards.

THE Harriman Lines have ordered 815
Rodger ballast cars from the Ameri-
can Car and Foundry Company. Of this
number 300 are for the Southern Pacific
and 515 for the Union Pacific.

THE Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
is reported to' be in the market for
22,000 tons of tie plates, 12,000 tons of
rail joints, and 700 tons of bolts. Later re-
ports state that contracts for this material
have been let.

THE Oregon Short Line has authorized
the filling in of the gaps in its block-
signal system on the Idaho division. Sixty-

two miles remain to be filled between Nampa
and Reverse, and 136 miles between Bliss
and Pocatello. With these gaps filled in,
the block system will be complete between
Salt Lake and Portland, Oregon.

THE Chicago and Milwaukee Electric
Railroad, Chicago, Illinois, is contem-
plating the purchase of a double-truck cafe
parlor car and three double-truck passen-
ger interurban cars for limited service, five
standard, semi-Empire, interurban double-
truck cars, four motor, eight semiconvertible
trail cars, and one double-truck snow-
sweeper.

•*

IT is announced by the Pennsylvania Rail-
road Company that the general con-
tract for the Greensburg, Pennsylvania, im-
provements has been awarded to the Millard
Construction Company, of Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, and that work is to be started
immediately. Plans for this work, which
will cost upward of $r,ooo,ooo, were pub-
lished several weeks ago.

PLANS have been prepared for a new
roundhouse for the Union Railroad,
which is owned by the United States Steel
Corporation. The new roundhouse will be
constructed of steel and concrete and will
be almost double the capacity of the pres-
ent building. On account of the increased
production of the Steel Corporation's
plants in Pittsburgh, which has resulted in
much heavier tonnage for the Union Rail-
road, it lias been necessary to purchase ad-
ditional locomotives. The new engines are
much larger than those formerly in use,
and for this reason the new roundhouse

477

478

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

has become an absolute necessity. Work
on the new structure will probably be
started early next spring.

THE New York, Ontario and Western
will build 500 forty-ton hopper gon-
dola cars. These cars will be built at its
Middletown shops. They will be 33 feet
long, 8 feet 11 inches wide, and 5 feet 1
inch high. They will be equipped with steel
underframes, which have been ordered
from the Ralston Steel Car Company, of
Columbus, Ohio. The bodies will be con-
structed with steel frames and wood siding.

THE Houston Belt and Terminal Com-
pany has awarded the contract for
the erection of a passenger station at Hous-
ton, Texas, to the American Construction
Company of that city. The plans for the
building, which were prepared by Warren
& Wetmore, of New York, call for a struc-
ture 250 x 130 feet, with floor and wain-
scoting of marble, electric elevator, electric
lighting, electric fans, telephone service.
Train-sheds will be 2,700 linear feet long,
with steel canopy and tile roofing.

CONTRACTS have just been closed by
the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad,
with the Patrick Farrell Construction Com-
pany, of Cincinnati, Ohio, for extensive
shop improvements at Benwood, West Vir-
ginia, covering an expenditure of $150,000,
and which will practically mean the rebuild-
ing of the Benwood shops complete. The
improvements include : 23-stall engine-
house, with turntable and pit 80 feet long,
oil-house 30 x 58 feet, storehouse 30 x 70
feet, with platform 20 x 30 feet, machine-
shop, blacksmith-shop, boiler and engine-
rooms 60 x 184 feet, with brick stack 125
feet high, sand-house 22 x 94 feet, with
tower 13 x 15 feet, carpenter-shop 35 x 82
feet, material storage platform 25 x 90
feet, shaving-shed 12 x 33 feet, casting
storage platform 38 by 60 feet, pipe, bar-

iron and sheet-metal storage racks, 20 x 38
feet, two scrap-bins, 20 x 42 feet and 20 x 70
feet, respectively, locomotive cleaning plat-
form, 19 x 75 feet. There' will also be in-
stalled a system of water supply and fire
protection, and a complete sewerage system.

THE Chicago and Northwestern has
given out the following information
regarding the 125 new all-steel passenger-
cars which that road recently ordered
from the Pullman Co. and which are now
under construction: "All of these cars
are fully equipped with non-collapsible,
heavily reenforced steel frames, with the
most modern safety vestibules, Westing-
house high speed air-brake equipment, and
the latest improved draft gear. The floors
are laid with a sanitary composition that
adds strength to the car and deadens the
noise of the train. Even the. frames of
the seats are built of steel, and no com-
bustible material enters into any part of
the construction. The new dining-cars
will have features that are of direct interest
to the public. Each car is arranged to seat
thirty-six people, which is six more than
the usual standard, and special improve-
ments have been effected in the arrange-
ment of the kitchen and pantry, which will
insure greater capacity and more prompt
service and at the same time remove all
odors from the kitchen. The xlay coaches
and reclining-chair cars are to be five feet
longer than the. largest cars heretofore used,
and will, in consequence, have greater seat-
ing capacity. The parlor-cars will be of
the most ample dimensions, and the in-
terior fittings and finish will be in accord-
ance with the usual luxurious Northwestern
standard. Special attention has been
given to the sanitary arrangement of all
this equipment and it will all be fitted with
the latest devices for insuring cleanliness
and satisfactory ventilation. The Chicago
and Northwestern will be the first Western
road to provide all-steel, safety, fire-proof
equipment on through passenger-trains.

LAST YEAR'S RAILROAD EARNINGS.

THE gross earnings of the railroads of
the United States for the year ending
June 30, 1909, were $2,437,385,841, according
to the figures compiled by the Bureau of Rail-
way News and Statistics from the reports of
the Interstate Commerce Commission.

The operating expenses were $1,611,927,-
766; taxes, $88,961,475, and net operating in-
come, $736,496,600. The figures for the

year ending June 30, 1908, were : Gross
earnings, $2,424,640,537; operating expenses,
$1,695,101,878; taxes, $83,860,516, and net
operating income, $645,678,243.

The average mileage covered by these
returns in 1909 is 230,099, against 226,121 in
1908, an increase of 3,978 miles. These
figures show an increase of $12,745,204 in
gross earnings and of $90,718,357 in net.

MABEL ON A MOUNTAIN.

BY CROMWELL CHILDE.

Sometimes It Pays to be Snowed In, Even
If It Does Happen on Your Wedding-Day.

OB TAINTOR cursed at the
snow-storm that was settling
down thicker than ever. Any
man would who had a bride
.coming toward him as fast
as steam could carry her.
There he was in Denver, holding down
his job as private secretary to Ephraim
Babbott, president of the Denver and
Western, and she — Heaven knew just
where or how — with this snow growing
into a great white torrent.

To-morrow was to have been their
wedding-day. At 9.13 that morning
Mabel was to have taken No. 4 out
of Glenwood Springs. It would have
come into Denver at 10.35 that night.
The next afternoon, under a bower of
white roses in her sister's parlor, she
was to have become Mrs. Bob.

And now ! No. 4 had left Glenwood
Springs reasonably on time. The storm
had not held her back materially ; though
it was slow running, even with two en-
gines, until, up over a very heavy grade,
she entered the canon of the Grand
River, mounting toilsomely toward the
gaunt gray peaks on the west side of
the range.

The little clock over the secretary's
desk had its hands at four. There had
been no word from the despatcher's
office for two hours. Nervously, Bob
Taintor went over to the operator, just
outside his door.

The click-click, repeated many times

over, seemed to bring Mabel nearer to
him. She had been a telegraph opera-
tor ; in fact, it was only the night before
that she had ceased being one. He re-
membered how pretty she looked the first
time he saw her in an office at Glenwood
Springs. And what a little witch she
was with a key ! It was not so long ago
that he had handled a key himself. By
pure luck, Babbott had happened to run
across him and set him on his feet, in
direct line for promotion. A hundred
a month now, and Bob saw visions of
many things.

There was no need to ask Maguire
any questions. Tick - tick, a message
came, and Bob read it in the clicks of
the Morse:

Manton. Four passed 3.45. Con-
ductor says cannot get much farther.
Going to try to make next station.
Snowfall increasing.

" There won't be a wheel turning
soon," said Maguire. " Not a hundred
and fifty miles west of here, at any
rate."

Restlessly, Bob went back into his
office. It was fortunate, perhaps, that
President Ephraim Babbott was in Chi-
cago, for he would have had a some-
what unfavorable impression of his
young secretary. The young man he
had liked so much, because of his cool,
collected air, was cool and collected no
longer.

479

480

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" I don't — " he began, pacing the
floor worriedly. " No, there can't any-
thing happen. I don't know, though.
By Godfrey, to think of that blessed lit-
tle scamp up there in the cold ! "

He took another turn up and down
the room. He seized a picture from his
desk and took it over to the window.
The thick rush of whirling snow blotted
out all but the very nearest buildings. •

It proved a good guess. At seven
o'clock that night, after countless tele-
phone messages to Elsij, Mabel's sister
— who hourly got more and more wor-
ried, and who bewailed the' white satin
and duchesse lace wedding - gown laid
out on her spare-room bed — the operator
at Ivanhoe was heard from.

He told how No. 4 had manfully
pushed through the desolate storm-bound

THE YARD FORCE SAW ITS BURLY TRAINMASTER GO DOWN INTO A SNOW-DRIFT.

The photograph showed the saucy,
piquant face of a dainty blond girl that
any man might be proud of winning.
Bob groaned as he thought of what was
to have been at half past ten that eve-
ning. He could seem to see her step-
ping from the train in the Denver depot.

" Busk wires Three, due there 4.50
this morning, snowed tip two hundred
feet from station platform," called out
Maguire, poking his head in at the door.
No. 3 was the west-bound Transconti-
nental Express.

"Looks like my wedding to-morrow,
all right, all right, Jim. Four'll get just
about to Ivanhoe, and'll be doing darned
well at that."

bleakness above the timber line, and had
finally been prisoned in huge drifts just
at the tunnel's mouth.

Ivanhoe is a platform and an opera-
tor's shanty — only that and nothing else
— two hundred and twenty miles west of
Denver, so high up in the peaks of the
Rockies that forest fires, snow slides,
and never-ending cold have left only
the grim, bare rocks and a series of
wonderful views for the traveler. From
Glenwood Springs, under the most fa-
vorable of conditions, it takes four hours
for a train to climb the grades, just
sixty miles.

Over the summit of the range, toward
Denver, lies Busk. The ingenuity of

MABEL ON A MOUNTAIN.

481

man was called into play here. Moun-
tain-climbing must come to an end. In-
stead of further twisting and more ser-
pentine coils among the rocks, they
bored the mountain. The Busk tunnel,
three miles- long, is the result. " Ft was
at each end of this that a train was
stalled, that farthest away with the pret-
ty bride-that-was-to-have-been among its
passengers.

No. 4 had five cars — a baggage-car,
a mail --car, a smoker, and two day-
coaches. Old - fashioned Baker heaters
kept the day - coaches and the smoker
reasonably warm. At seven o'clock at
night, when the drifts on the mountain2
side just at the entrance to the tunnel
finally blocked the _ way, everybody was
•still comfortable. The well-filled wood-
boxes made it certain that no one would
suffer for a good many hours.
■ " You know better, man," said Raf-
ferty, the trainmaster, his mustache
icicle-covered after a tour of the yards.
" Get to Ivanhoe ! You couldn't get
fifty miles from here to-night. You're
enough of a railroad man, Bob, to know
when to keep your shirt on. No. 4's all
right. Your little gal's O. K. She's
prob'ly playing bridge whist now with,
some o' those nifty Chicago drummers."
Rafferty did not lose Bob that night.
Until gray dawn — a dawn far grayer
than usual because of the snow whirling
faster and faster — both sat listening to
the tale of train after train coming into
Denver hours and hours late ; and of
others, far away in the mountains, snow-
bound beyond all help.

Not a single wheel, finally, was turn-
ing. But long before midnight the
private secretary had ticked off two mes-
sages to his sweetheart held tightly on
the mountain-top, and received one from
her. Sloan, the Ivanhoe operator, most
obliging of fellows— who had a girl of,
his own and, privately, thought Bob
a prince — had carried the messages
through two hundred yards of blinding
storm to the train and Morsed back Ma-
bel's penciled scrawl :

Don't worry. But you're horrid if
you don't. Isn't it awful! But I'm
just as comfortable as anything. Dear-
est love !

Everybody on the train pooled for a
dinner, the remnants ' of the luncheons
7 RR

which some with wise forethought had
brought. They made a gay little party.
Rafferty was right in part of his guess.
There were two drummers from Chicago
aboard. A manufacturer from Keno-
sha, Wisconsin ; a woman in widow's
black, a Swede ^farmhand, a pair of
prosperous - looking farmers, a German
frau, with two pig-tailed little girls ; a
Denver business man, and a Glenwood
Springs lawyer, spruce in the extreme,
were very much in evidence.

The . wood - boxes still showed brave
heaps of chunky logs. If any one wor-
ried down in his heart, he did not let the
others know. But Simpson, conductor,
after he had fought his way over the
tender and peered at the mountainous
drifts in front — seen through a swaying
curtain of almost opaque white — had his
thoughts.

To the people on the train, to Raf-
ferty, and a certain ardent young man
in Denver, the morning brought a real-
ization that No. 4 was in for it. The
storm had not stopped. Let alone get-
ting out to the foot-hills, it was impossi-
ble to move trains close to Denver.

" Tied up a heap worse, Bob, than we
were last night," said Rafferty at nine.
" Keep your mind easy, though, 'bout
the kid. Jack Simpson's a dandy; you
can trust him. 'Bout this time to-night
you and me'll take stock an' see what
we can do. It's no cinch, though, those
rotaries are goin' to have."

" You're a good fellow, Raff," said
Bob, " but — I must get out. I must, I
tell you. I — "

" How you're goin' to?_" cut in the
trainmaster. " Go out on a rotary?
Try it, Bill. Get aboard. Take the
first one. But, say, wait till you get
stuck in a drift fifty miles from nowhere.
Where'll you be then, hey? Now you
can wire straight to the lady. You can
spoon that way a lot. .Course it won't
be up to a parlor, with the gas down,
a holding one of her little hands. Oh,
I've been there ! "

" Shut up ! " And, to its utter demor-
alization, the yard force saw its burly
trainmaster go clown into a snow-drift,
to be well mauled there by the wiry,
athletic private secretary until he cried
for mercy and promised to devote all his
skill in rescuing Mabel.

482

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

That young lady had had a capital
night's rest. Mabel was never Miss
Worry. She took what came in her sim-
ple, pleased, girlish way. When she had
been given her place as operator in
Glenwood Springs it was the most de-
lightful piece of luck she ever knew.
When Bob proposed she was the most
fortunate girl on earth.

The faithful Sloan made his appear-
ance by eight o'clock. This is the mes-
sage Mabel gave him then to tick off to
the private secretary :

You're not to worry a mite, Bobbie.
(Have you written that all down, Mr.
Sloan?). Warm as toast! Lots to eat!
(Now we zvill have, Mr. Station Agent,
don't you leave that out). Awfully nice
people, especially the Ivanhoe operator,
who's terribly handsome and has big
blue eyes. (Don't you dare get that,
wrong). Now be jealous! (Yes, you
can send all that). Good-by,

BoBSY.

Her little hand reached out for the
pad and pencil that Sloan held.

" Here, I can't talk the rest of it."

She wrote a few words rapidly, then
folded the sheet over. When Sloan got
at his key and started sending, he found
the words below his own were : " And
God bless my boy."

Mabel had taken one of the pig-
tailed German girls to " bed " with her,
cuddling the plump small body close
in the uncomfortable seats. She had
begged the child from its mother, and
by the time she had washed and dried
the two youngsters' faces in the morn-
ing she was a close family friend. When
Mrs. Helmzwitter heard of the balked
wedding plans, and had seen his picture
in the locket around Mabel's neck, she
became enthusiastic, sympathetic, com-
miserating, hopeful.

" Ach, lieberchen, it vill .coom all
right. Such a be-youtiful yunger man.
He is like mine Heinrich vhas, but not
so fat. You vill be von happy mddche?i,
Ach, so romantistic, es ist wie Goethe.
Aber, vill. you t'ink, railroads be so
gute a business as butchering? "

Mabel raised the brightest, proudest
face to her new friend.

"HE IS LIKE MINE HEINRICH, BUT NOT SO FAT

MABEL ON A MOUNTAIN.

483

" Oh, Mrs.Helmz-
witter, don't you
know? Course you
couldn't, though.
Bob gets a hun-
dred a month now
' — a hundred — just
think ! Isn't that a
lot? And it's just a
beginning. He's
going to be presi-
dent of the road
some day, unless
the Pennsylvania
or the Great North-
ern want him first."

" I felt just dot
vay mit Heinrich,"
,put in Mrs. Helmz-
witter, hugging
Gretchen and Hilda
together in one ca-
pacious embrace.
" A voman vants
to t'ink dot off her
man effry time."

It could not long
remain a secret that
a near - bride was

aboard, and congratulations commenced
to shower. It was the Swede farmhand,
however, who first rose to the occasion
and perceived the proprieties. He mum-
bled, " Ay t'ank congrats," awkwardly,
and stolidly shuffled to his seat.

In the bustle about the pretty girl and
amid the flowery speeches of the two
Chicago drummers, thq Denver business
man, and the Glenwood Springs lawyer,
nobody noticed that the Swede was dig-
ging down deep into his clumsy bag.
Nobody even thought of him until his
lanky form edged its way between the
enthusiastic^ drummers.

" Ay vant," he began stammeringly,

" to gif yo' dis. Sophie, she vould say,

' Gude boy, Yonnie.' Ay got it for her."

And he laid in her hands a big, bright

■ breastpin with gaily colored stones.

The bride's eyes filled with happy
tears. Was the whole world as good as
this? Why, it wasn't only Bob who
was a clear. Everybody was that, with
but Bob the nicest of all. She sprang
up and reached out both her hands for
the ." jewel."

" Thank you ! Thank you ! " she cried.

" I DON'T KNOW YOUR ^AME — ONLY PART OF IT

" It's just the most
splendid thing ! I
don't know your
name — only part of
it. I'll call you by
that. It's fine, Yon-
nie—fine ! "

Her hands went
into the big paws
of the Swede, and
held them tight.
Having made his
speech, Yon could
only grin happily.
Clumsily shifting
his feet, he stood
there, one* great
mass of satisfaction.
Cheers embar-
rassed him further.
The passengers
slapped his shoul-
ders vigorously and
shouted: "Good
man, Yon ! You're
all right ! "

" Ay tank she like
it," said Yon, beam-
ing, after the noise
had subsided. But he was not to hold
the center of the stage. The Denver
business man sprang forward.

"Shall he beat us, boys?" he yod-
eled. "No, not for me! He may tie
us, but he can't beat us! I'll bet this
crowd's got sporting blood ! Get busyr
boys ! Get busy! "

He rummaged in his pockets and
dropped back into his seat. In a mo-
ment Mabel was completely deserted.
Every man and woman suddenly became
absorbed in the mysteries of their bags.
The Denver business man was the first
to emerge. He approached Mabel with
a courtly bow.

" There never was a bride on her wed-
ding-day," he said, with a laugh, " who
couTd see her presents straight. This is
a dozen solid silver spoons."

Into her lap he tossed a folded slip
of paper. It was a check drawn to the
order of " Cash."

The woman in widow's black leaned
over the seat with a tiny embroidered
handkerchief done up in tissue - paper,
and she timidly kissed the little bride.
The youngest Chicago drummer had

484

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

made a flying rush for the baggage-car.
He came back on the jump with a
lavender kimono. "Only thing 'good
enough I've got with me," he told her.
" It's from stock, but I'll fix that all
right with the house. You may have to
clean it up a little."

" I'm in builders' hardware," the sec-
ond drummer announced, after an un-~
successful search through his grip.
" Nothing tasty among my truck like
Crawford there's got. But that's easy
to fix." He scribbled on a piece of
paper and handed it over :

One Morris chair for library coming.
P. Kurtz, with J. Salomon & Brothers,
1634 Wabash Avenue, Chicago.

Then the four Italians in the smoker
seemed to understand. If 'they knew
any English, no one could tell it. They
jabbered enthusiastically among them-
selves, went back into the smoker, and
finally returned with four brilliant head-
kerchiefs — a glory of purple, red, yel-
low, and blue.

From his valise the Glenwood Springs
attorney presented a book, fresh in its
original wrappings. The farmers came
up with diffidence. They had been con-
sulting together earnestly. " This has
caught us at a bad moment," they told
Mabel. " We've nothing in our bags
for a lady."

" When you start housekeeping,
though," said the larger of the two,
" every little thing counts."

" At any rate, these'll save your hus-
band some money, and you can spend
that money on fixings for yourself," con-
tinued the other.

They laid before her a safety razor
and a necktie.

Mrs. Helmzwitter produced a knitted
shawl that Mabel at once wrapped
about her shoulders. After much whis-
pering, Gretchen and Hilda shyly ap-
proached. Behind each little back was
a hand.

The little hands came out, and each
held a small dolly. Mabel grabbed and
took into her arms both girls and dolls.

" You darling darlings ! " she cried.

A cold blast, the slam of a door, and
Conductor Simpson blew in.

" Me the Pierp Morgan when it comes
to the eats." he announced. " Trust

your Uncle Jack for the commissariat!
Beginning to get hungry, I guess. Lunch-
baskets pretty empty, and it's nearly
breakfast - time. Boys and girls, we
sha'n't starve. Breakfast's all in shape.
Dinner and supper provided for, too.
What's this?"

He wormed his way krto the group.
By this time Mabel was happily crying.
In chorus, every one explained.

"I'll be swiggered!" said Conductor
Simpson. " So she's a bride — or as
good as one — and Bob Taintor's bride at
that ! Say, the Denver and Western's
got to come in.- Never do for the road
to be left out on this sort of a deal.
Ladies and gentlemen, the president is
not among us. A number of the other
high officers are not. I am the -ranking
official present."

The Denver business man started the
'applause.

" At the moment Ave are a bit handi-
capped," went on Simpson, " but we'll
do the slickest we can." He pulled his
knife from his pocket and detached a
little charm from his watch - chain.
" With best wishes," and he placed it
in her hand, " for the Mrs. Bob Taintor
that is to be.

" And now," continued Jack Simpson,
" this is what I started to tell you. It's
no wayside picnic, this. Not to - day,
nor yet to-morrow, nor for several days
are we going to get out of these snow-
drifts. Some folks might go hungry.
But No. 4 has always been a cracker-
jack. She keeps up her reputation — see?

" Say, I ain't joking. In the baggage-
car there's a slew 0' game-chickens and
a mess 0' bottled beer. Also — -and if
one 0' you ladies is willing to do a mite
0' rustling — there's a bag 0' flour."

It was then that the woman in widow's
black proved herself the most useful.
Drafting Mabel as a helper — " to get
you in practise, my dear " — inside of
twenty minutes she produced over the
Baker heater what Drummer Kurtz
called a most superior article.

Drummer Crawford plowed through
the snow to Sloan's shanty with a three-
cornered note from Mabel, on receiving
which the infatuated operator rashly
handed over all the salt he had and
offered everything in his supply cup-
board.

MABEL ON A MOUNTAIN.

485

" It'll be a ten-day job to get those
people on No. 4 down here, Bob," said
Rafferty late that afternoon, after he
bad thoroughly sized up the situation.
" Early to-morrow I'll get the rotary
moving from Tremlow. Boy, th' drifts
is fierce up there on th' range. You
don't know how bad it is. I'd stay here
if I was you. You ain't a mite nearer
to th' gal, kickin' round in th' snow.
There ain't no chance of getting up to
her, 'less you could fly. I knowv how
hot you feel. I'd be th' same if 'twas
Mamie there. Get busy on clearing the
road. Now's your chance, with th' boss
in Chieagy. Good boy, Bob."

Bob Taintor was no ordinary man.
All that night, alongside Raff, with his
clothes never once off, he worked as he
had never worked before. A new spirit
was given to the force. The morning
saw promise of a road that was to be
clear in record time.

At 'least twice a day, with the tireless
Sloan the angel of the wire, there were
coming in the snappiest clicks gay mes-
sages from Mabel.

Rafferty was right. It was going to
be a ten-day job. Bob had been hoping
against hope. From Tremlow, on the
edge of the foot-hills, they ,sent out a
rotary the second afternoon.

Before dark it was ditched. As a good
railroad man, Bob mustered up his cour-
age and tried his very best not to be
downcast.

On the third morning a second rotary
went out from Tremlow. For a while
the anxious waiters in the trainmaster's
office got good reports. She made Pilk-
ington ; and, as she slowly passed out of
sight from there, she was still keeping
the tracks.

That was all the news that had come
to them for hours.

Then, just at dusk, Leaston, the next

486

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

station beyond, got the trainmaster "on
the wire :

Rotary ditched half a mile east of -
here.

"Our last bag o' tricks?" snorted
Rafferty. " Not by a darn sight. Wait
till you've been a, railroad man twenty
years, young feller. We're up a tree,
that's all. But not for keeps. Didn't
I tell you 'twas goin' to be a fierce job?
Well, it's only a little fiercer than I
thought. Th' next move? Bobby, we're
wirin' th' Santa Fe for a ' Jull.'

" Take 'em 'bout forty-eight hours to
get it here. We sit down and knit, so
far's that end of the road's concerned,
till then. Never see a ' Jull,' son, have
you? Ain't much more than heard o'
one? A 'Jull,' Bob, bores and bores.
It's a pippin."

With every assurance of Raff's that
the " Jull " was a sure thing and was
now coming along the Santa Fe, he
flashed the news to Mabel by the faith-
ful Sloan. The bride read the wire
slowly. Sloan stood waiting her orders,
for they had become a very important
part of his life.

" A week," mused the little bride.
"Poor boy! I couldn't ; no, I couldn't
wait a whole week longer. Mr. Sloan,
do you think I could walk down to the
shanty? "

" The wind's the dead limit," was the
answer.

"But I must! I just must! It's as
important as anything. See here!"

She beckoned to him and whispered
rapidly into his ear.

"By jinks!" shouted the delighted
Sloan. "Great! Bully! You're a — oh,
Miss Mabel, you are — - But you don't
need to come down there. Honest, you
don't ! I'll tap the wire right in front
of this car and run a line right in here.
Then you can — "

She leaped to her feet and put both
her hands on his shoulders. " You're
the best that ever was, next to Bob. I'll
never forget all you've done; and Bob
won't, either." She whispered once more
in Sloan's ear. All you could hear was
the word, "Three."

The Santa Fe wired it was rushing
the " Jull " along, and the reports of its
progress from station to station were

very satisfactory. But the inaction was
telling on Bob. What might have hap-
pened in another half day no one can
tell had not Ivanhoe called him.

The speedy fingers of Sloan hustled
along :

Mr. Taintor, Miss Mabel says for
you to marry her at three, to-morrow.
Bring along the Rev. Mr. Shillaber,
her sister Elsie, and any one else you
like. Have them all in your office at
three sharp.

Don't stop us ! I'm not. crazy ! She
isn't either ! M-a-r-r-y y-o-u, that's
what I said. Perfectly simple and O. K.
I'll run a wire in the car, and she'll use
it herself. Certainly she can. It's her
own suggestion.

Now here's a special message from
her to you: "I've found a way, Bob.
It's elegant. By this time to-morrow
night you'll have a wife. Do just what
Mr. Sloan says. From

" Almost Wife."

Sister Elsie thought Mabel was out
of her mind. Then the romance of the
situation struck her, and she began to
smile.

" It's -perfectly lovely, Bob," she ex-
patiated. " You and Mabel'll remember
it all your lives. And just think that
Dick and I were married in an old par-
lor, with two bridesmaids and two
ushers, with wedding - cake and the
Lohengrin march — just like everybody
else ! "

She swung the baby up and down
until it crowed gleefully. " Don't you
wish, Poppums," she asked it, " that
your mother had been married in such a
killing way as your nice, pretty Aunt
Mabel's going to be? - Yum — yum —
yum! "

" I'll get Dr. Shillaber, Bob," she
went on. " And I'll not tell him what's
up:" Won't the dear old man be sur-
prised? My, I'd be — "

Sloan had eight devoted assistants the
next morning concerning a line with the
first day-coach. Everything at the key
was made ready for the bride's own
. hand. She had asked Gretchen and
Hilda" to be her bridesmaids, and had
even found some white ribbon in her
satchel to give a wedding-day air to their
braids. The men of the party held a
meeting, and unanimously chose the

MABEL ON A MOUNTAIN.

487

"old dr. shillaber won't marry us. did you ever hear of anything so horrid?"

Denver business man to give_ the bride
away, if she were willing.

" My clear," said that gentleman, as
he looked into the blushing face, " may
I have that honor?"

She dimpled as she answered that
she " would be so glad." Then, all
the preparations being complete, they
lunched on the same old menu of same-
chicken and bottled beer.

Proudly Mrs. Helmzwitter and the
woman in widow's black took upon
themselves the functions of unofficial
" mothers " to the bride. As they were
brushing and patting and pulling here
and there, Mabel was called to the wire.

Sh« knew it was Bob, and she shiv-
ered a bit ; for she felt, somehow, it
must beebad news. It was not three
o'clock. Why should he call?

" I'm a silly girl," she said, and she
went trippingly over to the key. Click-
click! rang out briskly. Click-click-
click! Her hands fell despairingly into
her lap.

"What do you think?" she cried.
" Old Dr. Shillaber won't marry us.
Did you ever hear of anything so horrid
and mean? Bob can't make him. Just
listen."

Click-click-click! Click-click! " Bob
says he doesn't know I'm here. He doesn't
really know. He can't see me, can't hear
my voice. He says it may not only not
be Mabel, but perhaps a man this end of
the wire. He can't marry that way."

On her own account she clicked away
sharply, calling out the message she was
sending. " Tell him, Bob, it's me ; that
you know it's me, Mabel — he knows
Mabel — right here and all ready to say
1 yes.' "

Click again from Denver, after a few
seconds' wait. Click once more ! Click-
click!

" Oh, he won't — he won't ! He says
he can't." She turned around and
faced the anxious faces behind her.
" We'll, I—"

"Send a message for me!" angrily

488

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

exclaimed the Denver business man,
pushing to the little bride's side. " ' Dr.
James Shillaber ' — I know Shillaber
well, and I won't stand — I — "

" Wait," said the bride. " Please let
me. Perhaps a minister — I've an idea."

Her dainty fingers fell on the key and
made it fairly scurry. She talked as she
sent :

Bob : Never mind him. Get on your
phone. Send for a justice of the peace.
Try to get John Buckner. He'll do any-
thing for me, I'm sure. Explain it all
quick. Tell him to hurry.

Two minutes— four — five. Then the
nervous clicking again.

"He's coming! He's coming! Bob
says. He answered back, ' All right ! '
Oh! It's hard to wait!-"

She slipped the locket from her neck,
and, opening it, laid the picture of Bob
before her. The Denver business man
put his arm about her shoulder caress-
ingly. She smiled up into his face.

" You're all so good ! " she told him.
" Come here, dears ! " She beckoned
the two tiny German girls to her side.
Their mother petted her arm encourag-
ingly. The clicks began again. The
borrowed father softly stroked her hair.

" John Buckner knows it's me," the
bride called out entrancingly, after she
had clicked back once or twice. " He's

been an operator. I am sure that he can
tell my touch."

Almost dreamily now she followed the
clicking that went on and on, saying a
word here and there that told the listen-
ers how the ceremony was progressing.

Click-click-click! and more came over
the wire. "Will you take this man — "
she breathed. Her fingers instantly
pressed down her sender.

"Yes!"

There was a whirl more of clicks back
and forth. You could seem to tell of
the joy on the wire. The Swede, the
drummers, the German frau, the woman
in widow's black, the farmers, the ele-
gant Glenwood Springs lawyer, Jack
Simpson, and the Denver business man
deliriously congratulated each other.
At length the bride sprang up, her face
aglow.

" Everybody remember to say ' Mrs.
Bob ' now," she laughed gaily. " She's
all here but the wedding-ring. Bob's
bringing that; and John Buckner's com-
ing with him, to see that it's put on right.

" We're going to have the loveliest,
most romantic wedding breakfast, and
you're all invited. Bob and John Buck-
ner are going to follow up the ' Jull.'
They're coming with toboggans and
snow-shoes, and' 11 get us down the
mountain on those. What do you- say
to that?"

STEEL TIES IN EUROPE.

CONSUL H. ABERT JOHNSON, of
Liege, states that in many of the lead-
ing industrial countries of Europe the steel
railway tie is largely being substituted for
that of wood. The consul says further:

When these ties are carefully constructed
in order to meet the demands of the mod-
ern railway traffic, they are in general
favored on account of their superior so-
lidity and power of resistance. Neverthe-
less, their high price, certain defects Jn
form, and the absence so far of a con-
venient and simple mode of attachment have
prevented in a great measure their general
adoption, although they are being more ex-
tensively utilized.

It is asserted that the English manufac-
turers have on the market a tie " profile en
rigole " (grooved section) that sells for
$30 per ton, or less than the present cost

of wooden ties. It is evident, therefore,"
that under these conditions the use of the
steel tie would produce decided economical
results for the railways.

A good steel tie of moderate price is
urgently needed by the railways of Europe,
and the prospect of supplying such a demand
might be worth the consideration of Ameri-
can steel works. The adoption of metal
tiejs is especially necessary in certain locali-
ties to prevent the rapid destruction of
forests. It is estimated that in Europe a
mile of railway line requires about 2,500,000
cross-ties every twelve years, which means
the cutting of an enormous quantity of
forest trees. It is also estimated that the
railways consume something like 40,000,000
ties a year, and this consumption is said
to be increasing at the rate of 3,000,000 a
year.

Letters of an Old Railroad
Man and His Son.

BY HERMAN DA COSTA

No. l.-JIM GETS A JOB IN THE GENERAL MANAGER'S
OFFICE ON HIS DADS OLD LINE.

Some Good Men Run on the Sidings, but There's a Reason Why They

Are Never Able to Pull Out on the

Main Line Again.

From Jim to the Old Man.

EAR DAD : As you see, I
got here safely. I went
right up to the Young
Men's Christian Associa-
tion, and they put me next
* to a boarding-place, and
gave me the glad hand. I pay five dol-
lars a week for all the comforts of home.
The comfort I like best about it is the
landlady. I'm the only boarder she has
got, and she's always running up to look
after me.

I wandered around town the first few
days, looking for a job. That's what you
have to do here. They don't come to
you. I guess I went to as many as thirty
places a day.

Of course, the work was somewhere ;
it was merely the looking for it. But I
tell you, it must be tough luck looking for
work when you begin to lose confidence.
I finally landed a job in the B. and
G. I walked into the general manager's
office, and sat outside the rail for about
fifteen minutes, waiting for somebody to
come to me. People came in and out the
gate, would look at me, and rush on
again ; so I got tired waiting, opened the
gate, and went in. A big fellow was sit-
ting in a corner of the room.

He looked like the boss, so I went over

to him and asked for the general mana-
ger. He asked me what I wanted. I
told him a job, and gave him my name.
He thought for a minute.

" Know anything about stenography? "
he asked.

'-' I studied stenography and typewri-
ting."

" Can you do the work? "

" I think I can."

He frowned. "Are you sure you
can? "

I saw_ what he wanted, so I said :
" Yes."

He made me sit down and take some
letters, and got me to read them back to
him. It's enough to rattle anybody, get-
ting up against that kind of proposition,
and I told him I wasn't sure whether it
was a fair test.

" I am," he says. " We want a man
here who can read his notes in a hurry
when they're wanted, and not have to gal-
lop between his desk and mine, asking
if I said this, and if I didn't say that.
I pay him to do my work. If he needs
assistance on it, then we'll hire his as-
sistant— and let him out."

That was going some, wasn't it? Well,
I made a bluff at it. Then he got me
over to the typewriter. I knew I had him
there, with all the practise I had. He
gave me two or three letters on the ma-

490

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

chine. Then he asked me if I knew any-
thing about telegraphy.

I told him, " A little."

"Are you willing to learn it?" he
said.

" I am willing to do anything that will
get me a job in this office." I was begin-
ning to see what he liked.

He smiled at that, then got me Over to
his desk and dictated about twenty let-
ters to me. Then I had to go to the ma-
chine and write them. When I had fin-
ished, he was out of the office.

I noticed that things were rather mixed
up — letters lying around loose on his
desk, ink-well without ink in it, dust
everywhere. It looked a mess, and I
pitched in and straightened up the desk,
dusted it, cleaned and filled the ink-well,
fixed some clean pens, and sharpened
some pencils for him.

Then I piled my letters in front of his
chair. By that time he came in. He
looked at the desk, looked at me, then
sat down and began running over the let-
ters. I only made about ten thousand
mistakes in those twenty letters. That is,
I was watching him, and he would read
a little way, grab a pen, scratch, lift up,
read a little way again, scratch, read,
scratch.

I wanted to get my hat and get out
before he jumped on me as the rottenest
stenographer he ever saw ; but something
tied me to that chair, and all I could do
was to look miserable. Then he threw
me the letters.

" Address envelopes," he said. Not
another word. I picked 'em up and ad-
dressed the envelopes. There weren't as
many mistakes as I expected, but there
were enough. I took the letters back to
him, and reached for my hat.

" Wait a minute," he says. " We don't
quit work here till five-thirty."

While I was getting that through my
head, he had picked up another letter,
and was starting to dictate it. I grabbed
for my book, and managed to get it. He
gave me about thirty more letters, and I
did a little better with them, for there
wasn't so much scratching when he signed
'em up.

About five-thirty he swung around in
his chair.

" Britt," he said, " the hours are from
eight to five-thirty; practically, we work

until we finish. The pay is sixty dollars
a month. And, listen : you mean well,
but please leave my desk alone. You'll
have enough to keep you busy at your own
work."

I was thinking.

"What's the matter?" asked Connol-
ly. I had heard somebody call him by
that name. "Don't like the work?"

" No," I said slowly, " I wasn't sure —
that is, I was thinking whether I could
do it."

" Leave that to us. I'm paid to find
that out. If you can't, I'll fire you in a
week. And, let me tell you something
else. Be a little more sure about things.
It sounds bad to hear Billy Britt's son
talking like that."

Say, dad, that knocked me in a heap.
I had forgotten all - about your working
for the B. and G.

" I'll take it, and thank you, Mr. Con-
nolly," I said.

"No need to thank me, as long as you
do the work," he says._

It hasn't been as hard work as I
thought. There are about six people in
the office besides Mr. Connolly and my-
self. I'll tell you about them in my next
letter. And, dad, I saw T. F. He's a
six-footer, thin-lipped man, with blue
eyes that look like two dots of steel. I
like him.

I've only made one bad break, so far.
A man from the superintendent's office
rushed in here the other day, and wanted
to know if the 4>each-train was to be run
extra over his division. I wasn't sure,
but I had seen some correspondence about
the peach-train running on 22's schedule,
so I told him to run it as 22.

He grinned, and hunted up the C. C.
Afterward the C. C. came to me and told
me that if I wasn't sure about anything
in future, to ask him first.

Afterward I found out that 22 was an
evening passenger, and if it had run on
22's schedule the fruit would have had to
be re-iced.

The general manager's office is the big-
gest place on the road. I'm glad I got
in it. Every one has to come to us for
instructions. I've noticed lots of things
that could be improved around the office,
and am making up a list 'of them. When
the time looks favorable I'll show it to the
chief clerk.

LETTERS OF AN OLD RAILROAD MAN AND HIS SON. 491

Give my love to mother, and write me
when you get the time.

Your affectionate son,

Jim.

From the Old Man to Jim.

Dear Jim : Your mother and I were

switch-engine does a heap of work, and
the mogul is mighty expensive.

When I used to run 84 up to Wayne
Junction twice, a day, there was a young
fellow in the general superintendent's
office that thought, because they let him
write letters to the superintendent about
delays to fast trains, he was in charge of

glad to get your letter. And we were - the line. Imagined he was the cheese.

HE LOOKED LIKE THE BOSS, SO I WENT OVER TO HIM.

more glad to know that you had landed
a job in the office. Not that the office
is better to learn in than the yard —
eighty per cent of the men that^ever suc-
ceeded in railroading started in the yard
or somewhere on the division — but you
will be able to get in touch with operating
headquarters, and inspected by the men'
who run the road.

One thing, however, you want to re-
member— you are waiting on the siding,
as yet. Because you are in the general
manager's office don't mean you have the
right of way over the entire division.

The average young fellow that gets in
the office that runs things is apt to be-
lieve he's a mogul, and capable of show-
ing things to a switch - engine ; but the

One day Bob sent out a long letter,
demanding a reason for 84 stopping at
Bull's five' minutes for a hot box. The
whole bunch of correspondence came to
me, and after looking it over I went up
to T. F.'s office when 84 came in. T. F.
was superintendent at that time, and had
a reputation as the best man on the B.
and G. to work for.

Incidentally, T. F. had a string of cuss-
words that was a matter of envy for a
section-boss. I handed it to T. F., and
showed him what the letter was about.
He hiked right up to the G. S.'s office.

" Who in the blankety-blank-blank
wrote this? " he roared. The chief clerk
looked at it, and hollered for Bob. Bob
popped up.

492

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

"You write this letter, son?" asked

jr. f.

Bob had seen T. F. before, and knew
T. F. had seen him.

" Why, yes, Mr. Fitzgerald. Didn't
you see my initials there? And, while
you're here, there's some other things I
want to haul you up about."

Bobby was getting in his stride. He
was going to make a hit with the C. C,
he thought.. Smart boy !

" Who the blankety-blank are you, any-
way? " roared T. F.

Bobby butted in. " Me? Why, you
yknow me. I'm Robert Smith," says Bob-
by, some surprised that T. F. had for-
gotten his name.

T. F. was staggered. Then he regained
speech. " You are, are you? Well, look-a-
here, young man; you seem a blankety-
blank sight too much worried about this
road. Blank it, who in the blankety-
blank-blank is sending that train through
— you or me? "

Bob started to explain, when T. F. shut
him off.

" Look-a-here," said T. F., " while
you're about it, have you got an idea
what a hot box is ? "

It stuck Bobby. He had never been
out in the yards. His idea of a railroad
was gained from thrilling stories, where
the engineer sticks to his engine and goes
down with it in the collision. He was
too proud to ask questions, for fear of
being laughed at, and too busy with the-
aters and giggling petticoats to find out
for himself.

The delay had looked mighty bad to
him from the office standpoint, and he
proceeded to jump on T. F. for what he
called an " outrageous " delay. There
are a heap of fellows like Bobby in the
world — too hasty in doing things, and not
taking the trouble to find out if they are
right before they go ahead.

The funny thing about Bobby, though,
was that T. F. had him transferred to his
office. The boy had the makings of a
man in him, and T. F. put him through
the mill. To-day you'll find Bobby su-
perintendent of a division on your road.
That's the kind of a man T. F. was, when
he got ihe right material.

Don't you get it into your head that
because you're in the office you have
got charge of the line. Orders are or-

ders, and the men will obey them when
they come right; but it don't pay to call
down people when you don't know if you
know what you are talking about. Keep
your mouth shut until you know. You
will usually find that the fellow that
knows will keep his mouth shut even then,
and only open it when he's called upon.
Do your own work well, and you won't
have time to volunteer advice about the
other fellow's.

The boss has lots of advice about other
people's work. He hired you to do your
work. Do it. Which doesn't mean that
you shouldn't offer good suggestions —
but be sure they are good and wanted be-
fore you offer them.

You don't want to forget that the en-
gine standing on the siding-*with its steam
up is always used. Keep your steam up,
and don't use' it huntmg up other engines
to see that they are working right. You
aren't paid for that ; that's the boss's job.

If he finds you are* all right, he will
use you for other work besides your own.
And you can depend upon it, he wouldn't
be boss if he couldn't find that out. He
might get along for a little time, if he
wasn't in good order ; but the chief .
inspector would soon find it out. And
there's where the engine that does its
work right gets the main track.' Don't
depend on a helper; it's all right in a
tight fix, but you might get the habit of
always wanting one.

This isn't advice, Jim ; it's common
sense. Your mother sends her love.
Your affectionate

Father.

From Jim to the Old Man.

Dear Dad: Wnat's the point? If I N
said in my last letter that I had charge
of the office, I didn't mean it. It's true
I had a lot of suggestions about im-
proving things.that I was going to- show
Mr. Connolly ; but one day I asked him
why he had taken me, when so many
more men in other departments wanted
the job.

" Well," he said, " all those other men
Avere primed with suggestions about how
I could improve the office, and I wanted
a man who didn't know anything, so that
I could get a chance to attend to that part
myself.

LETTERS OF AN OLD RAILROAD MAN AND HIS SON. 493

" Mind you," he added, " I like good
suggestions ;: but these fellows didn't look
at it from that view. They wanted to
make them so that I would see how good
they were."

How was that for a close call, dad?
After that I've been going ahead attend-
ing strictly to my work and trying to make
it better wherever I could. Nothing big,
you know.

I would copy all the letters during the
C. C.'s dinner-hour. I indexed all the
letter - books up to
date, and tackled the
routine correspond-
ence for him. And
just yesterday I was
standing at the filing-
desk when a fellow
came in from the
superintendent's office
and went up to Con-
nolly.

He talked for a
while, and then saw
me.

" How's the new
man? " he asked.

"Keeping his
mouth shut, his eyes
open,"* and attending
to his own business,"
snapped Connolly.

" Good ! " says the
man. But it hit him
hard. He was the
fellow that had come
in and asked me about
putting the peach-train on as an extra,
about three weeks ago. And, say, dad,
you have no idea how proud that made
me feel.

I forgot to tell you about my first ex-
perience in the office. The first morning
that I came to work regularly I was down
at seven o'clock. There wasn't a thing I
could do. I didn't know how they ran the
office yet, or where they filed their stuff,
or anything ; so I had a lot of spare time
on my hands until the chief clerk came
down.

I knew what he was thinking. He had
me sized up as one of these way-ahead-of-
time - for - a - week - and - late - the -
rest-of-the-year fellows. At noon-time
he came over to my machine, and stood
watching me.

" Britt," he said, after a minute, " did
I tell you the hours were from eight to
five-thirty?"

I guess I got red around the ears, for
he didn't wait for me to answer, but
walked back to his desk.

T. F. came out of his office the other

LOOK-A-HERE. HAVE YOU GOT AN IDEA WHAT A HOT BOX IS ? '

day, and asked me how you were and
what you were doing. Almost everybody
knows you, and they seem to think that
I ought to know all about railroading in
five minutes. I'll have a hard time living
up to your reputation.

There's a fellow here in the office
named John Lynes ; black-haired, me-
dium-sized, talks in a contradictory
voice. He sings in some church choir.
He has taken me in hand, and told me
a good many things abouKpeople in the
office. He explained to me how the
schedules are made, too. I guess that's
why I like him.

He's been with the road for twenty-
five years, and is getting seventy - five
dollars a month, adding up columns of
figures on tonnage reports. Think of

494

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

that, dad ! Twenty-five years with the
road, and only getting fifteen a month
more than I am !

I have often wondered why he hasn't
been promoted, for he knows everything
about train schedules and things of that
sort.

He is awfully touchy ; gets mad in a
minute if anybody crosses him. Every-
body in the office fights shy of him; but
at bottom he is a big-hearted fellow, and
always willing to help you out if you
go to him.

Right opposite Lynes sits Pat Niff ; a
gray-haired man ; used to be on the
Monongah division as despatcher ; wears
a size eight hat. - He's got a memory
that's wonderful. I don't understand
what work he is doing, but it's something
about the running of fast freight, and
watching them to see that certain cars go
through all right.

Pat is something like Lynes, only
Lynes will get angry and not speak a
word for a week, and Pat will forget he
is mad inside of ten minutes. Pat's been
with the roatl thirty-five years, and he
gets seventy-five dollars a month. I
can't understand it, dad. Here are two
men who know^as much about handling
trains as any man in the office, except
T. F., and yet they make one-third of
what Connolly gets, and Connolly has
been with the road only three years.

There's a big difference between Con-
nolly and those two men. He can get
work out of them when nobody else can,
and he doesn't know as much about the
office details as they do, and I know he
often goes to them for advice. I notice,
when he does, he asks them for it as if
they are able to give it better than any-
body else. He usuarfy gets it, too. It's
funny, watching the two men give it.

Lynes says what he has to say, and
stops. The C. C. will ask (him about
something of which he isn't sure, and
Lynes will explain it. Then, if the C. C.
suggests something better, Lynes will get
angry, and stick out for his way. The
C. C. will try to explain to him, but it
only makes Lynes more angry, and final-
ly he won't say anything at all. Really,
the C. C. very seldom goes to him, for
that reason.

If he asks Pat anything, Pat will keep
on talking even after the C. C. under-

stands; and when the C. C. starts to go
away, Pat gets up and follows him, still
talking, to his desk, and keeps on ex-
plaining matters. The C. C. looks wor-
ried and annoyed, and wants to tell him
to shut up, but can't, and finally Pat
gives out, stands for a few minutes at the
desk, not knowing what to say ; then goes
back to his desk, stopping on the way
to talk to everybody. When he lands at
his desk, he shuffles his papers around, ,
looks up with a pleased smile on his face,
and doesn't get down to work for a
quarter of an hour afterward.

But, say, dad, I tell you this railroad
work is simply great ! I like it immense-
ly. I am beginning to take hold in pretty
good shape, and Lynes says I am improv-
ing right along. I would be a fool if I
didn't.

Just last week I started up a system
of filing. They have a filing-clerk here,
but he's not much good. So, when Sat-
urday afternoon came — we get a holiday
then— -I persuaded him to let me look
over the files, and jollied him along.
He's something like Lynes — touchy — so
I made him believe that he gave me the
idea, and now the filing is in fine shape.
I help him out whenever I get a chance
from my other work.

There's another thing that ought to be
cut out ; that's Lynes's work. He could
be put on the filing-desk with the file-
man; there's work there for two people
easily. I'm going to tell the C. C, when
he is in a good humor.

Could you guess from my first letter
that I was homesjek? I tried to hide
it; but I was, for the first day or so.
Since I've been here,, though, I've had
to work too hard to get a chance to think
, about it. ,

There are lots of opportunities here,
and I'm glad I came with them. Of
course, I don't expect to be president
right away, but there are a barrelful of
other places below- that I can learn to
fill. I'm going to learn, too.
• If mother asks how I am, tell her I'm
getting along fine, and give her my love.
Affectionately,

" Jim.

From the Old Man to Jim.

Dear Jim : Enthusiasm is all right in
its way, but the kind of enthusiasm I have

LETTERS OF AN OLD RAILROAD MAN AND HIS SON. 495

run up against in my time has been usual-
ly the kind that talks about itself. That
doesn't pay.

You may fool yourself into believing
you are exploding with pride in the line,
but there is another kind of enthusiasm —
it's the working kind.

The man who has it keeps his mouth
shut and goes out and works. He can't
afford to waste time telling how the serv-
ice might be improved, if he could only
be. put in charge of it; but he goes up
to his chief clerk, or to whoever is in
authority, and finds out, by a little tactful
questioning, how that official would re-
ceive a suggestion, and then makes it so
that his superior officer will believe it's
the right thing.

You don't see that kind of a man often.
Why? Because we're all more or. less
children, and have to be coaxed and
pushed and wheedled — something like
Homer Bastrop's engine on the Monon-
gah division.

Homer was a patient, enduring sort of
cuss,~~or he would never have gotten that
engine to work the way it did. She
would sashay along, woof-wo-of~ivo-of-
w-o-o-f ! and she would back right up and
stand plumb still, with the gage up in
the hundreds and the boiler getting hot-
ter and hotter. The first time she did
it Homer ran her in the shop for over-
hauling, but they couldn't find anything
wrong with her.

Then she began to do it regular, and
Homer got mad and madder." Finally,
one day he began talking to it — got se-
rious, then became sentimental, and al-
most cried over her. And derned if she
didn't get right back into action again !

So, after that, whenever she got in her
tantrums, Homer would roll out a string
of loving words, and in about five min-
utes, she would be clipping along again.
It worked the deuce with the train sched-
ule, though, and they cut her out after a
while and put her to hauling coal.

Plomer had simply learned that she
had to have a wheedling to get in action.
A good many people know that coaxing
will get what cussing can't, but they only
apply it to certain things. Pat O' Day's
boy was like that.

The old man was about as close-fisted
as he could be. His hand had held the
throttle so long that when he got money

in it you had to pry it open to get it
away again, and more'n likely he would
be changing it to the other hand while
you were getting at it. But that boy of
his never thought about using a crow-
bar to get it. No, sir !

He would get the old man talking
about engines, and freights, and improve-
ments in the service, and what he had
done for the- company, and he would sit
there with one ear cocked up, listening
respectfully, and now and then putting
in what the lawyers would call a " lead-
ing " question — and when he had his
hand oiled enough, it would just open
naturally and a five or ten dollar bill
would slip out.

And, mind you, Pat O'Day was the
man who, when T. F. was caught on the
line one day without change and wanted
to borrow five dollars, told him he wanted
security for it !

Come to office work, though, the boy
was different. He would sulk and grum-
ble when anybody tried to show him how
to do a thing right. And suspicious ! He
didn't trust a soul. He was always
afraid they were after his job.

He forgot to apply to his every-day
life the oil that he applied to his dad.
That's the trouble with most of us.

We are always watching to see that he
don't tread on our corns. Then, some
day along comes a fellow who hides the
hurt when you tread on his, smiles when
you cuss at him, doesn't give out forcible
opinions without first knowing yours,
keeps from quarrels, and never complains
about his abilities being unrecognized —
and before you know it he is your chief
clerk, and running things smoothly, too.
And you wonder why he was pushed
above your head.

No doubt you were a better man than
he was. You knew more about the office
details, and were more honest with your
feelings, and man enough to not let any
one abuse you.

Right there was your trouble. The
big-minded man can afford to let such
things pass, because he would have to be
small to notice them. I know what small
annoyances are ; but, hang it, if you
passed up one, the next would come
easier, and finally you wouldn't notice
them any more.

Pat's boy had to blow off steam when-

496

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

ever anything jarred him, and pretty soon
he was blowing it off all the time, when
he should have been applying it to what
he was paid for — his work. His flues
were bad, and he wouldn't let any one
help him take 'em out, and so they just
naturally ran him to the scrap heap. And
you couldn't blame them.

If I buy a big engine, and put it out

day with the company. It's made me
stick with them, and I'm going to stick
now till I get to be general manager."

Funny, wasn't it? And where is he
now? He's not only G. M., but I'll bet
he's the best G. M. the B. and G. ever
had. And he'll be the best president
they ever had, too. And he's as enthusi-
astic now as he ever was.

IF HE ASKS PAT ANYTHING, PAT WILL KEEP "ON TALKING EVEN AFTER
THE C. C. UNDERSTANDS.

to haul fa'st freight, I want it to do the
work. That's what I bought it for. I
didn't buy it to send it to the repair-
shop every ten minutes. I want it out
on the main line^ pulling a string of cars ;
not standing on a siding.

None of your five-minute enthusiasm
for me. When I first went with the
B. and G. I made up my mind I would
look on every day as the day I was just
starting to work for them. And I tell
you, you have no idea how interesting it
got to be. It was a regular picnic. T. F.,
your general manager, was section-boss
at the time, and one day he and I were
talking about what we wanted.

" I'll tell you, Bill," he said, " when
I came with this road I made up my
mind I would look on every day as a new

(To be co

That enthusiasm of his got the B. and
G. into Chicago, when the combine was
against them • it got him the peach traf-
fic from the South after the D. R. R.
had held it for fifteen years ; got him the
government mail when he bid three cents
higher than anybody else to competitive
points ; got him a twenty-year^ contract ,
with the American Paint Company — and
Heaven knows what else.

Why does he get it all? Because he
uses his steam for a purpose. He doesn't
waste it. That's the working kind of
enthusiasm.

It doesn't make as loud a pop as Char-
lie O'Day's did, but it has a heap more
action and go to it.

Your affectionate

Father.
n t i nu ed . )

The Stuff that Helps the
Wheels Go Round.

BY HORACE H. SMITH,

THERE are three main factors in transportation. They are propulsion,
lubrication, and check of momentum. Of these practically equal factors,
lubrication has been the least spectacular, and perhaps the most difficult
of satisfactory solution. The railroads groped about for many years, blindly
experimenting with almost anything that would give a greasy coating to
friction-producing parts. The results were worse than nil, and money flowed,
through overheated bearings in the shape of hot boxes and wrecks^-until a
man came who recognized the need of the scientific application of a scientific
lubricant.

From the Use of Pork Strips to Up-Drop Lubricators and the Highest

Grade of Lubricating Oil is a Far Cry, but the Railroads

Had to Make It in the Last Fifty Years.

N no branch of the railroad
service has there been such a
great advance as in the qual-
ity of the oils that are used
and the methods of their
. application. From an easy
way of causing trouble and wasting"
money, lubrication has become an art ;
a means of expediting traffic, saving
labor and material, and increasing net
earnings.

Every day American railroads con-
sume over 100,000 gallons of oil. The
annual consumption, which approximates
40,000,000 gallons, would fill nearly
6,900 tank-cars and make a train fifty
miles in length.

The oil would weigh about 150,000
tons, and there would be enough of it

to cover a square mile of territory to a
depth of more than two inches. The
George Washington, the largest German
steamship afloat, with its displacement
of 37,000 tons, would displace only
about 9,700,000 gallons of oil.

The quantity used every year would
float four George Washingtons and
more than seven of the famed Dread-
nought class of battle-ships.

It costs the railroads close to $1,000,-
000 a month to keep the wheels turning
smoothly. Under the methods, and with
the oils that were in use when the gray-
haired but still active railroad men of
to-day were boys, the cost would be
many times as great.

Even as recently as only twenty years
ago, when the equipment was much

8 R R

497

498

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

lighter than now, the lubrication of a
passenger-car cost over one dollar per
one thousand miles, while freight-cars
cost from thirty to fifty cents. To-day,
-a twelve- journal passenger-coach costs
only twelve cents for oil per one thou-
sand miles, and an eight-journal freight-
car costs about five cents.

Expense of Hot Boxes.

The direct cost of a hot box is from
ten to twelve dollars, to say nothing
of the loss of time of the train-crews
that are delayed by it. In addition, and
most . important of all, there is always
the danger that a hfcated journal will
precipitate a disastrous and expensive
wreck which may involve loss of life.

Accidents resulting from hot boxes,
which often were attended by fatalities,
were of frequent occurrence a quarter
of a century ago, but now they are un-
heard of. Of course, the advance in
equipment and methods is partly respon-
sible for this; but, when all the facts
are considered, it will be appreciated
that oil is a subject of vital importance,
alike to the railroads and to the people
who work for them and travel over
them.

In the early days of railroading,
lubricating appliances were as crude as
the engines, and as unsatisfactory as the
oils that were used. The oil for driving-
journals was fed through holes, which
often were filled with wicking to, check
the flow, running from the top of the
box, which was filled with waste. An
open-top cup on the steam-chest carried
oil for the valves and cylinders.

In 1854, a technical journal, in de-
scribing a " special fast passenger-en-
gine," weighing fifteen tons and built to
run ninety-seven miles in two hours and
a half, called attention to a new feature :
" a handsome brass reservoir, secured to
the side of the boiler, holding half a
gallon of oil, Avith pipes leading to the
different journals, each supplied with
cock for letting down oil at the pleasure
of the engineer while running."

Even then, though the idea did not
bear full fruit until nearly twenty years
later, railroad men were thinking of
economies. In 1855 the American Rail-
road Journal said :

" Perhaps there is no other article so
liable to waste as oil \ it is often the
case that the method of lubrication is
such that it is difficult • to see when
enough oil is communicated, without
using double the quantity needed.
Should not this fact suggest some im-
provement in oil-cups? Cannot some
man of" genius get up some lubricator
which will feed itself ^automatically? "

That question has, of course, been an-
swered many times since then. In 1869,
Nicholas Seibert, a California engineer,
introduced the first down-drop feed
lubricator, operated by the hydrostatic
displacement principle.

The first up-drop lubricator was in-
vented in 1873 by John Gates, of Port-
land, Oregon. These inventions were
gradually developed and improved upon
-until the establishment of the methods
in use to-day, which now seem incapable
of improvement, but which will, in their
turn, give way to something better.

There is an abundance of data regard-
ing the development of railroad equip-
ment, but the early records contain very
little regarding lubrication. It is as-
sumed, however, from the fact that they
then were in general use in Europe for
machine lubrication, that vegetable oils,
and chiefly olive oils, were used on the
first American roads.

Pork as a Lubricant.

"Subsequently it appears that, in the
general search for something which
would answer the needs, anything that
contained grease was experimented with.
Even soft soap was tried ; and another
genius, whose suggestion seems to have
been taken more seriously, advocated the
use of strips of fat pork.

Under the heading, " Pork for Jour-
nal Boxes," a trade paper inquired with
apparent anxiety:

"Why not use it? "We have asked
fifty railroad men within so many days
if they were aware of its success. On
the Hudson River Railroad .a car was
packed with slices of fresh pork, and is
to-day as good as it was a year ago. The
cost per box for pork packing that will
stand a year will not exceed thirty cents."

Still, in spite of this advice, pork does
not appear to have been widely adopted

THE STUFF THAT HELPS THE WHEELS GO ROUND. 499

as a lubricant. In the vernacular of the
day, the road which would try to use it
now would look like the amount then
set down as the annual cost per journal-
box.

Eating Into Steel.

Sperm and cotton-seed oils were tried
and abandoned, and gradually lard and
fish oils came into general use for jour-
nals and machinery, and tallow for
valves and cylinders. They did not give
satisfaction, but were used for want of
something better.

The destruction of steam-chests and
cylinders, from the corrosion caused by
the fatty acids in the animal oils, cost
the railroads millions of dollars annually.
All animal fats have three well-known
acids : oleic, stearic, and butyric, in ad-
dition to which there is much solid mat-
ter commonly known- as " stearine,"
from which tallow candles are made.

This gummy and non-lubricating part
of the oil collected on the non-bearing
surfaces of the steam-chests and cylin-
ders, and gathered and held the fatty
acids which were liberated by the steam
at high temperatures. These acids, at
the same time that they decomposed the
stearine, ate back through the metal
until it became so honeycombed and
fibrous that it was possible to run the
blade of a knife for three inches or more
into what had once been solid steel.

With the greases that were used for
exterior lubrication it required more
power to haul the trains, for the reason
that heat had to be generated by the
friction of the journal before it would
absorb any of the oil. Dirt and dust
accumulated on top of the grease, and
became mixed with it, and many hot
boxes resulted.

Temporary Solution.

This insistent demand was met, a few
years later, by the discovery that crude
West Virginia oil, as pumped from the
wells, was an excellent railroad lubri-
cant. This oil was at first supposed to
be of no value, for the reason that it
contained none of the volatile qualities
from which illuminating oils are made.

Thus, the refiners could not use it;
but the producers, unwilling to throw

it away, stored it in immense tanks, hold-
ing thousands of barrels. They offered
it forsale at as low a price as one dol-
lar a barrel, but there was no purchaser.

Finally, J. M. Foss, superintendent of
motive power and machinery of the Cen-
tral Vermont Railroad, tried it as a
lubricant, and found it so satisfactory
that its use soon became general, and
the price advanced rapidly to thirty
cents a gallon.

This oil had a low cold test and a
flash lest of 175 degrees, and was* en-
tirely free from -gum, grit, or tarry sub-
stance. The supply of it, however, was
limited. When the last well which pro-
duced it had been pumped dry, refiners
throughout the country undertook to
meet the demand for petroleum oils by
extracting all of the volatile qualities
from the ordinary crude oils and con-
verting what was left over into lubri-
cating oil.

This residuum was a thick, tarry sub-
stance, which, as it stood, was altogether
unsuited for railroad lubrication, and the
only way by which it could be adapted
to such purposes was to. mix it with
lighter oil to give it the necessary fluid-
ity. It is interesting to note here, in
passing, that yf or ten years the refiners
threw this tarry mass' into the river on
the assumption that it could be put to
no useful purpose.

More Makeshift Relief.

While the oils that were produced
from this black mass were very low
priced, a great deal of trouble was ex-
perienced in their use, as they lacked
sufficient " body " to properly lubricate
the equipment. It was about this time,
in 1869, that General Charles Miller,
of Franklin, Pennsylvania, began the
manufacture of Galena oils under a se-
cret process invented by a man named
Hendricks. Like most inventors, Hen-
dricks was unpractical, and, not know-
ing how to use his discovery, he sold
out for six thousand dollars, in addition
to which he was to receive a royalty of
one dollar on every barrel of oil that
was sold.

Not long afterward he sold out his
royalty interest for six. thousand dollars
in cash. Had he retained this right, he

500

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE,

would have received more than two mil-
lion dollars during the life of the patent.
By the process which he invented,
oxide of lead is combined with crude
petroleum, whale oil, and other ingre-
dients in perfect solution, with the re-
sult that the product has a consistency
which preserves the necessary film of oil
between the bearing surfaces for long
periods and without regard to weather,
climate, or speed. In this way the crude
petroleum of West Virginia was im-
proved upon.

A Discovery at Last.

Oxide of lead performs a peculiar
purpose by filling the interstices of the
bearing surfaces, making them perfectly
smooth, and putting them in a condition
which insures the most perfect lubrica-
ting action of the fluid elements of the
oils.

General Miller has been the sole di-
recting genius of his company from the
day it was organized, forty years ago,
and has seen it grow from nothing to
the greatest concern of its kind in the
world. Recognition was by no means,
instantaneous. General Miller had all
the struggles of a pioneer.

" It was a hard fight at first," he
says ; " for our oils, while less expensive
than the fatty oils, which were still
largely used, were much more expensive
than the so-called petroleum oils,, made
from the residuum from volatile oils.
For the latter reason, the supply houses
refused to handle them, and we were
compelled to deal directly with the rail-
roads, whfch no manufacturer had done
up to that time.

"J. R. Nicholls, general purchasing-
agent for the Union Pacific, was my
first customer. I solicited him for an
order, and he told me to send him fifty
barrels, with the understanding that if
it was good he would pay for it, while
if it was not good he would pay noth-
ing. I had plenty of faith but not a
great deal of capital, so I compromised
by sending him three barrels.

"They were sufficient -to prove all of
my claims, and we soon received an or-
der for fifty barrels, which was quickly
followed by a still larger one. As we
began to make inroads on the makers of

other oils, we were challenged to make
several competitive tests, all of which
we won.

" My first big order came from Collis
P. Huntington, president of the South-
ern Pacific. He wrote me, asking for
a price on our oils in large quantities.

" Instead of writing him, I took the
first train for New York, determined to
see him. I was at his office early the
next morning, but at the door I was
overcome with nervousness.

" The prospect of interviewing the
greatest railroad man in the world, as he
was then properly regarded, and of be-
ing put to a test on my prices, which I
had firmly decided would be maintained
at the established scale without regard
to the purchaser or the quantity, was
temporarily too much for me. I re-
treated— in rather bad order, L fear.

" I walked around the block for an
hour or two and smoked several cigars
before I mustered up enough courage to
return to his office and ask to see Mr.
Huntington. I was greatly relieved
when I was told he was out of the city.

" I left my card, with a request that
I be advised of his return and at what
hour he would see me. A week or so
later, I returned to New York in re-
sponse to a telegram, and was at his
office at the appointed time, though I
must confess that I approached it with
something of the former fear and trem-
bling.

Breaking Into Espee.

" Mr. Huntington received me in his
brusk way, and asked me the price of
my oils. I quoted him- the price for the
different kinds — car, coach, and valve.

" ' You'll have to do better than that,'
he said. ' Ours is a big road.'

" I started to tell him of the superior
qualities of my oils, but he interrupted
me with, ' I know all about your oils.
If you'll make the price right, I'll give
you an order for five car-loads.'

" For a moment I was stunned by the
size of the prospective order, and
paralyzed by the fear of losing it.
Furthermore, my oils were then being
used from the Atlantic as far West as
Ogden, and I was anxious to have them
running clear across the continent.

" The temptation to cut the price was

THE STUFF THAT HELPS THE WHEELS GO ROUND. 501

strong, but I knew if I ever started that
business, there would be no end to it,
so I resolved to stick to my guns. After
I had run the whole situation over in
my mind, I told him, if it would be anv
accommodation to him, I would let him
bave,five car-loads at the same price.

" Mr. Huntington threw himself back
in his chair and laughed loudly. At
first I thought he was ridiculing me, but
when he sobered down he gave me the
order for five car-loads without any fur-
ther argument. We, became close friends
after that, and were subsequently inter-
ested together in several enterprises, in-
cluding the construction of a line of
railroad which is now a part of the
Chesapeake and Ohio system.

i Start of a Great System.

" Not long after this incident I had
a somewhat similar experience with John
F. Lincoln, general superintendent of
the St. Paul and Sioux City Railroad.
I had been calling on him regularly for
several years without selling him a pint
of oil, for I would not cut pjices.

" After I had been trying for months
to get him to sign a three-year contract
at a guaranteed maximum cost for lubri-
cation, while he was standing out for
lower gallon prices, he suddenly turned
on me and said : ' If you will make the
contract for five years, I will agree to
your terms.'

"I felt much as I did when Mr.
Huntington gave me the order for five
car-loads, but concealed my surprise and
gratification, and told him that, while
five years was a long time, I would let
him have his way about it.

" That was the first of our five-year
contracts on a guaranteed maximum
mileage cost basis, which system I
adopted for the reason that under it,
more conclusively than by any other, I
could prove the faith that was in me.
in the development of this plan I em-
ployed experts, always selecting the most
capable men I could find, who were as-
signed to the roads which entered into
contracts of this kind, to instruct the
employees in the efficient and economi-
cal use of our oils.

"This system worked out very satisfac-
torily, both to the railroads and our-

selves, and it is now in general use. By
this plan a railroad manager knows that
his cost of lubrication for a year or a
term of years will not exceed the max-
imum cost stated in the guarantee, while
it may fall below it.'

" No matter how much oil is used,
any amount paid uTexcess of the guar-
antee is refunded to the road at the end
of the year. If, through hearty co-
operation with our experts, less oil is
needed than was figured on as necessary
in fixing the guarantee, the road saves
the difference.

" The constant effort of our experts
is to decrease the quantity of oil used ;
to increase the miles run by engines,
coaches, and cars to every pint of oil.
We now have about one hundred ex-
perts at Work in this country . and in
many foreign lands.

"The records show that, as a result
of the scientific use of a scientific lubri-
cant, there is not more than one hot box
now where there were a thousand twenty-
five years ago. When we entered into
a contract with the New York Central,
the hot box record between New York
and Buffalo averaged one hundred and
twenty-nine daily, in the passenger serv-
ice alone.

" To-day, with more than four times
as many trains running at the highest
speed, including one of the fastest long-
distance trains in the world, there are
less than one hundred and twenty-nine
hot boxes in a year."

Matters of Record.

In the old days oil was stored at prac-
tically every stopping place, and it was
thrown into the journal boxes with reck-
less prodigality, whether it was needed
or not. All of this waste and labor are
avoided by the methods which General
Miller has introduced. Oil is shipped
in tank-cars or barrels to the general
storage points, at terminals, and from
there the general superintendent dis-
tributes it to the consuming stations,
which generally are located at division
points.

There the division storekeeper turns
it over to the foreman of the oiling sta-
tion, who keeps an accurate and de-
tailed record of its distribution. Each

502

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

engineer draws the scheduled quantity
of valve and engine oil required to take
him over his run; the experts have it so
finely figured out that they know how
much he will need, under normal condi-
tions and with a liberal allowance for
contingencies.

If an engineer exceeds his allowance,
he is required to put in an extra ticket,
with an explanation. The records of the
oilers, who . attend to the passenger and
freight cars, are kept in the same way.

At the end of the month, tables are
posted at division points, showing the
miles run by each engine, and by each
engineer, per pint of oil, per ton of coal,
and the cost of his repairs. It is the
desire of every engineer to stand at the
head of this list, and the same ambition
fires the car and coach oilers, so there is
a minimum of waste.

Oiling Transcontinentals.

Oil is applied scientifically as Avell as
economically. When a transcontinental
passenger-train starts East, it is fully
oiled at Oakland. At Ogden, after a
run of seven hundred and seventy-five
miles, and again at Omaha, one thousand
miles farther East, it is lightly reoiled,
and it is freshly oiled again at Chicago
before it returns westward.

Improved methods of packing have
also been introduced. Tests and expe-
rience have shown that one pound of
waste, either woolen or cotton, will ab-
sorb from four to six pints of oil. The
waste is soaked in oil for thirty-six or
forty-eight hours, and -is then drained
until all of the loose oil has dripped off.
Then, with the waste holding just
enough oil so it will ooze through the
fingers when, tightly gripped, it is care-
fully packed in the boxes, with none of
it in front of the journals.

Old waste, instead of being thrown
away, is put through a cleaning process
which makes it as good as new, and all
of the oil it holds is reclaimed, and put
through a strainer and filter and restored
to service.

The results which these methods have
accomplished are illustrated by a recent
test on the Norfolk and Western Rail-
way. On May 10, 1907, baggage-car
236, running between Bluefield, West

Virginia, and Wilcox, was fitted with
new brasses and freshly oiled, with five
gallons of oil to ten pounds of waste,
and the boxes were sealed.

About once a month the foreman in
charge of coaches would open the boxes
and stir up the packing, if necessary;
but no oil was added. The car was in
continuous service; and up to March 13,
1909 — twenty-two- months from the time
the test began — when it was transferred
to another division, it had run 88,609
miles, at a cost for oil of one dollar.

Near a World's Record.

The car was running smoothly when
it was transferred, and did not seem to
need reoiling.. It is believed that, if its
record had been transferred with it, a
new world's record might have been
established.

On October 30, 1907,. on the same
road, coach 562 was freshly oiled, sup-
plied with new brasses, and put in serv-
ice under similar conditions. On Octo-
ber 10, 1908, this car was taken away
from Bluefield, and the test was ended.
At that time it had run 69,364 miles,
and it was reported that the packing was
" in very good condition."

The Avorking out of this system of ex-
pert supervision, and the extent to which
the railroads have profited by it, were
strikingly shown by figures recently
brought out in connection with the gov-
ernment's extensive inquiry into the oil
industry.

Government Evidence.

On seventy American systems, inclu-
ding all of the important lines, it was
shown that for the period from 1897 to
1906, inclusive, there had been a saving
of from twenty to eighty per cent in the
cost of lubrication per ton mile.

On the Union Pacific the cost had
been reduced to less than one-fifth of
what it was ten years ago. On six roads
the cost was reduced over seventy per
cent, on fifteen others from fifty to sev-
enty per cent, and on twenty others from
thirty to fifty per cent. During the same
period every other department of rail-
road operation showed an increase in
cost.

Observations of a Country
Station-Agent.

BY J. E. SMITH.

No. 19— Is It Any Wonder That Railroad Men Don't Make Good

Farmers? Jake Z. Planted Canned Tomatoes and They

Game Up Just Plain Hay-Fever.

As a rule

A man's a fool.

When it's hot

He wants it cool.

When it's cool

He wants it hot.

Always wanting what is not,

Not content with what he's got.

HERE are forty - two more-
verses of this epic poem,
but that is probably forty-
two more than the editor
will stand for. As Emer-
son would not say in the
terse and expressive lingo of New Eng-
land :

" This will hold us for a while."

Now, will the reader kindly read

those eight lines again, and ponder? It

is not often he will find anything in these

chronicles to give him ponder. Better

our choice runs — short hours, a long
time at home, and a nice salary. Every
freightman on the road looks on James's
run with covetous eyes, and figures the
year when he will land it.

I told James, in my opinion, he had
the best thing a railroad had to offer a
man below the rank of High Panjan-
drum.

James dissented.

•" Every one thinks," said he, " run-
ning a passenger-train is such a snap.
But I'll tell you, if I had money enough
to buy a good farm, I'd quit 'em to-
morrow."

" You are right, James," I said con-
solingly. " It's a cruel fate that com-
pels a man to go up and down the aisle
of this twenty - thousand - dollar coach,
punching tickets, handing out informa-
read them three times. tion and good cheer, when he might be

What brought this illuminating stanza chasing an insurgent calf over a twenty-
to the fore was this: acre lot, or milking ten cows, or turning

A few days ago I went to Chicago to the mules into the wood pasture, or car-

see for myself if the Masonic Temple
does turn on its axis every few hours,
and to find out for true if it could act-
ually be bought by an outsider for $102,
cash in hand, if the outsider would ap-
pear on the spot carrying a canvas tele-
scope and gaze long and patiently at the
twenty-third story until he was run over
by a cab.

On the way to Chicago Conductor
James sat with me, and we had converse
about many things. James has- one of

Series began in the July, 1907, Railroad Man

503

rying slop to the Poland Chinas."
It's Mere Popoff.

" All the same," persisted James, " it's
the most independent life."

A man hears that expression so often
among railroaders that, if he isn't vac-
cinated, he may believe it. It is only
idle talk — mere popoff — the present
yearning for what is not.

" James," said I, " you wouldn't stay

Magazine. Single Copies. 10 cents.

504

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

on a farm ten days. You would come
crawling back. You would watch a
crossing, or you would carry water to
a construction gang, before you would
stay away from a railroad." Then I
quoted him that forceful rime:

As a rule

A man's a fool.

Better go back and read them again.

Why the farm for railroad men? I
never heard of an engineer wanting to
quit the road to run an engine in a flour-
mill. I never knew of a conductor anx-
ious to break away and own a shoe-store.
It is not a common thing for even a rail-
road clerk to voluntarily sever his con-
nection and become a clerk in a private
enterprise. Wherefore — why this hun-
ger for agriculture?

After thinking so hard for an answer
that I could "not sleep at night, I wrote
the International Psychological Research
Association, of Oxford, which in due
time submitted this explanation :

Instinct of primordial man. Why
does man recoil at the sight of a snake?
Why does man have an innate horror
of falling from a high place? Be-
cause he lived ten thousand years or
more in trees and in cliffs, to avoid
the ravages of wild beasts. But he was
all the while beset with two dangers,
namely : snakes and falling. We have
not yet outgrown the impress of fear
thus made. By and by man learned to
vary his raw-game diet with vegetables.
Then, for ten thousand years he dili-
gently cultivated carrots, and that, too,
left its impress on posterity. Thus
skipping the evolutionary generations,
and coming with one bound to the
period of grasshopper engines, and all
steel hoppers, we find railroad men, hi
common with all men, recoiling at the
snake, in horror of a fall, and with a
wild impulse toward a truck-patch.

Clever explanation, isn't it? Scien-
tific, too ! Shows that we inherit it —
just like freckles, red hair, and other
malformations.

Just One Crop. *

Generally speaking, the dream of a
railroad man is of a small farm, and
there is but one crop — chickens !

Many a railroad man has forgotten to
throw a derail or close a switch because
he was figuring if one hen laid seven
eggs in one week, how many eggs would
three hundred hens lay in one year?

Then, if it only cost one cent per day
to keep one hen, and eggs retailed from/
twenty-five to thirty cents per dozen the
year round, and dressed poultry is worth
thirty cents per pound, how long would
it take him, on forty acres of ground, to
have enough money to buy the control-
ling interest in the railroad so that he
could fire the present management?

About that time the train backs up
and the caboose goes off on the ties, and
there's such a muss that he forgets the
answer.

Jake Z , a friend of mine — twenty

years a freight conductor, and just now
wearing the epaulets of blue and gold —
had the fever of the soil many years.

Jake's fad was tomatoes. Tomatoes
enter largely in the diet of a freight-
train crew. They come canned, and are
a convenient vegetable.

Likes Them Any Style.

It must be remembered that there is an
infinite amount of cooking done on the
caboose stove, but there are not many
gastronomic surprises. The menu is
boiled pork and beans. Occasionally a
can of tomatoes adds variety to the
relish. >

Jake doted on tomatoes. He liked
them sliced, spiced, or iced. He took them
baked, deviled, fried, scalloped, stewed,
or stuffed. Whenever Jake thought of a
farm or garden-patch, the mental per-
spective was always one of tomato-vines
in endless profusion, and red and yel-
low tomatoes hanging pendant thereon
in countless .numbers.

With all the rest of us, Jake thought
that, by and by, he would own a small
farm. He made up his mind to strike
out on original lines. He reasoned it
out : The tomato was the finest vegeta-
ble known to man. When people actual-
ly found out how succulent and appe-
tizing it really is, the demand was bound
to be enormous.

Jake would get in early on tomato cul-
ture ; and when the people began clamor-
ing and fighting for tomatoes, he would

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT.

505

have them for sale — baskets, wagon-
loads, car-loads, and train-loads — each
and every one of 'em with Jake's private,
Dutch coat-of-arms blown on the skin
as a trade-mark.

Ready to Plant.

Jake went at it systematically and sci-
entifically. He talked knowingly of

In the following spring he received
twelve tomato-plants from the old gar-
dener-— all that could be spared. Jake
guarded them as if they were jewels in
the crown of the Gaikwar of Baroda.

He decided not to set out the plants on
his patch of ground, as he would only
be able to see. them once a week. He hit
upon a happy idea.

Every other day on his run his train

DO YOU KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT TOMATOES ? " ASKED JAKE.

potash, phosphoric acid, nitrogen, and
other soil properties.

Good luck attended him. In the ful-
ness of his enthusiasm he ran across an
old gardener, who, by some strange and
unexplained freak of nature, had devel-
oped a new variety of tomato — firmer,
hardier, and more abundant than any-
thing heretofore known.

" Burbank may have turned a few
tricks with the potato and the cactus, but
we'll show 'em something on tomato cul-
ture that'll cause Uncle Jim Wilson to
sit up and rub his eyes," said Jake.
" We'll play Andrew Carnegie's research
commission for the usual award of
$3,500 per to enable us to continue our
investigation and experiments for the
perfect tomato, which will- take the place
of bread and meat."

That winter Jake bought on long in-
stalments a twenty-acre tract of land.

stopped one mile east of K — - — , and the
engine went on to the station and did
the station switching, usually consuming
one hour in the work. Jake always re-
mained behind in the caboose until the
work was. done, and the train pulled up
to the station. It occurred to him that
that particular spot on the right of way
was the ideal place for the first year's
culture of the new tomato — which he
had decided should bear this name :
" Z 's Bountiful."

A Real Rube.

He prepared the soil over by the fence,
and set out the plants with great care.

The section foreman agreed to look
after them and protect them.

Jake told the boys in the office at the
depot about his experimental station,
because he was full of it, and it is not

506

THE RAILROAD MANS MAGAZINE.

human nature to remain quiet when in-
terest is at the effervescent-point.

Every other day he worked and
watched at the little patch. He sought
counsel of experienced gardeners, and
he loosened the earth and coaxed them
along with all the vigilance and industry
possible.

Grew Like Pine-Trees.

With all his care, he was dismayed
one morning to find them stringy and
wilted. For a time it was a question if
they would live ; but constant attendance
and the summer sun brought them out,
and they put out new leaves and 'pushed
themselves upward.

Now, the original tomato is a vine
that falls sprawling to the ground and

it's hay-fever, that's all. just hay-fever!

requires a support to enable it to round
and ripen its fruit.

" Z 's Bountiful " went straight up

like a pine-tree. It had a hardy stalk,
a fine bush, and would evidently hold a
peck of fruit without a prop. That
alone would make it famous. But add
to that the additional yield and the finest

quality, and the possibilities of " Z 's

Bountiful " were indeed beyond calcula-
tion.

As the season advanced, other garden
and truck patches along the road showed
tomatoes in bloom, but the new variety
steadily refused to give a hint.

It began to give Jake some concern.
His wife overheard him saying in his
sleep one night : " They're se'ttin' on, all
right! Hurrah! They're settin' on! I
can see 'em ! Ten — fifty — one hundred
— ten thousand — one mil-
lion— on one stem ! "

"Jake!" exclaimed his
wife, poking him in the
ribs, " what on earth's the
matter? " '

" Matter, nothin'," grunt-
ed Jake.. " I was just dream-
in' we had a head-on colli-
sion and killed a million
people. Don't bother me."

On the next trip out Jake
had as a passenger a farmer,
in charge of a car-load of
emigrant movables. His car
was next to the caboose.

''Do you know anything
about tomatoes?" asked
Jake.

" I've raised 'em every
year for twenty years for
the Pokeville Cannery. I
reckon I know 'em about
as well as any man in Pike
County," replied the farmer.
" When we stop up here
a few miles," said Jake, " I
wish you would get off and
look at some tomatoes I am
raising on the right of way.
It's" a new variety — just dis-
covered— and it's bound to
revolutionize the tomato in-
dustry of the country. I
expect to get seed enough
from the twelve plants to
put out twenty acres next

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT.

507

year. After that I'll offer plants for sale.
I'll get my own price for 'em, too."

The farmer manifested a lively in-
terest.

They got off together and looked over
the patch.

Plain Hay-Fever.

" Don't seem to be any bloom,'
the farmer.

" That's one thing I
don't like. They do seem
a little slow," replied Jake.

"You never farmed any,
did you?" asked the
farmer, somewhat ab-
ruptly.

" I've read a good
deal," said Jake; " I
always thought I'd like
it."

" Who told you them
was tomatoes? "

" Why, they're a new
variety."

" Some one's stung
you, ^brother. Do you
know what kind of a
crop you're raisin'?"

" Why, of course — "

"You do, eh? Well,
I'll tell you. It's hay-
fever. That's all. Just

hay-fever ! .Why, man, them's nothing but him, but the experimental patch is bare
ragweed, the orneriest plant that grows ; of its crop. No one seems to know, and

£sq

HE SET- UP A HOWL THAT WOULD HAVE DONE CREDIT TO AN
INDIAN MASSACRE.

and it ain't any new variety, either. You
can get seed enough out of them plants
for twenty acres, all right ; but if you
expect to get a lot of money out of them,
you'd better change your mind and rob
a bank. Rais'n' ragweed ! Well, durn

all the office force- is curious.

Can't Beat Sherlock.

Sherlock Holmes would note this
pressing curiosity of the office force, and,
my buttons, if that don't beat anything after poising a tomato in one hand and
I've ever heard of." snuffing a twig of ragweed, would de-

Jake did not tell his wife the particu- duct something like this:
lars. When she questioned him about " Substitution of plants was made

" Z 's Bountiful," he told her a tale after planting. You will remember

of robbery by envious and eager farmers plants thrived at first, then wilted, then
to beat him to an agricultural triumph. revived. The Lycopersicum escalentum,

The boys in the office continue to
question him almost eagerly about the
new variety. He remains mum. There
is a crisis in all development, and in that

or tomato, was removed at that time, and
the Senecio jacoboca or ragwort, or so-
called ragweed, was substituted. This
was done by the office force. Hence

crucial period science shuts up like a their curiosity and suppressed snickers,

clam. Jake feigns the caution of a By looking over the back fence of the

weighty secret, and lets it gb at that, garden of the chief clerk there will be

He doesn't repeat what the farmer told found twelve tomato-vines, but they are

508

THE RAILROAD MANS MAGAZINE.

bearing only ordinary tomatoes. How
do I know that? Because no railroad
man ever has great expectations that
come true."

You can't lose Sherlock.

Jake doesn't know to this day why
" Z 's Boun-
tiful " failed to
" bount." But he
is now so -busy
with the Interior
Department, get-
ting information
about irrigated
land of the great
West, that there
is no use to stop
him and tell him.

Twenty years
ago trains were
not provided with
air as they are
to - day. When
a train running
along broke in
two, there was
no way to know
of it unless the
engineer or fire-
man chanced to
look back and
notice that the
tail end was not
in sight. It was
then up to the
engineer to keep
going lest the
rear should bump
into him with
disastrous results.

It was considered rank carelessness for
the engineer to permit a smash-up of
this kind, and he was vigorously dis-
ciplined for it.

One very dark night Bill Hart was
pulling a freight-train on the branch to
Madison. He was creeping noiselessly
upon a small hamlet, and came to a stop.
Bill knew there was no other train on
the division. Both he and the fireman
took a sack and got off and disappeared
in the darkness. The head brakeman
had twisted a few brakes and had just
crawled down onto the tender, when
there came a rumble of wheels and a
smash.

The brakeman went over the breast-

THE IMPULSE TO SAVE A LIFE PREVAILED

works on his head and shoulders. He
came out of it with a few bruises
and dislocations. The train had parted
and run together. Five cars were badly
smashed.

Why had Bill stopped? Echo asks why?
Bill and the
fireman saw they
were in for it at
a glance. They
held a hasty con-
sultation with the
brakeman, who
was on his feet
by this time, with
the result that he
made a wide de-
tour through a
field and came
out on the track
again a short dis-
tance behind the
caboose. Here
he rolled over in
the ditch, and
set up a howl
that would have
done credit to an
Indian massacre.
They found him
there, and helped
him into the ca-
boose.

It all came out
in the inves-
tigation. The
brakeman fell off
the engine. The
engineer knew
the train was
parted. Would he stop and go back to
the assistance, and perhaps save the life
of the brakeman, or would he go on to
keep out of the way of the rear end?

The human impulse to save a life pre-
vailed. He stopped. They at once
came together. Disaster ! Tableau :
Bill posing as hero.

Bill got out of it that way, and in one
week was back on his run.

He was asked, if by making possible
a wreck, had it not occurred to him that
he was endangering the lives of the men
on the caboose to render doubtful service
to the brakeman who had fallen off?

" All I thought of," Bill answered.
" was that poor fellow that fell off."

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT.

509

So it passed as one of those rare and
strange incidents — one of those freakish
combinations — that now and then occur
in railroading to wreck trains or take
human life.

to admonish them to play the game safe-
ly and for small profits on corn, cabbage,
or cucumbers, and leave the " wonders "
to be worked out by real farmers.

Why should a railroad man be a

Of course, the whole thing was acted , farmer, anyway? Can a farmer come

out and recited to save Bill's job. Since
that much is known, the question .sug-
gests itself, "Why did Bill stop?"

That brings me back to the railroad
man and the farm once more.

Bill wanted to be a farmer, and he
had a fad. No tomatoes for him ! His
was Jersey pigs ! Bill read all the liter-
ature extant on Jersey pigs. He had
two cows and a pasture-lot, and he fig-
ured that a vast brood of Jersey pigs
could roam therein, wax fat and multi-
ply, and add many doubloons to his an-
nual income.

One day he noticed quite a litter of
Jersey piglets in a pen adjoining the
right of way fence. They were frisky,
rugged little fellows. A few nights
later he came crawling up
to the spot with a convenient
bag and proceeded to gath-
er in about six of them,
when — smash !

But Bill never wavered
from his purpose. It is
true that he lied about the
accident, and it is true he
was about to steal when it
occurred. He came along
softly a month later, but he
was sure of the tail-lights
before he stopped. Then
he went over and got two
pigs. He did not take six,
because they had grown so
that two were all he could
handle.

He combined them with
other pigs he had secured
by various processes. < By
and by, when pork reached
the fancy figure of ten dol-
lars per cwr., and Bill was
prospecting on the profits,
the cholera laid its heavy
hand on the collection and
took them all.

These stories of disaster
are related to solemnly fore-
warn all railroad men
against agricultural fads,

up out of the alfalfa and run a train,
lay a track, or conduct a railroad office?
By the same token, can we wipe the ink
off our pen, and go out and run a farm?

We can't do it, brothers; we can't
do it!

Farming is a scientific game. One
must be born to it, and learn it by the
hard rule of experience.

If you have too much money, ask the
management to reduce your salary. It
will be done cheerfully.

Hold a minute ! Maybe it would be
better to buy a touring-car.

When a railroad man runs a touring-
car a year or two, he has no further
thought of buying a farm.

" There's a reason." . ■

4g?

DSc-

HE DID NOT TAKE SIX, BECAUSE THEY HAD GROWN SO.

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

BY BANNISTER MERWIN,
Author of "The Girl and the Bill," "The Sword of Tarroloys," "The Corner."

The Course of True Love Grosses the
Usual Rough Ground In Preliminary Survey.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

LARRY SMITH and Jack Marly, being in possession of some valuable water-rights.
J are building a dam, Smith being the engineer and Marly supplying half the
capital. The other half of the capital is supplied by a Denver capitalist named Briggs
and another man named Garth. Briggs comes to view the work, and while there he drops
half of a broken shilling, which Marly picks up. The capitalist is interested as a
money-lender, and not as a partner, and he holds a mortgage on the dam and all the
rights, subject to a time-limit for the completion of the work.

Jack rinds that Garth, Briggs, and Murdoch, the contractor, are playing a double-
cross ort Larry and himself. A walking-delegate tries to organize the men, and Jack
orders him off the place. It is evident that he is paid by Briggs. There is a scrimmage,
in which the walking-delegate loses considerable dignity and some skin.

CHAPTER VII.

Rumors.

^ARE sat heavily on Jack and
Larry that evening. They
smoked in silence, on the
bench at the front of the
shack, until Mrs. Larry —
who could tell without eyes
that something was wrong — rallied them
on their glumness.

At that moment Jack happened to be
thinking how much worse off he was than
Larry, because Larry had won a splendid
wife. And Larry had a profession which
would always assure his freedom from
poverty, even if Mrs. Larry should man-
age to lose her fortune — which, as Jack
had gathered from talk at the table, was
safely invested in bonds.

As for himself, ' he was a vagabond
Avho had been unlucky enough to have
money, and now, it seemed, was about
to be unlucky enough to lose it.

" Are you two men owls? " Mrs. Larry
was inquiring.

" I don't wonder you think so. Mary,"

Began in the Octobet Railroad Man

replied Larry, with an attempt at a laugh.
" Come and join us."

She seated herself beside Larry; and
Jack did not turn his head, for it would
emphasize his own feeling of loneliness,
if he saw that her hand was in Larry's.

" It will do you good," she said, with
fine seriousness, " to tell me all about it."

Jack moved uneasily.

" I can guess this much," she went on.
" It's Mr. Garth. You have discovered
that he is not genuine."

"You know that?" Larry turned to
her in surprise.

" Yes. I had a good view of him the
other day, when you were taking him and
Mr. Briggs over the work."

" But what makes you think he isn't
genuine, Mary? "

" I can't tell you what made me think
so. I just knew it."

"And Mr. Briggs?"

" He is all selfish."

" Larry sighed. " It looks," he said,
" as though you had seen in a flash what
Jack and I believed only when evidence
convinced us."

" In addition," remarked Mrs. Larry,

's Magazine. Single copies, 10 cents.

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

511

" there is something that Wing Fah tried
to tell me. Perhaps you would under-
stand him."

"What did you make of it, dear?"
Larry was quite aroused.

" You remember he went to the city
the day Mr. Garth brought Mr. Briggs
up? Well, on his way back he seems to
have met them, and something was said
or done — "

" Come, Jack. We'll see what Wing
Fah has to say."

Larry rose abruptly, but he paused to
lay his hand gently on his wife's shoul-
der. " I don't want you to be worried,
Mary, dear," he whispered. " Those
men sha'n't beat us."

She smiled her loving confidence.

" Wing Fah," began Larry, " you sabe
Mr. Garth?"

" Me sabe" replied Wing Fah.

" The missis says you saw him the
other day? "

" Fat-belly man in bluggy," said Wing
Fah. " Thlin-belly man, too. Hoss talc
a dlink at blook — ass'agement of thlust."

" What did they say?"

" Thlin-belly — top-side bluggy — say :
' Fleeze 'em out ! Fleeze 'em out ! Make
steike ! '"

Larry looked at Jack ; then said again
to Wing Fah :

" Did you sabe what he meant? "

" No sabe. Fat-belly say : ' Glet away,
damn Chinaman ' — so ! " He illustrated
what Garth had done to him by kicking
out with his right foot. "Me agglavated
by pang." He rubbed his leg ruefully.
"' Sabe, me lun away."

Larry nodded, and he and Jack left
the kitchen.

"Could you understand it?" asked
Mrs. Larry.

" He overheard Briggs say something
about ' freezing us out,' explained Larry.
" That's the danger, dear."

" Don't think about it now," she said,
" cither of you. Take me for a walk in-
stead. I have not been away from the
shack to-day."

So they strolled along. the mountain-
side, the three of them, and drew peace
from quiet converse and the companion-
ship of the night sky and the dim masses
of the friendly peaks.

The next morning the work went on
as usual. Down on the pipe-line, as

Jones and Armsby reported, the men
were actually driving ahead. At the
dam the last sluice was being constructed,
and the installation of machinery in the
power - house was proceeding satisfac-
torily.

In the sparkling sunlight Jack felt his
depression evaporate. As for Larry, he
was coolly and methodically busy, using
every means of hurrying Murdock with-
out seeming to hurry him.

Later in the day Jack yielded to his
desire to ride to " Sweden." Thekla
Wist persistently came before the eyes
of his memory. Even when the problems
of the work were most absorbing, her
presence seemed to be hovering near.

He could not understand why this
should be so. She was a mysterious vis-
ion of beauty, flowering unexpectedly in
that meadow . in the mountains, but he
had seen her only the one time, and he
knew no more of her than what she ap-
peared to be. Some unaccountable shy-
ness had kept him from making inquiries
about her.

When he came to the bridge that
crossed the little stream he saw that his
" message " had disappeared — the flowers
and note and handkerchief. He dis-
mounted and ' walked up the stream to
the place where he had left them, to
make sure that they had not blown away.

The stones with which he had weight-
ed them down were swept together in a
little heap. Going back to his pony, he
searched the landscape for a sight of her,
but he searched in vain.

This day, however, he had no mind
to go away without seeing her, and, mus-
tering his courage — it impressed him as
odd that the act should require courage
— he rode on toward her father's house.

In a distant field he had a glimpse of
men mowing ; but when he came to the
house, no one was in sight. He waited
in the road, hoping that she might see
him and come out.

In the yard a hammock swung be-
tween two trees, and a book lay on a
chair beside it. Her book, no doubt ;
and in the hammock she might have lain,
reading.

But though it seemed to him as if she
must have left the place only an instant
before, the house-door did not open, and
no face appeared at the windows.

512

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

At last he dismounted, and, walking
to the door, knocked. He must at least
ask for her. The noise of his summons
echoed emptily from the hall within, and
no steps came to open to him. The place
suddenly oppressed him with that lone-
liness which one feels so much the more
overwhelmingly when there are signs of
recent human presence, but no person to
account for them.
*— Again he knocked. There seemed to
be no one within sound. Reluctantly he
returned to his pony, and, again in the
saddle, looked back once more to the un-
responsive house, half expecting a late
recognition.

She might be sleeping— or ill. The
restless pony put an end to his linger-
ing by starting forward with no urging
of the spur, and though he found him-
self headed toward the heart of the val-
ley, he did not check the animal, nor
turn him about. Onward the pony car-
ried him, farther and farther from the
Bendwater.

Ahead was another farmhouse. As he
approached it some one came out and
started down the road toward him. He
knew her at once by the gblden gleam
of her hair, by the untrammeled manner
of her walk. It was Thekla. As he got
nearer to her he saw that she was carry-
ing a black hand-bag.

He waved his hat happily, and, getting
down from the pony, led the animal,
meeting her on foot. She smiled with
frank pleasure, and took his extended
hand.

" Little Christine Peterman found
your note," she began. " She brought it
to me, with the flowers and the handker-
chief. Thank you for your thoughtful-
ness."

" I am glad you felt no after-effects
from your fall."

" It was nothing. Even the bump is
gone. See ! " She turned her head and
parted the heavy coils of hair for his in-
spection.

" I planned to ride up yesterday," he
went on, " but I couldn't get away."

She smiled faintly. " You would not
have found me. Little Christine's mother
has been very ill, and I have had to be
with her nearly all the time."

" Then you are a nurse as well as a
valkvr?"

"I? Behold!" Laughingly she held
the hand-bag before his eyes.

" You mystify me," said Jack.

" I have no wish to mystify you, Mr.
Marly. I am the doctor."

" The doctor? "

She nodded.

" But I don't understand. There are
so many things I don't understand about
you."

" I am a regular M.D.," she said
quietly. " My father led these people to
this valley some years ago, from Minne-
sota. I stayed behind, with some rela-
tives— my uncle, who is a banker at
Minneapolis — for I was studying at the
University of Minnesota.

• ' After graduation I went to Chicago
and took a course in medicine and sur-
gery. I spent a year in a Chicago hos-
pital. Then my father sent for me."

" And you buried yourself here? "

" It is my father's home." She" spoke
gravely. " He is growing old. He has
had many disappointments in his life.
I should not like to be his last, great
disappointment."

Jack was silent.

" He spent several years in the West
long ago," she went on, after a pause.
" Then he came back to Minnesota and
married my mother, and went to farm-
ing. I think he is less moody now, less
bitter than he used to be."

" I used to be afraid of doctors," re-
marked Jack. " There was one who
looked after the football squad. He
caught me smoking a cigarette once " —
he smiled at the memory — " but there
can't be so many cases here that you are
kept busy, prof essionally ? "

" Only now and then."

" Why not have a gallop with me,
then? You ride, of course?"

" Yes, I ride ; but I have no good
saddle-pony. They are more interested
in work -horses up here."

"If I were to bring an extra pony — "

" That would be splendid," she sighed.

" I will come for you to-morrow."
He took hold of the broken shilling in
his pocket, hoping that its lucky magic
would help him to get her consent.

" Hardly to-morrow."

" Why not? " he asked boiclly.

" Mrs. Peterman is not out of danger
vet."

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

513

" Then, the next day? "

" Very well, the next day — and, thank
you."

They had now come to her house. "If
you will wait I will get your handker-
chief," she said.

" Of course I will wait — as long as
you will let me, but you needn't bother
to return the handkerchief."

" Oh, but I must." She tripped lightly
to the house, and returned in a moment
with the square of colored fabric. He
had hoped that she would keep it. He
would like to have her possess something
of his.

" I knocked at the door as I came
along," he explained, " but I could get
no answer."

" No one is at home, except my aunt.
She is very deaf."

" Your father is out in the fields? "

" Yes ; and that reminds me, Mr. Mar-
ly. I am glad to have seen you to-day.
There is a story in circulation that youi
company secretly intends to flood this
valley. I think you uught to know."

"To flood this valley? Absurd!"

" Yes, I know it is absurd, and I have
told them so. Nevertheless, the story is
believed. My father believes it."

" But who could have said — "

" It came through some Norwegians,
at Larkin City. They profess to have
heard it from some of your workmen.
The.dam is being built so high, they say,
that the water will back up and cover
all this land."

" Why—"

" Your company is supposed to have
planned it in such a way that the flood-
ing will drive us all out and leave us no
recourse but lawsuits. You are supposed
to have so much money that we shall
stand no chance in the courts."

Jack was thoughtful. " I think," he
said, " that if you don't mind I will
wait and have a talk with your father."

"I doubt if it would do much good
just now. My people are stubborn, Mr.
Marly. When they/once get an idea into
their head, it is not easy to get it out, and
you cannot possibly convince them by
direct argument."

" Nevertheless — "

"If you will only say nothing about
it. and leave it to me. I believe I can
make my father see, after a few days."
9 R R

" But if I were to offer to show him
our plans? "

" He would be more suspicious than
ever. He would say that it is very easy
to deceive with lines and figures."

"You prefer that I shouldn't, then?"

" It would do more harm than good.
I wished you to know of it, but I do. not
wish it to worry you."

She was very earnest and very lovely,
and underneath her charm was a note of
sound common sense. He was almost
tempted to tell her of the difficulty in
which Larry and he had found them-
selves, but he remembered in time that
that was as much Larry's secret as his
own ; and Larry, for all he knew, was
not even aware that such a girl as Thekla '
Wist was in existence. But he said :

" Have you ever been to the dam? "

She nodded. " I have been in sight of
it more than once, with my father, but I
have never gone quite all the way, and
it is some months since I have been out
of this valley."

How lonely she must have been !

"You know, that used to be our route
to Larkin City."

" You speak like the oldest inhabi-
tant," he laughed.

" And, in fact, J have been here less
than a year."

" Well, some day, before long, I am
going to take you down to the work and
show it to you properly."

She looked doubtful.

" You will like Mrs^ Smith," he has-
tened to add. " Her husband is the
chief engineer. He and I are in the
thing together."

" Then you are one of the engineers? "

" Nothing quite so busy as that. But
will you come? "

" Perhaps. Isn't it enough that I
promise-! to ride the day after to-mor-
row?"

" Just what you wish to do is enough,"
he said. " I shall be on hand, with a
pony for you. Meantime " — he frowned
a little — " I am a bit troubled by that
rumor you speak of. Are you certain
that Larry Smith and I hadn't better do
something about it? "

' " Quite certain. You would probably
make things worse. 1 am sure that I can
manage it."

" Hut—"

514

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" You don't realize how deeply rooted
their suspicion of the company is. It
has been growing for two years ; so please
do not even tell Mr. Smith, your chief
engineer."

Jack yielded. There was nothing else
for him to do. But his doubts recurred
when, on the road back to Bendwater
Canon, he was halted by a burly, middle-
aged Norwegian, who said to him in
broken English :

" You must not come here again."

"Why not?" asked Jack coolly.

" We know why you come. You must
stay away."

" I come to see Miss Thekla Wist."

" No — no ! We understand why you
come."

" iVnd I shall visit Miss Wist again,"
Jack continued.

The man shook his head, and began to
jabber in his native tongue, and Jack
rode on. All the way to camp he won-
dered about this strange suspicion among
the Norwegians. Could it be traced
back to the brain of Thomas Brigg^? It
would be easy for him to pay one of the
workmen at the dam to carry the false
story to the Norwegians of Larkin City.

When he went to the home of Thekla
Wist, on the second afternoon following,
leading an extra pony, he was prepared
to find his progress disputed, but he met
no one. The girl was waiting for him.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Beginning of Dreams.

"T ET'S make a circuit of the valley,
-*— ' among the foOt-hills," he sug-
gested, and at her assent they went back
to the limit of cultivated ground and
struck off to the left.

The soil was firm, and the slopes were
easy. Thekla rode to perfection. With
corselet, helm, and spear, she might well
have passed for the valkyr his fancy had
first painted her. Her face was alight
with the joy of the bounding gallop ; her
red lips parted above her white teeth,
and her blue eyes shone.

At their left the hills billowed up to
the peaks. Below, at flie right, was the
veil-watered valley, with its fields shim-
mering in the breeze. After a time they
slowed their ponies to a walk.

"How are your patients?" asked
Jack.

"Doing well — thanks!"

"And the other matter?"

She was ready for the question. In-
deed, she may have guessed how close to
the tip of his tongue it had been lying.

"I am progressing slowly. It takes
time to convince my father. Once —
many years ago — he trusted a man too
much ; and since then he has seemed to
trust no one."

Jack hesitated. " A fellow stopped
me on my way home the other day, and
warned me to keep out of the valley."

She reined in abruptly. " What did
he look like? "

" He was, say, forty — strong looking,
with peculiarly long arms. He had a
straggling red beard and bushy red eye-
brows."

" That was Ole Knudsen." She shud-
dered as she spoke the name. " How
did you answer him?"

He told her, and she looked thought-
ful. Jack became aware that conflicting
issues centered in the man, though for
the time she said no more.

After they had nearly completed the
circle of the valley, however, she turned
her pony abruptly down toward a field,
where a man was cultivating potatoes.

" Come ! " she said to Jack, and he
followed.

The man stopped his machine as they
came near, riding carefully between the
rows. It was Knudsen. He glared at
Jack, but his eyes softened when he
turned to Thekla.

She addressed him sharply in Norse.
He answered little ; but Jack could see
the look on his face range from admira-
tion to distrust, and from distrust to a
sullen submission. At her signal, Jack.
swung his pony around, and they rode
out of the field.

" I don't think he will bother you
again," she said, " but he is a hard man
to deal with." Then, in a tone of em-
barrassed frankness, she added : " He is
a widower with six children."

Jack understood. That creature of
the soil had desired this goddess !

It was as she had said ; he saw no
more of Knudsen, though almost daily
he came to the valley. But Thekla he
saw again and again, and soon it was

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

515

" Thekla " and " Jack " when they spoke
to each other ; and they were telling
each other freely of their past lives, and
voicing their future hopes and aims.

He even qne day confessed to her his
follies — how' he had squandered a fifth
of his fortune — and he knew that the
lack of reproof in her sympathy was due
to her knowledge that such follies were,
with him, all of the past. Her fine
comradeship would of itself have been
his salvation.

He could not induce her, however, to
visit the dam. WJiether it was shyness
that made her refuse, or whether she did
not wish to go alone with him so far out
of sight of her own home, her pretty ob-
stinacy, was persistent.

One day, when she spoke to him of
her life in Chicago — of people she had
known there, of the books and the music
that she had enjoyed — he caught the
note of wistful yearning in her voice.
" Thekla," he said abruptly, " you have
been lonely here."

She bent her head a' little.

" You have sacrificed yourself to be
with your father — to deal out pills to
these farmers. You have cut yourself
off 'from the worthy things you had
learned to enjoy, and you are facing a
monotonous future. You know it."

Still she was silent. They had fin-
ished their ride, and were standing in
the road before her house. She turned
away from him and stroked the warm
neck of her pony.

" It isn't fair to you," he went on
hotly. " Your father ought to see it.
1 "here is so much in life for you that — "

" Don't ! " She turned suddenly, and
he saw that she was crying. " I am the
tragedy of the second generation," she
said. " They have taught us to know
more than our fathers — to see more — to
enjoy more — and yet we are held back
by the old bonds of family relationship.

" I have known it for years — that I
was having my glimpse of the promised
land, only to be drawn back into the
arid desert of a life like this ! But it
has to be. My father is my father ;
there is work for me here ; there is no
escape."

He tried to take her hand, but she
motioned him. away.

" Why didn't they bring me up as

they are- bringing up Christine Peter-
man?" she exclaimed fiercely. "Then
I should have been at least contented.
But now I am forced to look at the
ignorance of the very father I love — ■
and know it to be ignorance.

"Do you think it has been no shame
to me that he should believe that stupid
story about the dam? Can't you under-
stand why I have kept you from meet-
ing him? It was because I was ashamed
of him. Ashamed of my father!" She
burst into a torrent of tears.

" Thekla, dear — "

" You sha'n't pity me ! You sha'n't! "

" But, Thekla, there is no shame in
a life that has lacked opportunity."

"I know it. I have tried every day
to keep that thought in my mind; but I
had no happiness here until you came,
Jack. You were something from the
life I" had left behind."

" But I hope to be something of the
life you are going to live," he said so-
berly. " Do you think I would look
down on your father, Thekla?

" There is shame to me in my history
of wasted opportunities ; but he — at
least, he has made things grow ; and he
has shown himself a leader. Men
obey him. I shall honor your father,
Thekla."

" This is foolish of me ! " she ex-
claimed of a sudden. "Good -by!"
She darted away to the house, and for
several days thereafter he came to the
valley in vain.

CHAPTER IX.

The Power of the King.

TV/I EANTIME, the work on the Bend-
!▼-*- water went steadily forward; and
that, in spite of innumerable unexpected
delays, that reduced, little by little, the
safety margin of time. Larry and Jack
could not prove that these petty delays
were wilful.

Thus, when a load of staves was upset
on the road up Klingerman Pass, and
the needed staves were so scattered down
the slope that it took an hour to gather
them, it was easy for the teamster to
point to a soft place in the trail. Again,
when a boulder rolled down the moun-
tain and smashed a short section of com-

516

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

pleted pipe, though Jack climbed within
the hour to the place whence the boulder
had started, he was unable to find any
human footprints.

All that Jack and Larry could do was
to be watchful. Every morning Jack
nonchalantly patrolled the line of the
pipe, appearing unexpectedly where the
different gangs were at work.

In the evenings he canvassed the sit-
uation with Larry. They had become
quite dogged about it, and they tacitly
adopted the policy of ignoring the final
issue, as far as they could^ and concen-
trating on each immediate problem as it
arose.

To get the pipe completed was the
first concern. Gradually this was ac-
complished. By Saturday, the twenty-
third, it was ready to carry water — as
the contract specified.

From the intake below the dam, all
the six miles to its outlet basin on the
inner slope of Klingerman Pass, it ex-
tended its serpentine length, segmented
by nearly a million steel rods. The last
sluice, too, was done, and the manufac-
turer's men in the power-house had com-
pleted the installation of the machinery.

During all the crowded days there
had been a thousand signs of coming
trouble. Murdock's men appeared to
be getting out of hand. Groups of them
who went down to Larkin City on dif-
ferent evenings returned to camp bois-
terous and unruly, waking the night with
yells and revolver-shots.

Whisky found its way to the sleeping-
tents ; and there was more gambling than
formerly. To everything that Larry said
to Murdock, the contractor had one re-
ply.

He sould not prevent the men from
going down to the city after working
hours ; and the trouble was primarily due
to Jack's handling of O'Neill, the walk-
ing-delegate. Yet Larry knew that Mur-
dock, despite his pretense of helplessness,
could control the men if he chose to.

One evening, a few days before the
pipe was completed, Jack went alone
down to the temporary camp at Klinger-
man Pass. He found Jones and Armsby
at their tent, much depressed.

" Listen to that, will you? " said Jones
disgustedly, after greetings had been ex-
changed.

" That " was the sound of squabbling
argument from the long tent of the
workmen.

" It gets worse every night," continued
Jones. " The foremen don't half man-
age 'em. The trouble is, the men have
got the idea that Bill Murdock is afraid
of them. Darn it! I'm beginning to
believe he is."

Jack knew better, but he said nothing.
After a time, however, he strolled quiet-
ly over to the men's tent and entered.

The scene was not pleasant; the odor
was worse; and the jabber continued,
growing louder with the ostentatious ef-
fort to ignore the presence of the visitor.
One black-browed chap, in particular,
remarked in a loud voice to three others
who were shaking dice with him:

" Some people never knows their
places. They gouges the poor man, an'
then comes an' stares at 'em, eh? Here,
I'H throw to them sixes ! " He rattled
the dice-box again.

Jack saw that he would get into trou-
ble if he remained. With a last glance
at the frowzy groups, he Avalked away.
In the darkness outside he heard a man
say to another:

" O'Neill told me last night that if
we — " The rest was lost.

All about the camp it was unrest —
unrest. O'Neill was making good his
promises. Still, if the men — even with
their growing disorderliness — could be
kept to their tasks only a few days
longer, all might end well.

Let ever so little water be in the reser-
voir on the thirtieth; let it be turned
into the turbines and set the big dynamos
in motion; let the "waste run through the
pipe, down to the thirsty soil of Mor-
mon Valley — let these things be done,
and Thomas Briggs, by his written and
completely witnessed agreement, would
have to reneAv the mortgage. Bonds
would be sold then, and in time the mort-
gage would be paid ; and Larry and
Jack would hold their own with Aaron
Garth.

In the midst of this crisis it was -Mrs.
Larry who developed the strongest hope.
Her calmness was better medicine for
Larry and Jack than any forced or hys-
terical good spirits.

She did not deny the menace of de-
feat ; but her quiet insistence on the right

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

517

made them feel that defeat would not
matter so much, if only they did their
best. And, as much as they could, they
still ignored the chances of defeat.

It was Friday afternoon, the day be-
fore the pipe was finished, when Jack,
after two days in which he had been
closely tied to the camp, felt justified
in riding up to " Sweden." He had
seen Thekla but once since her out-
break, and then only for a few minutes;
and now his heart leaped at the pros-
pect of an hour with her, for he was
taking the extra pony along, and hoped
that she would ride.

When he reached the house and
knocked at the door, however, though
she answered at once, and though she
did not conceal her pleasure in seeing
him, she made no move to go and put
on her riding-habit, but invited him in-
stead to a seat on the doorstep. She
clasped her hands over her knees and
looked straight before her, and said :

" Jack, you mustn't come any more."

He laughed. Did she think that he
could help coming? Her feeling, he
inferred, was clue to a decision that his
friendship was disquieting ; that it made
her lot the harder, by the contrast be-
tween the hours she passed in his- com-
pany and the dreary monotony of her
life among her people.
x Well, he would lift her out of that
notion. He would show her that she
owed something to herself, and perhaps
■ — he realized this fully for the first time
— that he himself — She was speaking
again.

• " I am serious," she' said. " Your
visits have been misunderstood."

He interrupted hotly. " I don't see
how--—" |

"Wait! The suspicion has grown
that your rides about the valley have
been for the purpose of spying out the
land. Ole Knudsen has made them be-
lieve it. The worst is that they think
I am in league with you.

" They believe that you have drawn
me to your view of the case, or at least
that you have fooled me. They sneer .at
me now when I tell them that you are
not going to flood the valley. Even my
father has forbidden me to speak of the
subject to him."

" I can't imagine such a thing."

" It is true. You don't understand
my people, Jack. Suspicion is their
great weakness. Since they have seen
you and me together, all that I can say
counts for nothing. So you must keep
away. I ask it for their sake as well as
for yours." v

"Why for their sake?"

" Because I do not wish them to be
driven to madness."

He laughed. " Not as bad as that ! "

" Think for a minute what it means
to them. They came here and found
this valley barren. They bought it for
little. They dug ditches and diverted
the streams, and they have made the
desert bloom.

"It has become home to them. They
love it. The fear that your company
may force them from their homes is
enough, to drive them to anything."

" But they can be made to see — "

" Only by patience. Their minds
have been thoroughly poisoned by false
rumors. There is another reason why
they love this valley. Here they are
almost shut off from the world. They
are, in a way, independent. They gov-
ern themselves, and they are let alone to
work out their own customs.

" If they are driven from this valley,
they will have to go where they would
probably come directly under the rule of
men whom they would not understand,
and who would not understand them.
This valley is a little monarchy, and my
father is its king. If he were to order
that a wrongdoer be tied to a post and
flogged, it would be done."

" Has it been done?" Jack was
amazed. ,

" No, but I have lived here long
•enough to know that such an order
would be obeyed. The people here
never call upon the law of the State,
though they pay their tribute of taxes.
They are, indeed, a law unto themselves.
And they are well behaved, too." She
said this with some pride.

"Look at me," said Jack; and when
she showed him the troubled depths of
her' eyes, he continued: "I am going to
have a talk with your father."

"No! "

" Yes ! Whatever I can say, I must
say. Now, I am going to tell you some-
thing that I haven't told you before, lie-

518

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

cause it was not my secret alone. Unless
the work down there in the canon is
finished by the thirtieth, Larry Smith
and I shall lose our shares in it.

" Another man — an interested man —
is trying to make delays so that we sha'n't
get through on time. Do you under-
stand? I am convinced that this story
about the flooding of the valley was
started by that man. It is intended to
make trouble for us."

She stared at him, nonplused.

" More is at stake," he added, " than
you have realized. There is no time for
patience. The man who is behind this
rumor will force the issue — must force
it, if he is to rob us — within a week.
You say you cannot change the situation
at once. Then it can do no harm for
me" to talk with your father. Where is
he now? "

" In the field, at the back of the
barns," she faltered.

He arose. For a, moment he smiled
down at her. It seemed as though he
were about to speak again; but at last
he reached down and took her hand,
pressed it gently, released it, and walked
quickly around the corner of the house.
She sat for a time as he had left her;
then, with a sigh, she followed him.

Peter Wist looked up from his radish-
bed as Jack approached. He was a
rugged man of sixty — firm of mouth,
sharp of eye. Time had plowed many
furrows on his face, and the autumn of
life had touched his thick hair with
white frost.

"How do you do?" said Jack sober-
ly. " My name is Marly. I am one of
the owners of the power-dam in Bend-
water Canon."

Peter Wist got slowly to his feet.

" I understand," Jack went on, " that
you men up here think we are going to
flood your valley. It is not true."

" You say it is not true," said Wist
dryly. His English was good, though
made quaint by the trace of foreign ac-
cent.

" I will prove that it is not true.
Come yourself down to the dam — bring
with you as many of your friends as you
choose — and Mr. Smith and I will show
you all our drawings and specifications.
You will then know just how high the
clam is to be built, and you will find that

the water cannot possibly back up as far
as this valley."

Wist made no answer.

" Isn't that a fair offer, Mr. Wist? "

"Yes; I suppose so,"- said Wist in-
differently.

" We will also show you our title
from the State, and you will see that we
have not filed for a head of water high
enough to make the flooding of this val-
ley possible."

"It is easy to fool men with plans
and writings," remarked Wist. " We
would not understand them."

" Then bring with you some lawyer
that you trust," began Jack eagerly.

" We trust no lawyers."

" But you have friends in Larkin City
who would understand the maps and ex-
plain them to you."

Wist shook his head.

" We will do more than show you the
plans, Mr. Wist. We will give you a
written agreement not to let our reser-
voir come within a mile of the head of
the canon."

Jack was turning the broken shilling
in his pocket, for he had come to have
a half-superstitious faith in its value
as a charm. It seemed to have no virtue
in this case, for Wist merely shrugged
his shoulders.

" What do you say? " Jack smiled.

" I say nothing. I do not believe
you."

" But I will prove — "

" I do not want your proof. ■ You have
been coming to spy on us many days."
His eyes were beginning to light up with
the anger which he had until now kept
under control.

" But you are mistaken," said Jack
eagerly. " I have not come to spy. I
have come to see Thekla."

Wist laughed scornfully. " I under-
stand," he said, and his voice shook.
" You would play with my daughter
while you spy. You . would rob me of
my home and of my daughter, too."

"It is false ! " exclaimed Jack. And
at the same moment he heard an excla-
mation behind him, and turned to see
Thekla, aghast. " Yes," he continued,
" it is false ! "

Wist had drawn himself up.

"You say I lie?" he demanded
fiercely.

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

519

" I say you are mistaken," replied
Jack. " You do not understand. We
will not flood your fields. We have
never thought of such a thing."

"You' say so," remarked Wist grimly.
" And my daughter? "

" And Thekla — " Jack's voice broke.
He looked at the girl and made an im-
pulsive gesture toward her • but she
drew back. " I have come to see
Thekla," he went on, " because — be-
cause— " Again he turned to the girl.
She was like stone.

Wist was studying him with burning
eyes. " So," he shouted, " it is what I
have said ! "

" It is not what you have said," cried
Jack. " It is what I say now. I have
come to see Thekla because I love her — -
I wish her to be my wife."

There was a long silence. Peter Wist
appeared to be stunned. Thekla clenched
her fingers so' tightly against her palms
that her knuckles were white. Her
breast fluttered with her breathing.
And Jack — there was no trace of good-
natured indolence about him now. His
face was transformed. He was startled,
but exalted, by the revelation of his own
feelings. For what he had said was
true — and he had not known it until that
moment.

At last Wist spoke. " She is not for
you. What has she said?"

Jack turned to Thekla. " Come with
me, dear. Leave this place. Come."

She shook her head. Her eyes were
wet ; her lips trembled. At that mo-
ment she could not have spoken.

Jack stepped nearer to her. " The
ponies are there," he said in a low voice.
" Thekla, I love you. Come with me.
We will ride to the camp, and I will put
you in the care of Larry's wife.

" I haven't known it, dear, until now.
I have only known that every day
seemed empty unless I saw you — that
you were always in my thoughts. But
now I know it is because we belong to
each other, you and I. Thekla, dear,
you care ! Oh, you care!"

His arms were outstretched. All of
love and devotion was his face, and the
girl wavered. With her, too, this was a
moment of self - revelation. She shrank
from the glare of her own thoughts, but

(To be co

the compulsion of his feelings seemed to
drag her to him. She raised her hand — -
took an uncertain step.

" Thekla! " Peter Wist's rough voice
broke the spell. The girl sighed,
dropped her hand, drew back.

" Thekla " — Wist's voice shook —
"who is this man?" He pointed at
Jack. " How long have you known him
that you turn to him from your father?
Would you leave me for him? He is a
robber ! You would be his toy.

" I know his kind — smooth — smooth.
I am your father." He was stern, ac-
cusing, regal. " I have 'given you your
chance to be what you are. I have
worked for you — digging in the fields so
that your hands would be white. Do
you turn from me to him because his
hands are white? "

"No! No!"

"Are you ashamed of me, Thekla?"

" No! No! " she sobbed.

" If you go from me, I shall think it
was because I had made you too sgood for
me — my daughter. And if you go, you
need not come back."

With a hurt cry, she darted to her
father and buried her face in his coat.
All the old reproach of her disloyal feel-
ing toward him and toward her home
swept over her with agonizing emphasis.

Jack partly understood, but only part-
ly ; his own immediate pain of loss was
too keen for him to see clearly.

He awaited the final blow.

Wist glared at him sternly. " Go
away," he said. " Go away and do not
come back."

Jack stood his ground. " I
what Thekla wishes me to do.
me, Thekla."

She shook her head.

" Thekla, do you want me to go

She was motionless, her face
pressed against her father's coat.

"Thekla!"

He saw her fingers clutch more tightly
her father's ■ sleeve ; but she made no
sign, and at last heavily he turned and
walked slowly away.

And, strangely, the impression that
remained with him was not the clinging
girl, but the grim, triumphant father —
still suspicious, still embittered, but more
a king than ever.
n t i n u e d . )

will do
Look at

still

HELP FOR MEN WHO HELP
THEM SELV ES — NUMBER 28.

MAKING PASSENGER-
GARS COMFORTABLE

BY G. F. GARTER.

IF running, a railroad were as easy as the silly-season correspondents
imagine, there would be no excuse for paying high-priced men, and
conducting costly experiments, to solve its problems. As a matter of
fact, the hurling of a maximum of weight at a -maximum of speed and a
minimum of danger and discomfort, across a continent, involves difficulties
which the general public knows absolutely nothing about. The difficulties
are as unending as travel itself, and they progress with every step and line
of development.

The Aims, Efforts and Difficulties of the Men Who Must Progress

with Every Luxurious Wish, and Every Danger

of the Traveling Public.

,HE difficulties of making a full-grown travelers, the length of the
railroad - train as comfort- sleeping-car berth — or, rather the lack
able as a hotel are obvious of length — was adjusted some years ago
when one takes into consid- by the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul
eration the limited space. Railroad by the simple expedient of
But the public is a factor building longer berths,
that takes no account of difficulties ; and, Yet this is but one of the problems
if a miracle is required to produce a de- connected with rolling-stock, and, in the
sired result, a miracle is demanded. The opinion of operating officials, "not the
sleeping - car is a notable example, most important. One of the things that
and the good and bad rimes and jokes promised a substantial reward to the in-
launched upon a defenseless world about ventor was to find a way to provide all
the limitations of this piece of rolling- the luxuries that are regarded by pam-
stock would fill many five-foot shelves. pered travelers of to-day as necessaries,
Railroad men have realized these lim- at less than the heavy first cost of a
itations, too, and have sought, with the whole train of separate cafe, dining, par-
same tireless zeal with which they have lor, and sleeping cars, for long runs and
grappled with the problems of the per- light traffic, and at less than the enor-
manent way and motive-power, to over- mous expense of maintaining and op-
come them. The cardinal grievance of erating such a train. The problem has

Series began In the August, 1907, Railroad Man's Magazine. Single copies, 10 cents.

■ 520

MAKING PASSENGER-CARS COMFORTABLE.

521

been solved by the American Palace Car
Company by the building of a single car
which fulfils in itself all the functions
of a whole limited train. Several of
these cars are in use on the Canadian
Northern, where they are giving satis-
faction.

A Disguised Sleeper.

Starting in daylight from Port Arthur
on its long journey into the northland,
this new type of traveling palace appears
to be a parlor-car, with observation and
smoking rooms, and with twenty com-
fortable movable wicker chairs. There
is nothing suggestive of the sleeping-
car about it.

At meal-time the porter, who is also
waiter, produces ten double tables from
mysterious closets, which are spread with
a full service of linen, china, and silver,
such as is to be found in the best dining-
cars, and upon which are spread not a
buffet lunch, but an appetizing course
dinner, as served on the crack trains of
the trunk lines.

At bedtime the porter sets a couple of
chairs aside, lifts up a trap-door, and
begins turning a crank, whereupon there
rises from the floor an upper and lower
berth, longer and wider and higher than
the usual berth. Chairs and hand bag-
gage are stored in the cellar vacated by
the berths, and the car is transformed
into a comfortable ten - section sleeper
for the night. The windows are unusu-
ally high, while the upper berths are
ventilated and lighted from the outside.

An Interurban Luxury.

Another sleeping - car, which is dis-
guised as a parlor-car during the day, is
the Holland. Its chairs are fixed to the
floor, and are folded down to form the
berth.

The chief novelties about the Holland
car are that the berths are long, that the
curtains are sliding wooden partitions,
which make each berth a private com-
partment, and that the fares are one-half
those on standard Pullman sleepers.
The first cars, operated by the Illinois
Traction Company between Blooming-
ton, Illinois, and St. Louis, have been so
popular and profitable that the company
will place similar cars on other runs.

Altogether it had been found easier
to please the passenger than to do some
other things. For instance, a difficulty
that is growing more serious every year
is to find suitable material from which
to build cars. Even if wood were satis-
factory, which it is not, it is getting so
scarce and so costly that other material
is necessary on the ground of economy
alone. There are other and stronger
reasons.

The motive - power officials of the
Harriman lines have recommended the
building of steel passenger-coaches. Ex-
periments conducted by •them have de-
monstrated that the cost of maintaining
a steel coach is only half the cost of
maintaining a wooden one. But the
safety of the steel car in wrecks and fires
is its strongest recommendation.

So far as the mere building of steel
cars is concerned, that is easy. The first
steel sleeping-car was exhibited by the
Pullman company at the Jamestown Ex-
position, and it has been undergoing a
trying out in regular service since then.
The Pennsylvania Company in 1907
placed an order for two hundred all-
steel coaches. They are to be built
strong enough to stand a roll down an
embankment without collapsing, and to
stand an end blow of four hundred thou-
sand pounds, while the end-wall frames
are to be so strong that the superstruc-
ture cannot be swept off in a collision.

Thousands of steel gondolas have been
built and are in, daily use. To build
steel box cars would be an easy matter,
as the Union Pacific shops proved by
building the first two early in 1907.
Although of greater capacity than stand-
ard wooden cars, they weighed but
38,000 pounds, compared with 42,000
pounds.

An Experiment in Iron.

Indeed, the Baltimore and Ohio proved
that it is, forty-six years ago, by building
two hundred box cars of one-eighth-inch
iron. The tremendous progress made
since 1862 in producing machinery for
the economical working of metal has
greatly simplified that problem. When
the Baltimore and Ohio had built its iron
cars, however, its troubles were just
begun.

522

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Using iron or steel cars is a very dif-
ferent matter from building them. When
the summer sun beat down upon those
old iron cars the temperature in them
was almost high enough for baking.
General merchandise or anything else
that was affected by a high temperature
could not be shipped in them.

They could not even be vised for lime-
cars, as they would sweat and ruin all
the lime. The only thing for which they
could be used satisfactorily was scrap-

Heat in Metal.

Any one who has been in a railroad
yard full of steel gondolas in summer
need not be told that they have an enor-
mous capacity for absorbing heat. On
a warm, sunshiny day they are often too
hot to touch with the hand. A steel roof
would greatly increase the inside tem-
perature. It is claimed that the temper-
ature in an all-steel car on a summer day
would kill live stock and seriously dam-
age grain and a large variety of other
classes of freight.

In winter the changes of temperature
would cause deposits of moisture from
the atmosphere on the walls, such as is
seen on locomotive-tanks, and this would
cause serious damage to freight. From
this it may be gathered that the problem
of the steel car is by no means so simple
as it might be.

The Ease of Theorizing.

The plain truth is that nothing about
a railroad is nearly so simple to the men
who operate it as to the outsiders who
know nothing about such matters. Take
the problem of safety appliances, for in-
stance. Almost any plain citizen could
take his pen in hand and in half an hour
dash off a letter to his favorite news-
paper that would illuminate all details
of any question that could possibly come
up in the next decade.

Yet mere railroad officials spend an
astonishingly large part of their time
considering safety devices without ma-
king any very rapid progress. So many
inventions that work out to absolute per-
fection in patent specifications and draw-
ings, and models that are infallible in

exhibition tests, have a most unpleasant
habit of failing miserably in actual serv-
ice. Some of them prove to be downright
dangerous.

Really, it isn't surprising that railroad
managements do not spend more millions
on wondrous mechanisms guaranteed by
the inventor to work miracles when usu-
ally the inventors do not understand
even the most elementary facts about the
operation of such a simple piece of mech-
anism as a car-wheel.

It is simply amazing to discover how
many complications can arise from that
humble metal disk. The problems as-
sume considerable magnitude when it is
remembered that nearly two and a half
million freight-cars in the United States
each -have eight of these trouble-makers.

The Elusive Car-Wheel.

A great deal has been learned about
the car-wheel recently as a result of some
very curious and spectacular experiments.

Previous to 1905 little was known
about car-wheels, except that they were
of few days and full of trouble for the
operating department.

When cars of 100,000 pounds capac-
ity were, introduced the wheels lasted
only half as long as they had under the
cars of 60,000 pounds capacity. It was
concluded that part of the trouble arose
from long continued and heavy pressure
of the air-brake shoes, which heated the
wheels, expanding the rims and thus re-
ducing their strength, causing flanges to
break and ditch trains at most incon-
venient places. Yet this theory did not
cover the entire case.

Experiments Avere begun by breaking
the flanges off of ordinary cast - iron
wheels in a testing - machine. Some of
them broke at pressure as low as 45,000
pounds, while the best gave way when a
pressure of 100,000 was applied. Steel
wheel flanges stood 526,612 pounds.

The next step was to ascertain if the
pressure on the flanges in going around
curves — the lateral thrust as it is called
— in actual service approached nearly
enough to the minimum strength of the
wheels as ascertained by the testing-ma-
chine, to be dangerous. The lateral
thrust is largely caused by the tendency
of the wheels to roll in a straight line.

MAKING. PASSENGER-CARS COMFORTABLE.

523

In going around a curve the wheels
must- slide laterally, and also longitudi-
nally to an amount equal to the differ-
ence between the length of the outer and
inner rails. The resistance of the trucks,
which must be turned on the center plate
and side bearings to an angle with the
car body and then straightened back
again- at the end of the curve, also in-
creases the lateral thrust.

Flashlight Measurements.

To settle this point, a section three
feet long was cut out of the outer rail
on a curve of 1,307 feet radius on the
Hickory branch of the Pennsylvania
Railroad, and so arranged that it would
be held firmly in the track, yet free to
move out enough to exert a pressure on
a hydraulic cylinder.

The measuring apparatus attached to
this section of the rail had to be heavy
enough to withstand the thrust of the
heaviest locomotive as it rounded the
curve at high speed, yet so light that the
effect of the inertia of the moving parts
would not affect its operation. It had to
be so sensitive and so rapid in action that
the pointer would register the thrust of
a passing wheel and get back to zero in
time to register the next.

That meant very quick action, for the
wheel base of an ordinary freight-car
truck is five feet two inches, and at a
speed of forty miles an hour the interval
between the two wheels would be eighty-
eight thousandths of a second.

The recording instrument was placed
on a table seven feet from the track and
connected with the hydraulic cylinder
by a brass pipe. The speed of the pass-
ing cars in a train was registered at the
same instant as the lateral thrust by two
trips, sixty-six feet apart, which were ad-
justed to be struck by the journal-boxes.

At nine miles an hour the lateral
thrust of passing wheels on this curve
varied from 2,260 to 7.,210 pounds; at
twelve miles an hour, 7,070 to 10,605
pounds, and at thirjy miles an hour,
9,190 to 12,865 pounds. At higher speeds
the pressure ran up to 30,000 pounds, or
two-thirds the minimum strength of a
cast-iron wheel flange. This was alto-
gether too small a factor of safety, so it
was concluded that cast-iron wheels were

dangerous when placed under a modern
high-capacity car.

Centrifugal Force?

That was pretty good for one lesson,
but it was only a beginning in the study
of curve mechanics. The railroad world
realized this when, on February 16, 1907,
a New York Central train of five cars,
drawn by two electric locomotives, in go-
ing around a three-degree curve with a
radius of 1,710 feet at Woodlawn, was
derailed — ■ four of the coaches being
thrown over and partly destroyed, kill-
ing twenty-four persons and injuring one
hundred. The point was emphasized six
days later, when the Pennsylvania spe-
cial— the eighteen-hour train from New
York to Chicago — was derailed on a
three -and -one -quarter -degree curve at
Mineral Point, Pennsylvania, while run-
ning at fifty miles an hour.

The newspapers promptly announced
that the centrifugal force of the New
York Central train, in rounding the
curve, threw it from the track; but the
railroad engineers declined to accept this
theory. They demonstrated that, with
a superelevation of four and one-half
inches on a three-degree curve, a speed
of one hundred and twenty miles an hour
was required to tip the train over.

They also pointed out ' that the acci-
dent at Salisbury, England, was the only
one in many years caused by centrifugal
force. As the train at Salisbury rounded
a ten-degree curve with only three inches
superelevation at sixty miles an hour, it
simply had to tip over.

A Newspaper Race.

In order to find out what really was
the matter with track or equipment, both
roads undertook. a series of experiments.
One point that interested both roads was
what difference, if any, there was between
a steam locomotive, with its large drivers,
and an electric locomotive, with its short-
er wheel-base and smaller drivers, in
rounding a curve.

For several days in October, 1907,
Pennsylvania engineers stood near a lone-
ly curve near Franklinville, New Jersey,
watching a steam and an electric loco-
motive thunder past at speeds of sixty to

524

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

one hundred miles an hour. The news-
papers concluded this was a new sort of
race-meet gotten up to determine which
could run the faster, steam or electricity,
and so gave long reports daily, which
could not have failed to edify the sport-
ing fraternity as much as they did the
engineers.

The New York Central experiments
showed that, while a steam locomotive at
forty miles an hour exerted a lateral
thrust of 6,120 pounds in rounding the
experimental curve, an electric locomo-
tive only registered 4,740 pounds. At
sixty miles an hour, the lateral thrust for
steam was 11,230 pounds, and for elec-
tricity 10,470 pounds. At eighty miles
an hour, the thrust was 21,160 pounds
for steam and 18,360 pounds for elec-
tricity.

By. far the most elaborate experiments
ever made with a view to the solution of
problems connected with rolling - stock
was the series undertaken by the Studien-
gesellschaft of Germany, assisted by the
ministry of public works, the last of
which was held in 1903. An experi-
mental track was laid from Berlin to
Zossen. The department of public works
supplied the material and money, and
soldiers were detailed to do the work.

omething in

Speed.

The Studiengesellschaft had only to
conduct the experiments. The object of
the test was to find out how the car and
its various parts acted at very high speeds
in order that defects might be remedied,
and to study the resistance of the track
and the atmosphere, and how best to
overcome them. Tests were made at va-
rious speeds up to one hundred and twen-
ty-four miles an hour.

The results strongly emphasized the
importance of careful design and good
construction for trucks of cars destined
to run at high speeds. Smooth running
was possible only when the load was
equally distributed on the axles.

The second instalment of this article

Specially constructed swivel trucks of
longer wheel-base and wider lateral play
than ordinary were found to run more
smoothly at one hundred and twenty-four
miles an hour than the high-class cars on
through trains at one-half that speed. A
sleeping-car with six wheel-trucks taken
from its regular run for the test, began
to sway so dangerously at one hundred
and eleven miles an hour^ that the ex-
periment had to be stopped.

Finding Safety Limits.

The danger - line in speed on curves
was found to be one hundred and thirty
miles an hour. On entering a curve, the
truck follows the rails, while the car
body runs straight ahead until the ten-
sion of the springs becomes great enough
to overcome this tendency, when the car
body swings over and runs smoothly.

The tendency of the front wheel of
the truck to climb the rail was so great
at extreme speeds that it was found
necessary to put guard-rails on tangents
as well as on curves.

An interesting point on which the first
authoritative data was collected at the
Berlin-Zossen speed trials was the resist-
ance of the atmosphere of moving trains.
This atmospheric resistance has always
been something of a bugaboo to the more
conservative, while the other kind of
railroad engineers have not given it the
attention it deserves.

The Obstinate Atmosphere.

The first serious attempt to deal with
atmospheric resistance in the United
States was made by F. U. Adams, a re-
porter on the Chicago Tribune, who,
eighteen years ago, was sent to write up
a locomotive which, the inventor claimed,
by using a driving-wTheel sixteen feet in
diameter running upon a single rail, in-
stead of the customary two, could make
the run between New York and Chicago
in one hour.
will appear in the Jasuary number.

^ksU/'

I JUDGED THEY WERE DEAD, AND

STARTED HUNTING FOR

MY GRIP."

"«^£^C

CARRYING THE BOODLE TO

CASEY.

BY E. FLORENCE.

Uncle Monk, with a Can of Dynamite,
Tries To Do a " Message-to-Garcia " Stunt.

|J\HE Loose-jointed Individual
reclined in the shade of a
tree by the roadside, serene
and content, watching the
approaching figure on the
highway. As the traveler
halted and gave the high-sign of the
fraternity, ..he said :

" Welcome, brother, to my arboreal
abode. Enter within its cool shade and
shake off the rigors of your personally
conducted pilgrimage."

" Thanks, my lord," replied the indi-
vidual with the De Bergerac nose, " I
am weary with walking. My motor has
served me a scurvy trick, hence the
necessity of this ambling advance. Have
a smoke? "

The Lean-and-lanky One extracted a
hostage from the tobacco-bag of his
guest, and filled and lighted his pipe.

Under the mellowing influence of the
aromatic weed, his mind took a remi-
niscent turn, and he started off like a
parlor phonograph with a new record :

" Say, pard, was you ever initiated into
any of those secret societies where _you
have to do a lot of fool things for the
amusement of a lot of overgrowns?
Have you ever unconsciously acted like
a post-graduate student of a Blooming-
dale correspondence course in lunacy, or
been ' it ' for the delectation of the
bunch of speed-breakers in the land of
the midnight fun?"

"Well," replied De Bergerac, "I
have never shone as a vaudeville lumi-
nary; but, in the production of merry
mirth, I calculate I have contributed
somewhat to the risible reserve of the
nation."

" Mv bov," resumed the Lean-and-

525

526

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

lanky One, " I was just thinking of the
time when 1 was the star performer in
a comedy drama that was a howling
farce to the initiated audience, but a sort
of ' your-money-or-your-life ' experience
to your Uncle Monk."

" Nothing can spoil the pleasure of a
good smoke, so let's have your yarn,"
ventured De Bergerac.

" This adventure happened in Penn-
sylvania, whither I . had drifted after
blowing, out of the Sunflower State. I
was holding down a job as extra man
in the office of the P. and A. R. R., not
a great distance from that section of the
country where the Molly Maguires had
flourished some years previous.

" My duties consisted of doing any-
thing for which my abilities fitted me,
and the superintendent ' fed me on such
a liberal diet of work that it was a won-
der I didn't contract indigestion in my
labor organization.

" He ordered me, one day, to go to a
certain station up the road and secure
a package which had been expressed
earlier in the day, and to deliver it to
its destination, which I would learn
from the station-master. Owing to an
accident on the line, I was unable to
get away until about 3 p.m., and then I
was compelled to take the freight and
ride in the tonneau of the caboose.

" The funereal cortege landed me at
my station at about four-thirty, and I
hurried to present my credentials to the
station-master. As he looked them over,
I imagined I saw a grin lurking in the
corners of his mug.

"As it disappeared he said, ' I am to
deliver to you a package of money for
the semimonthly pay of the men up at
the lumber-camp, which is situated on
the other side of a spur of the moun-
tain. You have a good five-mile tramp
before you, and should be able to reach
there about dark. You simply have to
follow the road to and across the spur,
which is shorter than going around.

" ' There is no danger of going astray
if you keep your eyes open. I'm glad
you have come to relieve me of the
money, as I will feel easier with it off
my hands.'

" ' Why, there's no danger in this joy-
less paradise, is there ? ' I asked.

' No, not ordinarily,' he replied.

' But word has come over the wire that
the Sweeney boys have broken jail. As
you know, they are notorious outlaws,
and they make these mountains their
headquarters.'

" ' Gee! ' I commented. ' And here's
me carrying the coin to Casey without
so much as a putty shooter to protect
the company's pay-roll. You don't hap-
pen to have a blunderbuss handy, that I
could, borrow ? '

"'No,' he answered; 'I have not.
But I have made up a dummy package
for you, which may help you outwit any
one who may tackle you. The genuine
package is sealed with red wax, while
the dummy is sealed with black. But
for that, you couldn't tell them apart.'

" I handed him my grip, and he
placed the two packages in it. I
thanked him, and was about starting off,
after getting explicit directions, when he
said:

"'By George! I nearly forgot. You
are to take this can of dynamite up to
Casey. He needs it to blast out tree
stumps, to clear a wagon road so that
he can haul his timber out.'

"He handed me a can — something
like a dinner-pail, only smaller — painted
a bright red, with the word ' Dynamite '
painted on it in white letters. I didn't
like the idea of lugging that canned des-
truction along, but the station - master
said Casey had to have it.

" I slung the strap of my grip over
my shoulder and started off, carrying the
can by the handle, and you can bet I
carried it carefully. I knew that if I
dropped it, pay-day for those wood-
choppers would be postponed and I
would be post-mortemed.

" Weighing my chances of being held
up, I hiked along. Shortly the sky be-
came overcast, and I knew that I was
in for a wetting unless I reached shel-
ter. As I neared the mountain I heard
some one calling, and on looking around
I saw a lad running toward me and beck-
oning for me to wait.

" When he came up, he asked me if
I was going to the lumber-camp, and.
if so, would I take a letter to his father,
who had gone over the day before.

" I assented, and he gave me a letter,
addressed to ' Bill Jenkins, sheriff.' I
hurried on, being; anxious to reach .the

CARRYING THE BOODLE TO CASEY.

527

shelter of the timber, and in a short
time I reached the wooded slope and
started the ascent.

" After proceeding a short distance I
beheld a cabin in the clearing to the
right, and decided to investigate. There
was no evidence of- habitation, so I
walked up and knocked. There was no
response, so I pushed open the door and
entered.

" I found myself in an ordinary moun-
tain hut, of one room, with a large,
open fireplace to one side. Suddenly I
discovered that the can of dynamite was
missing, and I realized that I had put
it down while waiting for the lad to
overtake me,- and had forgotten to take
it up again.

" There was nothing to do but retrace
my steps and secure the can. I decided
to cache the grip and get it on my return,
and found a good place up the chimney.
Hurrying back, I found the can where
I had left it. Securing it, I again made
for the hut, and as I was about entering
I heard voices inside.

" Some one was evidently inside, so
I cautiously peeped in. Two men were
kneeling on the floor, with my grip be-
tween them. .One of them held an open
letter, which he was reading, and I
judged it was the one that had been
given me for delivery to the sheriff.

"' Say, Tim,' he said. 'This here
letter won't never be delivered to that
big galoot who put us away. He'll find
out soon enough that we have made our
getaway. These packages look like they
has money in them, so I guess we'd bet-

ter fade away before the owner comes
along with a baggage-check and claims
his grip.'

" ' He can come, and be bio wed !

This ain't no claim office. What he'll
get will be plenty, and it won't do him
no good if he comes moseying around
here,' growled the one called Tim.

" I stepped boldly into the room and
said : ' Gentlemen,
I fear you have
made a mistake. I
happen to own that
grip you are
taking lib-
erties with,
and I will
thank you
to hand it
over.'

"They had
both jumped
up as I en-
tered, and
as I finished
they looked
at each other
grinned.

" ' Say, M i
says Tim,
wants this g r
He won't need
when we g
.through with him,
will he?'

" With that they
both made a move
toward me ; but,

raising the can of dynamite above my
head, I said : ' If you two amateur high-
waymen don't want to shuffle off by the
dynamite route, you'd better be good.
Hand over that grip, or I'll make mixed

Micks of you.'

" They stood, hesitating, while I

held the can aloft, ready to throw it

at the first hostile move they made.

Outside, the storm had broken, and

the crashing of the thunder furnished

the fitting effect for our little drama.

" I watched them closely, and as they
both made a rush, I hurled the can to
the ground, jumping back through the
open door as I did so.

"As it struck there was a flash and
a roar, and the cabin collapsed. When
I recovered consciousness it was dark,
and the moon was shining through the
trees. It was some time before I could
locate myself, but gradually everything
came back to me.

A STRAY DOG HAD
HOLD OF THE PACKAGE,

WHICH HE HAD

EVIDENTLY MISTAKEN

FOR A RABBIT."

528

THE RAILROAD .MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" I arose and looked around. The
cabin was a wreck, and I saw the out-
laws pinned down beneath the heavy
timbers. I judged they were dead, and
started hunting for my grip, thinking
it might possibly have escaped destruc-
tion. I found it intact, and the next
thing I saw was that can of demolition
powder smiling at me from amid the
wreckage.

" In my excited state I had thought
the dynamite had caused the wreck, but
I now realized that an opportune flash
of lightning had furnished the dramatic

1 tied it around the package securely.
Then I took hold of the line by the end,
and proceeded, dragging the package
after me, fifteen or twenty feet to the
rear.

" I calculated that if any one held
me up, I could drop the end of the line,
and the package would not be discovered.

" I had proceeded about half a mile
in this way when, suddenly, I felt some-
thing tugging on my line, just like a

"stand back! OR I WILL

BLOW THE BUNCH
OF YOU INTO

SMITHEREENS ! "

denouement to -my heroic stand. I didn't
bother trying to find out why the dyna-
mite had not exploded, but, gathering
my paraphernalia, I started afresh on
my interrupted journey.

'" The darkness and the solitude got
onto my nerves, and I wondered whether
there were any more highwaymen wait-
ing for an easy mark. After proceeding
some distance, I stopped to make sure
the packages were all right, and found
them undisturbed.

" I decided to adopt an extra precau-
tion for the safety of the package with
the red seal, and, taking a fishing-line
which I happened to have in my pocket,

bite. I tried to pull in, but whatever it
Avas had nabbed my precious bait, re-
fused to give an inch. Finally, I tied
the loose end around a tree and followed
the line back to find out what I had
caught.

" I found that a stray dog had hold
of the package, which he had evidently
mistaken for a rabbit or something, and
was trying to shake the life out of it.
I tried to shoo him away, but he
wouldn't shoo ; so, losing patience, I
soaked him on the head with the can
and laid him out.

" Then I realized that, for the second
time, that feminine gunpowder had

CARRYING THE BOODLE TO CASEY.

529

failed to make a demonstration when
provoked. Securing my package, I
rolled the dog into a convenient gully,
and proceeded as before, trailing the
package, like an innocent little Lord
Fauntleroy kid dragging a diminutive
red wagon.

"But it seemed that I was doomed to
catch it from all sides, for suddenly I
felt the other end of the line going up
into the air, and my hair promptly did
the same.

" ' What's the matter with this en-
chanted mountain?' says I to myself as
I tried to draw in on the line.

" It was just like flying a kite in a
high wind, for whatever had hoid of
the other end fought hard ; but finally
I got the thing started, and it came to-
ward me with a swoop, when I realized
that I had been kite-flying an owl. I
made a bat at it with that non-respon-
sive dynamite, and it released its hold
and flew into a tree, where it started
to make a noise like a locomotive in dis^
tress.

" After that, I put the package into
the bag and proceeded in a rational way,
thinking it better, to meet danger than
to fish for it.

"As I continued on my way, the owl
kept up its Caruso solo. It rather an-
noyed me to have a nocturnal canary
asking ' Who ? ' ' Who ? ' In a short time
answering calls seemed to come from all
quarters of the mountain. It did not
take me long to realize that there was
a method in these calls, and that they
were gradually drawing nearer in a
narrowing circle.

" Finally, on reaching a clearing in
the timber, I realized that I was sur-
rounded by a troop of ghostlike figures,
each one wearing an improvised mask.

" The most prominent' figure in the
group was a woman, who looked like a
veritable giantess. Like the rest, she
also wore a mask, while her cloak fell
in easy folds from her shoulders over a
massive figure.

'"'Who have we here?' she asked.

"'Who? Who?' piped the opera-
bouffe chorus.

" ' An enemy to the cause,' came from
one of the figures in a voice that sound-
ed familiar.

" ' Step forward and make your plaint,
10 R R

my son,' commanded the massive Brun-
hild.

" ' Good mother,' replied the owner of
the voice, stepping forward, ' the op-
pressors of the poor have sent this man
into our midst with money to pay the
men who are ruining our retreat by cut-
ting down the trees, Since entering our
domain, he has wrecked our cabin and
nearly killed two of your loyal subjects.
He has laid violent hands on our watch-
dog and spoiled his bark, and he has
offered indignities to the pet of the clan
— the sacred owl.'

" As the speaker proceeded, I recog-
nized him as one of the men who had
held me up in the cabin, and whom I
had left for dead among the wreckage.
; ' Son of iniquity ! ' thundered Brun-
hild. ' What have you to say? '

" ' Nothing,' I replied, ' that I care to
say to this bunch of masqueraders. My
sole wish is to continue on my way, and
continue quickly.'

" With that, I attempted to break
through the circle, but the fellow who
had summed up the indictment barred
my way.

"'Stand back!' I shouted, 'or, by
Heaven ! I will blow the bunch of you
into smithereens.' I raised the can of
dynamite above my head, that all might
see it.

" A mocking shout of laughter greet-
ed this threat, and the fellow called
Mike asked : ' Is that a new kind of
explosiveless dynamite you are armed
with ? '

" ' No,' I replied ; ' not when it hits
something hard, and it's going to hit the
hardest thing in this locality right now.'
And then I let it drive straight at his
head.

" He ducked, and the can sailed harm-
lessly by and was caught by the man be-
hind him, while I was seized and held
by a number of the other heavy villains.

" The one who had caught the can
handed it to Brunhild, who pried off the
lid, and said : ' Boys, here's a treat for
you. A canful of good old rough-and-
ready tobacco. Now you can smoke and
chew to your hearts' content.'

" You can bet it jarred me to learn
that I had been carrying a harmless can
of tobacco around, under the impression
that it was canned destruction. The

530

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

tobacco was distributed, and Mike re-
marked :

" ' Now, friends, why not burn up the
pay of those tree - chopping vandals
while we are burning up this good
tobacco ? '

" This proposition was greeted with
a shout, and the maker of the motion
took the packages from the grip. Sev-
eral of the others busied themselves
making a fire, and when it had gotten
fairly started the packages were tossed
into the flames, while I struggled to free
myself and prevent this mad act.

" When the packages were consumed,
the massive Brunhild raised her mighty
hand and commanded silence. ' My
sons,' she asked, ' what is to be done
with the prisoner ? '

" ' Why not do with him as with all
the other enemies of the cause ? ' spoke
up Mike.

" ' Enough of bloodshed,' replied the
chiefess. - I have a plan. It would be
a shame to sacrifice a man as brave as
he. Since my Tim died, I have looked
in vain for a man to fill his place. This
man seems like a bonny lad, so what do
you say to my taking him for better or
for worse? And bad cess to him if it's
for worse.'

" This proposition was received with
shouts of approval, and when they had
subsided I entered a protest, and swbre
I would never consent.

" Brunhild approached, and, facing
me, said : ' Think well before you refuse
to do the bidding of a lady. My brave
boys will not stand for a refusal ; and

before speaking the word that might
mean your destruction, I entreat you to
look upon the fair face you would re-
nounce.'

" As she ended, she tore off the mask,
and I beheld the bearded face of Casey,
the biggest devil in four counties.

" ' What the heck! ' I stuttered, while
the rest of the- outfit pulled off their
masks and executed a wild dance around
me, shouting with laughter.

" ' Monk, you barbarian,' roared
Casey, ' you are now a full-fledged
member of the Brotherhood of Joy.
You stood the third degree bravely, and
we are proud of you.' "

" And the whole thing was a joke on
you?" inquired De Bergerac.

" A rank farce, hatched out by Casey.
He had gone to the station earlier in
the day and secured the money, and
fixed up the scheme with -the station-
master. The whole outfit of opera-
bouffers and heavy villains was nothing
more than Casey's wood-choppers.

" Of course, we had a royal blow-
out at the lumber-camp that night; but
I'll bet that the man who carried the
message to Garcia didn't have half the
excitement that I did in carrying the
boodle to Casey."

" A very interesting story," comment-
ed De Bergerac. " I am weary; so,
with your permission, I will reel off a
few yards of sleep. Should a car ap-
proach that looks as though it might be
mine, kindly instruct the choffer to
await my awakening, and I will give you
a lift."

NEW YORK'S ABANDONED RAILWAY.

NEW YORK State has an abandoned
railroad line some fifty miles in
length — not an abandoned project merely,
but a line on which rails were actually laid
and trains operated at one time.

In the seventies, what is now the New
York, Ontario and Western Railway, then
the New York and Oswego Midland, had a
line extending from Norwich, in Chenango
County, to Scipio, in Cayuga County, a dis-
tance of 78.5 miles, as reported in Poor's
Manual for 1877. This line apparently ran
north from Norwich to De Ruyter, then

southwest to Cortland, and then northwest
to Scipio.

The distance from De' Ruyter to Cortland
is something like twenty-two miles, and that
section, in about 1878, was leased to the
Elmira, Cortland and Northern, and from
the remainder of the line — fifty odd miles —
the track was taken up some time during the
year 1881.

It is understood that the New York,
Ontario and Western still owns the right
of way,4)ut the circumstance is not referred
to in any of the recent reports.

SPEEDY PRIDED HIMSELF ON

BEING THE FASTEST' MAN

ON THE DIVISION.

a Boomer Brakeman.

BY HORACE HERR

RAILROADING is a pretty serious business, and the Arizona In and Out
i. System is just as seriously conducted as any other line, be it large or
small. But it has its human side, too, and the boys love to play jokes
on one another. Mr. Herr's ambitious hero recounts many that fell within
the range of his experience "in the railroad business.

3. — THINGS WHICH BREAK THE MONOTONY.

Some of the Yarns You Hear Before the Gall - Boy Gomes and You

Caesar's Coin.

AILROAD men are only hu-
man. They have their
jokes, their adventures,
and enjoy them the same
as any one else. They go
about looking for a laugh,
just like the rest of the world ; and al-
though I am inclined to think that they
seldom lose sight entirely of the fact
that every trip may be the last, still they
don't let it make their face take on a
quinin expression, and they don't lose

Began (n the October Railroad Man's Magazine

531

much sleep wording about the troubles
of to-morrow.

A great deal happens to break the mo-
notony of the first-in and first-out service.
One day it's a joke, the next day it's a bit
of sentiment, but it all serves its purpose.

Rube was one of the best conductors
who ever let a stinger do the work. He
knew every turn of the railroad game, and
spent all his spare time playing practical
jokes and poker ; and he generally got the
best of it at both games. He never got

Single copies, 10 cents.

532

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

excited in a pinch, and he could laugh
just as hard when looking into the face of
a head-end collision as he could when
peeking over a full on aces.

He believed that the world was made
to live in, and that money was manufac-
tured to be spent, and he sure lived and
spent to the limit of his whole-hearted
creed. I knew him by reputation long
before I climbed onto his dog-house for
my first trip, and I was much elated to
think that the extra-board had been jug-
gled so that I caught his car.

One on Speedy.

Speedy — never mind his last name,
every one knew him as Speedy — was
braking behind, and I was on the smoky
end ; and Speedy and Rube made the
liveliest pair that ever kept company
month in and month out over a Western
division.

Speedy prided himself on being the
fastest man on the division when it came
to closing and locking a switch and catch-
ing a caboose, and Rube, in his rough
way, used to hand him the josh at every
turn of the game as the slowest mortal
that ever lived.

Pulling out of Adamana, one morning,
after having been in on the siding for
the varnished cars, I let them out and
stood at the switch and let the string
drag by looking for brakes sticking.

When the caboose came along, I
climbed on, and Speedy dropped off to
close the switch. Rube stood in the door
and watched him and handed him out a
line of talk about like this :

" Heaven's sake, you mut ! Can't you
hurry a little? Do you want us to stop
so that you can catch up? Holy smoke,
but you're about the slowest mortal I ever
saw ! "

By that time Speedy had the switch
over and locked, and was starting to run
after the caboose. Rube ran back to the
rear of the car, picked up Speedy' s bed-
clothes, opened the rear window, and
yelled :

" Say, you'll need your bed if you're
going to stay there all night," and with
that he dumped them out of the window.

Speedy made a great scramble for the
two blankets and the pillow, and finally
caught the rear end, absolutely winded

and mad as a hornet Rube laughed
over that for a week, before he got an-
other chance to pull off the same stunt at
the same switch.

He repeated the performance from
that time on, every time we pulled out of
Adamana siding, until Speedy stopped
him in a neat little way of his own. Go-
ing into Adamana one morning, he wait-
ed until Rube was busy in the office of
the caboose, and then he changed the
bedding on the bunks, and put Rube's
blankets and pillow on his own bunk.

When Speedy swung off to close the
switch, Rube, as usual, gathered up what
he supposed was Speedy's bed. Speedy
didn't pay the least attention to them,
left them lying on the track, jumped on,
climbed up on top, and began to whistle.
Rube tumbled right away that he had
thrown his own bed off, and the way he
pulled the air on the hog-head didn't
trouble him. Walk back and get them?
Not for little Rube ! He made the en-
gineer back up until he gathered up that
bed, and then gave him the high ball.
That was the last time Rube took lib-
erties with Speedy's bed at the switch.

After both Rube and Speedy had re-
ceived their walking-papers, they went
mto the poker business together and
cleaned up quite a nice little sum. It
was said — and with a great deal of
truth, too — that Speedy never lost a
gambling proposition but once, and that
was a bet on a horse-race ; and as every
railroad man who was in tOAvn the day
of that race attended the event, it is just
as well that we recount it here as. one of
the things which shattered the monotony
that month.

Speedy Gets Lou Dillon.

Speedy bought a range horse one day
that had a local reputation as a runner,
and, just to be in fashion, he named the
nag Lou Dillon. He almost drove every-
one crazy about Lou Dillon, until one day
old Ed Sawyer came in from the sheep-
range and heard some of his remarks
about that famous horse's running ability.

Sawyer was a real sport. He stood it
as long as he could, and then he broke in :

" That old plug of yours couldn't beat
a sick burro."

Speedy exploded right there, and of-

BEING A BOOMER BRAKEMAN.

533

fered to bet one hundred dollars that his
Lou Dillon could beat anything in Ari-
zona, any distance ; and Sawyer called
him.

" I've got a lop-eared burro out at the
sheep-camp, and I'll bet you, old skate,
and we'll run the race here in town a
week from Sunday."

It was arranged, and Speedy was so

Speedy to ride the horse and the burro
to run free. It was agreed.

Speedy mounted the famous Lou Dil-
lon, and Sawyer led the burro up to
the ten-yard mark. Sawyer happened to
know that Lou Dillon was gun-shy and
at the sound of an explosion would bolt
and run any old way.

While- a Mexican sheep-herder held

confident that he agreed to give the burro
ten yards handicap and run under any
conditions which Sawyer might impose.
The date arrived, as did Sawyer, the
burro, and the crowd.

Just a Bit Gun-Shy.

When everything was ready, Sawyer
led the way to the only real alley in the
I own. When the bunch arrived at the
alley, he made known the conditions of
the race. The horse and the burro
would run one block down that alley,

HUMPY CAME RIGHT THROUGH THAT
BARBED-WIRE FENCE HEAD FIRST.

the burro, Sawyer went over to a near-by
yard and resurrected a large five-gallon
tin can, produced several large giant fire-
crackers from his pocket, twisted the
fuses together, tied the can to the burro's
tail, lighted the fuse, and dropped the
firecrackers into the can.

" When the first report comes, start,"
was all he said.

Say, I never saw and never expect to
see another such race in my life. When
that first firecracker popped, Lou Dillon
made a fancy pivot-swing. Speedy did
a double flipflap and came down on his

534

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

back in the middle of the alley. When
he came to, the race was over.

Lou Dillon ran a great race, but she
went the wrong way, and the burro,
frightened by the racket at his extreme
appendage, made a fair record straight
down the alley, winning hands down — ■
or, to be more exact, "tail down."
Speedy lost that bet, and Lou Dillon was
placed on the market the next day.

A Hagenback Stunt.

But to get back on the second division
with the crew ! After Rube left the road
by request, Humpy Lowe caught the car,
and things went along very fine for sev-
eral months. I want to tell you about
the time when I received my introduction
to Humpy.

He was great on hunting, and one day
old George Robinson, myself, and Humpy
went out dove-shooting. We were pass-
ing down through a range place, when
we noted a big Jersey bull standing in a
lot near by, pawing the earth as if
anxious to demonstrate to some one that
he was the king of the range.

I can't imagine what put the Hagen-
back stunt into Humpy's head, but he
suddenly remarked that he could walk
right up to that bull and scratch his head
behind the ears. I didn't call him a liar,
but I thought it, and he must have read
my thoughts, for he crawled through the
wire fence and walked toward the bull.

Mr. Bull stood for it, too. Humpy
walked bravely up to him, laid the shot-
gun on the ground, and, with a few sweet
words of cheer, began to scratch the bull
behind the ear, calling to us that this
talk about bulls being vicious was all a
fake. Then he started to walk away.

As he bent over to pick up his gun,
something happened, and Humpy came
right through that barbed- wire fence,
head first — without his shotgun, too.

Humpy never had much to say about
the innate gentleness of the bull race
thereafter, and he remarked, after he had
picked the cacti from his anatomy, that
it was almost the worst rear-end collision
he had ever been in.

For several weeks after Humpy
caught the car, there was nothing to do
but ride and draw the pay and ride some
more, with an occasional hot box to

pack, or a brass to put in — just enough
work to keep a fellow in practise. It
seemed as if good fortune had camped
on the division for a few months, and
nothing happened of a serious nature,
except that Jack Brisco, driving the lim-
ited at about fifty miles an hour, hit a
stray car of -flour at Gallup one 'day, split
it right in two, painted six coaches white,
and not a soul was hurt and not a wheel
went off the rail.

There was nothing more serious than
Porter's derailment at Aztec, where he
hit a curve one afternoon during a sand-
storm and found the sand drifted over the
rails. Of course, he took out across
country. The engine went down an em-
bankment, turning over twice, but no one
was hurt except Porter, who broke his
nose.

Then there was Jack Williams's
catching up with Shorty Riggs's caboose,
at Cosnino. Jack was drifting down the
crooked track beyond Cosnino, pulling a
passenger-train. He was trying to pick
up about fifteen minutes on the schedule,
and I guess he'd have done it all right
if Shorty Riggs hadn't been so thought-
less as to leave his caboose sticking out
of the siding onto the main line.

Jack couldn't turn out and go round,
so he proceeded to go through it, made a
nice lot of kindling-wood, put the 421
over against the bank on her smoke-stack,
and Jack took to the air-line down a
forty-foot embankment of rip-rap, broke
his leg, and lost his diamond ring.

Some Speed Yarns.

While things were running so smooth-
ly I got acquainted with the bunch a
little. We would get together over at —
the reading - room, and play sluff and
pool and railroad until the boxes smoked
and the rails were worn smooth. Ever
run up against that brand of railroading
known as "street-corner running"?

Well, some of the most marvelous rec-
ords of speed and some of the most mirac-
ulous escapes have happened right around
at the corner grocery or over in the read-
ing-room, four blocks from the railroad.

You'll hear some tallow-pot tell how
they started out with forty cars behind
a Baldwin hog, at twelve miles an hour,
and by the time he's half-way over the

BEING A BOOMER BRAKEMAN.

535

"i'd do that much for the dirtiest hobo on the pike."

division he's running just exactly one
hundred and two and three-tenths miles
an hour, and could have beat that a little
if the front end hadn't choked up.

You'll hear the poor, downtrodden
brakeman tell about the " pickin' " being
mighty poor, and the switchman telling
how many draw - bars they have broken
in the last ten years by shoving the cut
too hard. The low-water fiend will tell
the merits of his system, and some tal-
low-pot with a grievance will assure you
that he couldn't keep the 660 hot because
Old Dad Nance kept enough water in
her to float a battle-ship ; and so it goes.

Hinkley " John's Pride.

Everybody talks shop until the call-
boy comes, and you sign up for another
round trip and more of Caesar's coin. Tt
is in such a gathering that you hear the
unwritten legends of the road. Many of
them are based on fact, but fancy has
added much.

One of the stock stories oil the Ari-

zona In and Out I know to have been a
fact, and it's worth telling for the simple
reason that it shows that railroad men
are just human like every one else, and
that there is a little sentiment hidden
away even in such a man as " Hinkley "
John Reynolds.

Hinkley John was an engineer on -the
second division. He derived his nick-
name from the little Hinkley engine
which he used to- run in passenger
service, and he was known over the whole
road as the crankiest man who ever
pulled a throttle. But he could run
them, and he had nerves of steel.

It was several years back, the exact
date — well, I would refer you to a bald-
headed fellow who travels under the
name of Hen Murray, and who is prob-
ably drifting around the United States,
still following the railroad game. He
was the fireman on that great trip.

Hen ought to know all about it, for he
says that it was the fastest ride he ever
cares to take, and he held his place with
Hinkley, as In: was about the only fireman

536

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

on the division at that time who could
satisfy the old man. Things always hap-
pen in a hurry on a railroad.

One afternoon when everything was
going nicely, along came a message from
headquarters saying that Mr. So-and-So
was rushing across the continent in a race
against death, to reach the bedside of
his dying wife. The order was to put
the best engine and the best available
crew on the three-car special, give it the
right of way, and make all the time pos-
sible. .

He Had to Double Back.

The roundhouse got busy, and Hinkley
John, just in from his regular run, tired
and worn out, was called to double back
on that special.. Of course, he grumbled
— that was to be expected — but he
climbed back up on the Hinkley, after
the hostler had coaled and watered her,
and pulled down below the cut-off switch
to await the arrival of the special. " Red
Hot " Frost was the conductor..

The special arrived, and Mr. So-and-
So proved to be^a steel magnate of Pitts-
burgh, Pennsylvania. He came over to
the engine and told Hinkley just how
matters stood, and ended it with :

" My friend, please do the best that
you can. Run her just as fast as you
can and not place yourself in danger. If
I don't get there, I want to die trying."

The orders were read and signed,
" Red Hot " Frost gave Hinkley the
high ball, and with a toot-toot he was off.

Did he run? That record from Win-
slow, Arizona, to Albuquerque, New
Mexico, has been the envy of every engi-
neer on that division ever since, and it
has never been equaled by twenty minutes.
Scotty's flier wasn't in it.

Hinkley had the right of track over
everything. In fact, the road was prac-
tically tied up while the extra passenger
raced over that two hundred and eighty-
six miles of track. Hinkley was only sup-
posed to pull it to Gallup, a distance of
one hundred and twenty-eight miles, but,
going through Manuelito he threw off a
message to the despatcher stating that his
engine was running nicely, and that he
was willing to pull the special to Al-
buquerque, and if everything was O.K.

In the next instalment the hero of Arizona's In and Out System tries to break away
from the game.

to have the yard-crew at Gallup high-ball
him at the west switch, and he'd go on
through.

The racing fever was on him, and that
message set the despatchers "afire. They
cleared the yard at Gallup, and the crew
gave him the high sign as he came around
the curve into the station. He went
through that town so fast that people
swore that there was only one car in the
train.

On over the continental divide he went,
and down the eastern side, and when he
hit the down grade from Gonzalez to
Isleta he ate up the track at something
better than a mile a minute. The train-
sheets will show that the statement is a
fact, and " Red Hot " Frost, now gray-
headed but still in the service, will tell
you that it was one of the greatest runs
ever made by a steel horse.

He came thundering into Albuquerque
three hours better than the time the head
office had guaranteed, and when he
stopped, the passenger was off the coach
and at the engine before the switchman
had the Hinkley cut off.

He reached up for John's grimy hand
and almost squeezed the fingers off. "If
I get there in time, I will remember that
Mr. Reynolds did it," he said, and hand-
ed him a check.

Money Didn't Change Him.

In the meantime he had climbed up on
the deck of the engine. John took that
check and looked at it, and right "here is
where fancy has probably played its part
with the story.

Some of the boys will tell you that it
was for five thousand dollars, and some
claim that it was for two thousand, but
the fact remains that it was for quite a
sum, probably as much as Hinkley could
have made in a year.

Hinkley took it, held his torch up to
see what it was ; then, in the same old
crabbed way of his, opened the fire-box
door and dropped it into the fire with the
remark :

" You're losing time talking to me here.
I'd do that much for the dirtiest hobo on
the pike. If you get home in time to see
her, I'll consider myself well paid."

Recent Railroad Patents.

BY FORREST G. SMITH.

Improvement in Pay-As-You-Enter Cars— Strengthening Air Hose With-
out Adding Rigidity — A Turntable Worked by the Locomo-
tive ■ — A Switch that Will Not Move by Accident — A New
Brake-Setter — Ventilation for Closed Cars — Protection From
Trolley Wires — Vestibule Comfort for Motormen.

NEW PLATFORM BARRIER.

Improvement to Facilitate Entry and Exit

In Pay-As-You-Enter

Cars.

NUMEROUS improvements are being
made in the construction of the en-
trance-ways to pay - as - you - enter cars.
Among those worthy of mention is one
covered by_patent No. 931,724, August 24,
1909, issued to Charles O. Birney, of St.
Louis, Missouri. At terminals, and at other
points where it is necessary to discharge a
number of passengers in a short time, the
present form of car of this style presents a
disadvantage Tor the reason that but one
person can leave the car at a time.

It is true that all of the exits can be
thrown open, but it frequently happens that
persons are standing on the platforms or
wish to enter while others are leaving the
car.

Ordinarily, a barrier divides both door-
ways of the car, but in the patent referred
to a barrier of such construction is pro-
vided that the entire door-way at each end
of the car may be cleared for the exit of
passengers. In carrying out the invention,
a post is mounted about the middle of each
platform, and the barrier which takes the
place of the ordinary one now in use, is
mounted upon this post in such a way that
it may be swung to extend midway of the
door-way, or to establish a passage-way
from the door-way to the steps.

In other words, the barrier may be moved
to divide the door-way into an entrance
passage, and an exit passage, or to clear the
entire way for entrance or exit alone. The

537

conductor or motorman remains in the same
position in either instance, and he has con-
trol over means which is provided for lock-
ing the barrier in either position.

TO STRENGTHEN AIR HOSE.

A Simple Device for Taking the Strain Off

the Air Pipe and Leaving It

Flexible.

WHILE air-pipe hose for conducting
air from one car of a train to an-
other is constructed in a substantial man-
ner, the strain to which such hose is sub-
jected frequently results in it being broken
or torn so as to render it useless. It is
true that such hose is often wrapped with
flexible metal sheathing, but this renders ■
the hose less pliable, and so is undesirable.

Emil Witzenmann, of Pforzheim, Ger-
many, has secured a patent, No. 933,516,
September 7, 1909, on a construction of
hose for this use which is as pliable as
non-reenforced rubber hose, but still is so
strengthened that it may be subjected to ex-
traordinary strain without any possibility of
injury.

In carrying out the invention, lengths of
ordinary hose are employed, and in the
coupling sleeve at the ends of each length
is arranged a perforated disk to which is
secured one end of a flexible chain or wire.
This chain or wire is of less length than the
hose through which it passes, so that should
strain be placed upon the hose tending to
stretch it, such strain will be borne solely
by the length of chain or the like employed.

While the hose is thus relieved of all

538

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

strain, it may be doubled or otherwise flexed
as readily as can the ordinary hose now
employed for the purpose.
&

ENGINE TURNS ITSELF.

On this Turntable the Locomotive Supplies
Steam to Attached Cylinders and
Does the Work.

EVERY effort is now being made to do
away with the old style of turntable,
in which manual labor was the motive
power, and a step toward this end is dis-
closed in a patent, No. 933,637, September
7, 1909, issued to Richard R. Farrell, of
Sausilito, California.

Mr. Farrell thinks that the locomotive it-
self should perform this work of turning
the table upon which it is standing, and he
employs such simple means to accomplish
this end that it is a wonder that others have
not thought of it before. In connection
with .the ordinary turn-table he provides
a large ratchet-like circular track which
extends around the turn-table and then
mounts upon the table, at opposite points,
steam cylinders, in which work pistons,
carrying toothed projection which engage
with the track.

Supply pipes lead to each of the cylinders
by way of a valve chest, and when an engine
has been run onto the table, a branch lead-
ing from these pipes' is connected to a
coupling for supplying steam from the
boiler. Steam is thus admitted to the
cylinders, and the pistons are set in mo-
tion, thereby forcing their toothed projec-
tions against the teeth of the track and
rotating the table. The entire device can
be worked from the engine-cab after the
connection has been made, and the table
may be stopped at any point.

A SECURE SWITCH.

track rail sections formed or fixed thereon,
but in the underside of the switch-point
there is formed a recess which is shaped
something like a football, except that the
ends of the recess are more -sharply pointed.
In this recess is disposed a stout leaf-
spring, which at its ends seats in the acute
ends of the recess.

The body upon which the switch-point is
"mounted to swing is formed with an up-
standing abutment, such as a pin which en-
gages with the spring at a point midway of
its ends. When the switch-point is in main-
track position, the spring is bowed in one
direction, and when the switch-point is
moved to side-track position, it is bowed
in an opposite direction, so that no matter
wdiich position the switch-point may as-
sume, the spring will hold it firmly in place
until its position is changed.

It is to be understood, of course, that, as
the switch-point is moved from main to side
track position, or vice versa, the spring is
first straightened and then bowed in an
opposite direction.

NEW BRAKE-SETTER. •

By Means of a Leaf Spring the Point Is Pre-
vented from Having Any Play
Not Imparted.

QUITE .a novel, and at the same time
entirely practical switch-point-locking
means is disclosed in a patent, No. 933,040,
August 31, 1909, issued to John H. Laney,
of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The object of
the device is to lock a switch-point, not
permanently, but ■ against accidental dis-
placement, at either limit of its movement.

In appearance, the switch is like the ordi-
nary ones now in use, it consisting of the
ordinary body having the main and side

Contrivance for Tripping Valve-Stems With-
out Destroying the Valves by
Its Force.

UMEROUS devices have been pat-
ented for automatically stopping a
train should any car thereof become de-
railed, but such devices have usually in-
cluded in their structure trip devices, which
are directly connected with valves for set-
ting the brakes. These ' trip devices are
designed usually to come into contact with
either- the rails or the ties, and the shock
incident to contact is often so severe as to
completely destroy the valve.

A device which will accomplish the same
results, but will obviate this disadvantage
is shown in a patent, No. 932,675, August
31, 1909, issued to John L. Bering, of
Gainesville, Texas. In carrying out his in-
vention, Mr. Bering mounts beneath the
trucks of each car of a train, brackets, in
which are journaled long slender rollers at
the inner end of the spindle, on each of
which is a crank which rotates in the path
of a valve-stem for applying the brakes
throughout the entire train.

Normally, these rollers are above and out
of contact with the rails, but should a car
of the train become "derailed, they come
into contact with the rails and are rotated
so as to bring the cranks into engagement
with the valve-stems, thereby stopping the
train. The rollers are mounted in such a

RECENT RAILROAD PATENTS.

539

substantial manner, and their cranks have
such a slight engagement with the valve-
stems that no injury to the valves can re-
sult.

VENTILATING CARS.

An Exhaust Method for Drawing Foul Air

from Closed Pay-As-You-Enter

Cars.

NOW that pay-as-you-enter cars have
come into general use, it is necessary
that some means be provided for effectually
ventilating the cars in the warmer months,
as the circulation of air is not as great as
in the ordinary open car. To attain this
result, Dwight I. Cooke, of Chicago, Illi-
nois, has devised a ventilating system which
should prove acceptable, especially in view
of the fact that the passengers of the car
are not subjected to drafts.

The system devised by Mr. Cooke is de-
signed chiefly to draw the foul air, collect-
ings near the floor, from the car, and con-
sists of a suction fan, driven by an electric
motor, which is mounted upon the roof of
one platform of the car, and controlled by
a switch above the head of the motorman.

Leading to this fan, or rather the casing
in which it is mounted, are branches from
a conduit which extends the entire length
of the car beneath the roof thereof. From
this conduit other branches lead to registers
beneath the seats of the car, so that the foul
air is drawn from the car and fresh air may
enter at such points, such as the windows,
as the passengers may desire.

PROTECTION FROM WIRES.

A Trolley-Wire Hanger Which Breaks the

Circuit When a Wire

Falls.

WHERE overhead trolleys are used,
there is a constant source of danger
from broken trolley-wires which are liable
to come in contact with pedestrians. A
novel form of hanger for such wires is
shown in patent, No. 931,771, August 31,
1909, issued to Charles A. Kraynik, of
Racine, Wisconsin, which overcomes this
danger, and renders the overhead trolley
entirely safe for street use.

This hanger consists of a body portion

which has brackets projecting therefrom,
and in each of the brackets there is pivoted
a trolley-wire gripping member or hanger
section. These sections each have an up-
standing arm, the upper end of which con-
tacts with a conductor plug which is ar-
ranged in the body portion of the hanger.

The trolley-wire, supported by the hanger,
is in a number of lengths, the ends of which
are secured in the wire-gripping sections of
the hanger, and the circuit through the wire
is established by way of the conductor
plugs referred to.

Normally, each section of the wire, is in
circuit with every other section, but should
any one section become broken, the hanger
sections, by which it was supported, will
swing down on their pivots, thereby bring-
ing their upper ends out of contact with the
conductor plug and breaking the circuit.

VESTIBULE COMFORT.

Simple Device To Enable Motorman To

Keep His Windows Ice and

Snow Free.

QUITE a number of devices have been
patented designed to clean the snow
and ice from the window-panes in front of
the motorman of a trolley-car, but nearly
all of such devices embody chains, cords, or
other devices which are liable to get out of
order, and require, frequent repair; also
they are usually operated through the
medium of cranks, or similar means of a
complicated nature.

A very simple and inexpensive device for
this purpose is shown in patent No. 932,051,
August 24, 1909, issued to Garnet W. Mc-
Kee, of Chicago, Illinois. Instead of em-
ploying gears, or like complicated means
for the purpose, Mr. McKee provides a
long, slender air cylinder which is mounted
in front of the dashboard of the car, and in
which works a piston, carrying at its upper
end a wiper of any suitable nature, which
is normally in position against the lower
part of the window-pane directly • in front
of the motorman.

The cylinder has connection with the or-
dinary air-brake pressure supply for the
car, and by turning a valve the motorman
may cause the piston to rise, thereby mov-
ing the wiper upward across the window-
pane, and removing the snow or ice col-
lected thereon.

A full dinner-pail is a fine mascot. — The Roundhouse Foreman.

•\

OFT lines of light through the autumn
evening,
Paths of silver, all gloom-caressed;
I, who have always loved your bright-
ness— <
Shall I tell when I love you best?

Patient and steady 'mid hurrying motion,
Bearing a world on a world-wide quest;

Unmoved servant of man's mad speeding,
Would you know when I love you best?

Not in the world-wide quest, unending;

Not when your unreeled miles I roam;
Paths of silver, soft gloom-enfolded,

I love you best — when you bear me home.

Seraphim swords pointing into the gloaming,
Moonbeam ribbons by elfs unrolled;

Fairy-touched by your magic mission,
Silver lane to a heart of gold !

Fain would I tell you of your high service;

Star-bright trail over which I go;
But a thousand may tell and a million listen,

Yet, fairy path, but two can know.

540

THE TEN-THIRTY GALL.

BY PER G Y WILSON.

Pie and Platitudes Almost Prevent the Call-
Boy from Getting Burnside's Signature.

NAPPER was looking over the
yardmaster's shoulder when
the operator handed the latter
the order for an extra. As
was not unusual with him on
very slight -provocation, the
yardmaster immediately
" went off the iron." " Where's that call-
boy?" he demanded. "What's become
of that red-head? Where is — Oh! " as
he turned his head and came afoul of
Snapper's smirking countenance, " here
you are! "

"Yes, here I are!" mocked Snapper.
" Go on, go on — say what you were going
to. Don't mind me ! Where did you ex-
pect to find me — in your lap?" The
call-boy was aggrieved.

" What's the earliest you can call this
extra for? " was the brisk query. " Ten-
thirty?"

With an exasperating affectation of
indifference, Snapper let his eye wander
to the clock, gaped a minute over the
crew-board, and gradually came around
to the book. " I reckon," he answered.
Then, with sudden interest : " Who's to
shovel smoke? "

" Oh, you take notice, do you? Now,
that's what I want to impress on you.
Listen."

" ' Laying a hand to his ear,' " quoted
Snapper from a favorite author, and
suiting action to the speech, " ' he gave

close heed to the fiendish disclosure.' Go
on."

The yardmaster was too accustomed to
these burlesques to honor them with any
attention. " Go for Burnside," he di-
rected.

" He was let off."

" I know that. Pay attention. He
was to be off until midnight, unless we
should need him in some emergency this
morning ; and this is the emergency. He
promised to stay at home till nine o'clock,
and not to leave town before ten." He
glanced at the clock. " It's only eight-
fifty-eight now. You ought to find him
easily," winking to the operator.

" Sure ! " returned Snapper. " If only
I hadn't bent one of me wings ! What
was it the coal-heaver wanted off for, any-
way? "

" To rob a bank, maybe. Don't both-
er me ; but go get him."

" Put his name down," said Snapper
in disgust. " I'll get him."

The yardmaster entered the name and
handed the call-book over. " Now, hus-
tle," he directed.

Snapper thrust the book in his pocket
and struck an attitude. " Beware, James
Burnside!" he declaimed. "Your doom
is knelled, and the avenger — "

The avenger was the yardmaster, and
Snapper got through the doorway just in
time to escape his foot.

54i

542

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" Hang that kid ! " laughed the yard-
master. "He gets on my nerves, with
his spouting and fool antics. But he's a
good caller," he observed to the opera-
tor; "and, mind my word, he'll come
back here with Burnside's signature in
his book. Heaven knows where he'll
rind him, though, for Jim's tricky, and
he'll dodge if he can. He did beg hard
to be off."

In spite of his unhesitating assertion,
the call-boy had very grave doubts about
getting Burnside. The promise to re-
main at his boarding-place for a call till
nine o'clock made it unlikely that he
would be there one minute later, while
the additional hour did not give much
time for finding him in a town of fifteen
thousand people. What Snapper most
desired to know was, where was he in-
tending to go at ten? He had a sus-
picion that it had something to do with
Kitty Carnigan.

It was well known among the fire-
man's acquaintances that he was much
enamored of this black - eyed young
lady, and, taking into consideration the
hours he wanted leave, from ten in the
morning until midnight, Snapper at once
decided that a knowledge of Miss Car-
nigan's plans for the day would be very
helpful.

Being too wise, however, to attempt
to get this from the young lady herself,
as soon as he had called those two of
the crew who lived most convenient, he
moved directly on the engineer, whom,
in the usual order of convenience for
himself, he would otherwise have called
last of all. His information came with-
out his asking it. '

"Who's to fire for me this trip?"
the engineer inquired as he 'took the
book.

" Can't you see? " said Snapper, lay-
ing a finger on the name.

" Ho! " laughed the engineer, " you'll
not get Burnside. He's going out to
Maple Park on the ten o'clock car with
his girl and her folks to a basket-picnic.
He's keeping an eye peeled for you."

Snapper restrained himself. " It
would be a shame for him to miss see-
ing me," he retorted. " I'll go out and
let him have a look before he goes."

With joy in his heart, Snapper went
on. Calling a fireman for the ten-thirty

extra was merely a matter of business.
Snatching Burnside* from a contemplated
day's happiness with his lady-love would
make it a genuine pleasure. It would
square up a debt, too; for when he had
been surreptitiously " resting his eyes "'
on a bench in the roundhouse some time
before this, Burnside had taken the op-
portunity to lampblack his face, and
Snapper .had wandered around an hour
before discovering it. " Reveng-g-ge ! "
he muttered as he hurried to the northern
edge of town.

Back of the row of houses, of which
the Carnigan home was one, lay an
open meadow stretching to adjoining
fields, and on each side to partly graded
streets. At the end of the street to the
east stood the domicile^of Mrs. Cort,
where Burnside and several others of the
railroad men boarded.

From here a path led through the
meadow, across a little stream lined with
briers and alders, along the rear of the
row of houses, and then to the street
through an open corner lot. It made
a short cut from the boarding-house into
town, and Avas particularly in favor
with Mr. Burnside for the opportunities
it gave him in passing back and forth
to drop in for a word or two with Miss
Kitty.

Allowing for the possibility of Burn-
side staying overtime at the boarding-
house to make an extended toilet, Snap-
per went there first, only to find his
room empty. Mrs. Cort could give no
information. There was little hope of
catching him at Carnigan's, for which-
ever way the house might be approached,
there was probably a close watch kept
if Burnside was there, and he would
get away unseen in the opposite direc-
tion.

To lie in wait and take him from
his inamorata as they Avere starting for
the car would, have suited the call-boy's
dramatic longings most, but it was not
an impossibility that the fireman had
already forestalled this by an arrange-
ment to meet the party somewhere along
the line.

In this uncertainty the immediate
thing to be done was to get on his
quarry's trail. Snapper gritted his teeth
and struck across the meadow. At the
farther side of the run he stopped and.

THE TEN-THIRTY CALL.

543

on a sudden thought, got down and ex-
amined both ends of the short plank
that spanned it. Without doing any-
thing more, however, he got up again
and went on, and soon entered the Car-
nigan's rear gate. He had kept his eye
sharply on the kitchen window, and
flattered himself that he had stolen up
unnoticed; yet, when he stopped at the
kitchen door, Miss Carnigan seemed not
surprised to see him.

There was something suspicious in
this. To his inquiry she replied that
Mr. Burnside had been there that morn-
ing, but had gone into town. Was he
wanted ?

Oh, no, he wasn't wanted. Snapper
had merely noted that he had been look-
ing poorly of late, and stopped to inquire
about his health. " Gwan ! " said Snap-
per, and hurried to the front gate.

He sprinted to the corner just in time
to see the fireman turn to the right a
block ahead. On an easy trot the call-
boy followed after.

To his surprise, when he reached the
turn he was still nearly a block in the
rear, and Burnside was not running, but
only walking fast. Snapper let himself
out several notches more and put on -a
full head of steam, only to find when he
came to this last corner that the fireman
had completely disappeared. Lounging
on a step near by, however, was tone of
Burnside's friends, and Snapper slack-
ened up for information.

"Burnside?" said the man. "Yep;
just passed here with throttle wide open
and both pops up. Hit the curve and
shot up that first alley " — pointing —
" and he was going some. Why, I'll bet
he was half-way up the side of that
house when he made the turn, and I
reckon you'll find his footmarks on the
wall.

" He called to me to tell you to hurry
up, kid," he said with a grin; "and
you want to move lively, or he'll lose
you."

Snapper knew this was all gammon.
He glanced at his watch. It was almost
nine-thirty.

" I'll look for those footmarks some
other time," he remarked dryly; "I'm
in a hurry now," and he started off
afresh at a jog-trot in the direction
ibat had been indicated.

It was evident that Burnside had gone
into hiding some place soon after turn-
ing the corner; and there being still
time for him to get back to Carnigan's
and help the party with their baskets to
the car, Snapper wanted to give him
every encouragement toward doing it.
As for himself, as soon as he was safely
out of sight he put on extra speed back
toward the meadow.

Once there, he hastened across to the
little creek and, unseating the farther
end of the plank, dug some of the dirt
from beneath it and set it up again, but
resting now on a pointed stone. When
he had tested it to his satisfaction, he
crossed carefully back and, under cover
of the bushes, made his way along to
the street. Almost as he peered out he
saw the fireman come warily from the
corner ahead and enter the Carnigan
gate.

" It seems almost a shame to do it,"
commented the call-boy with a grin.
" He acts so nice about it."

Having no longer any necessity for
concealment, Snapper got up on the side-
walk-and walked on toward the house,
whistling cheerfully.

"There's that long-legged kid
again!" ejaculated Burnside. "If he
comes back here to the kitchen, I'll slip
out the front door and join you on the
car somewhere. If he comes to the
front, keep him till I can get to the
other side of the run ; and after he's
gone, I'll come around by the street."

Snapper's schedule took him to "the
front door. There was no answer to
his first ring, so he rang again; and
shortly Miss Carnigan answered.

"Oh! it's you, is it?" was her tart
greeting. "What do you want now?
It's a pity you couldn't have come
around to the kitchen door."

" That's the fault of me tender heart,
Kitty,1' returned the unabashed Snap-
per. " I want Jimmy Burnside, and
I couldn't bear to break it to him sud-
den. You tell him."

" Didn't I tell you he had left here? "

" Aw, quit it, Kitty ! Ain't he going
on the picnic with you? Sure!"

" Well," was the admission, " he
came back after you left, but he's gone
again. You might find him at bis
boarding-house."

544

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Snapper struggled to keep a straight
face.

" I've been there once," he returned ;
'"' and the book of rules says " — he held
his call-book close to his nose and
thumbed over some blank pages — "it
says, here: 'Rule 106 — In all cases of
doubt or uncertainty, see for yourself.'
I've got to do it, Kitty," and he pushed
past into the house.

" Oh, very well ! " retorted the young
lady, and followed through to where
her mother and a younger sister were
finishing the packing of the picnic-
baskets in the kitchen. "Now! are you
satisfied? "

Snapper made no reply. Something
of more immediate interest absorbed all
his faculties, for his eyes had lighted on
the top layer in one of the baskets.
" Are those some of your own pies, Mrs.
Carnigan?.." he inquired in awed tones.

" Sure ! " was the answer. " Whose
would they be? "

" But, some that you baked yourself? "
he persisted with an air of strong dis-
belief.

" Of coorse ! "

" Mrs. Carnigan " — he wanted a calm.
judicial answer to this question — " are
your pies as good as they used to be?"

".Well, I never!" cried Mrs. Carni-
gan, flinging up her hands. " If you
ain't the blarneyer ! "

Snapper was not a beauty. He was
still growing; his joints were too loose,
his feet too big, his clothes too small ;
vet when he opened his mouth to take
in the piece of pie that was immediately
cut for him, expanding until his freckles
ran together and his whole countenance
resembled nothing so much as a wedge
disappearing through a large, rusty wash-
er, he became fo<r the moment a sight
that gave true joy. to Mrs. Carnigan's
domestic heart.

" That certainly was good," he "mur-
mured in heartfelt commendation as he
swallowed the last of it. Then he met
Miss Carnigan's anxious eye and gave

a sudden impish start. " Gee. Kitty ! "
he exclaimed. " Some one's fell in the
creek."

Kitty jumped. " Nonsense ! " she re-
torted. " You couldn't hear that from
here."

" No," admitted Snapper. Then,
with a prodigious wink : " But I bet
it's happened, just the same."' And,
darting out the door, he ran back
through the yard.

Stopping at the creek merely long
enough to pull the plank out of the
water and set it roughly in place, he
hastened to the boarding-house and went
softly up to the fireman's room. He
snickered to himself at hearing Bum-
side muttering objurgations inside and
thrashing wet cjothes about.

He tried to peek through the keyhole,
but the key was in it. He felt sure the
doo-r was locked, and he was afraid to
try it for fear. his quarry might take
warning and even yet escape by going
out the window and down over a con-
venient shed-roof.

In this dilemma -the pie furnished him
a hint, for, as.it sought a cozy corner of
his anatomy in which to dispose itself
comfortably, it gave him €a gentle in-
ternal tweak. In an instant he had
doubled up as though taken with .a vio-
lent cramp and, falling* against the door
with a horrible groan, seized the knob.

The door was locked, but as he sank
on down to the floor he kept up a piteous
moaning. In another moment the door
opened and he fell half inside.

" You — ■" began the fireman, then
lost speech.

" Aw ! sign the book," said Snapper,
thrusting it at him. " And be quick
about it, too," he added sternly. " I
can't be fooling all my time on you."

Burnside mechanically signed.

" I hated to wet you up, Jimmy,"
said Snapper as he took back - the book,
" but—"

He slammed the door and raced down
the stairs from the irate fireman.

A flimsy order will lay out a flier, but it's better than a wreck
for the purpose. Contempt is usually misplaced.

— The Chief Despatsher.

Riding the Rail from Coast

to Coast.

BY GILSON WILLETS,
Special Traveling Correspondent of "The Railroad Man's Magazine."

SOUTHERN California was good to Mr. Willets. The railroad men in
that part of the country gave him as good a bunch of yarns as he has
picked up anywhere on his interesting journey. They are those fasci-
nating, gripping yarns that only railroad men can tell. And every-man — we
don't care if he is a pinhead, a tallow-pot, a stinger, or a ham, or even if he
has never .seen a railroad — will want to read them.

No. 10.— ROMANCES OF THE GOLDEN STATE.

Steeper than Pike's Peak — Rufus Haines's Potato Thief — Jim Fisher's

Lone Cotton Crop — The "Honeymoon Special" — Jim

Leonard's Last Letter — and Others.

UT, then, this sort of moun-
tain railroading is not
wholly a matter of cour-
age ; it's largely a matter
of stomach. I've seen pas-
sengers in this car close

man, conductor, trainmaster, despatches,
track-walker, section foreman, road-
master, general manager, and acting
general superintendent of one of the
most remarkable railways in America.
It was the Incline Railway of Mount

their eyes in sheer physical fear and Lowe, California, within a short trolley

grow white around the gills with fright, ride of Los Angeles.
Yet they were safer than riding in the- The incline jvas steeper than the one

elevator at the Alexandria Hotel over at Mount Washington, steeper than the

at Los Angeles. one at Pike's Peak, steeper than the one

" Why, I've seen business men from up the Rigi. In eight minutes you

the East back down at the first sight of made a rise of fourteen hundred feet on

these tracks. I've seen them arrive at a grade of sixty per cent,
the lower terminus of this road, take The car in which we made the ascent

one look up at the tracks, and then beat was called the " White Chariot." . Its

it back to Los Angeles or Pasadena, construction was adapted to carrying

vowing never again even to \ think of thirty passengers up an incline that came

climbing any mountain by rail. mighty near being a perpendicular. It

" Those men were courageous-looking had three compartments of two seats

enough, but what they lacked was stom- each, with each compartment on a dif-

aeh." ferent floor level, and could be com-

The speaker was the engineer, brake- pared to nothing better than a steep

Scries bcran in March Railroad Man's Magazine. Single copies, 10 cents.
11 RR 545

546

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

front stoop of three huge steps. To
this car falls the honor of making the
steepest ascent and descent in the world.

It's Perfectly Safe.

"Safe!" continued the road's Pooh
Bah. " I should say we are safe. We've
been running for sixteen years, and
never hurt so much as a passenger's
finger-nail. The power that hauls us up
is furnished , by electricity from a plant
down in Altadena, at the foot of the
mountain. You notice that endless wire
cable to which we are attached? Well,
it's one and a half inches, and it's
regularly -tested to carry a hundred
tons.

" At the top is the heaviest mountain -
hauling machinery you ever clapped
eyes on — with a prodigious cogwheel
embedded in solid granite. With the
least derangement of machinery, we'd
stop and hold fast, and all hands would
be as safe as on the level.

. " Yet, I don't guess but what we're
as near as we can get to being an ele-
vator and still run on tracks. Watch
what a neat job we'll make of passing
yonder descending car."

We were half-way up, had covered
fifteen hundred feet of track, and had
risen seven hundred feet. Right there
we made an automatic " turn out " to let
the descending car pass, for there were
two " White Chariots," and every time
one arrived at the top of the mountain,
the other arrived at the foot.

Just Like Ballooning.

" It's like rising in a balloon," I said.

" You've hit it right," said Mr. Pooh
Bah. " And when you reach the top,
you've ballooned to a point as high up
as Vesuvius. We're a declivity, all right.
I've heard folks who came direct from
travel in Switzerland board us and cry
out : ' The Swiss Alps were never like
this ! '

"Why, look at that view! You're
taking in a panorama of geography of
about seventy-five to • a hundred square
miles. There's the Pacific Ocean over
there — and Catalina Island far out at
sea. And there's San Pedro, and Long
Beach, and Venice, and Santa Monica.

And look at that San Gabriel Valley!
Looks like a checker-board, doesn't it,
with its orange-groves and vineyards?
And Los Angeles looks like a mere vil-
lage, eh?

" We owe the whole business to the
man after whom this mountain is named :
— Professor T. S. C. Lowe. He solved
all the engineering difficulties — got rich
men to back him and form a stock com-
pany."

Here the car came to a stop, and Mr.
Pooh Bah, turning to the passengers,
said : " This is as far as we go, ladies
and gentlemen. Yonder car will wind
you up the mountain another fifteen-
hundred feet to the Alpine Tavern.
Give my regards to my friend. Mr.
Deering."

The Cotton Broker's Yarn.

"Who's he?" I asked bluntly.

" Mr. Deering? Oh, he's a cotton
broker from Memphis, Tennessee. He's
chock-full of yarns of California — yarns
that we native .sons never heard tell of
before. And he's the jolliest man I've
ever met on this railroad — I me*an the
jolliest, excepting one who was a rail-
road telegrapher."

Hearing this, I pricked up my ears.
" Railroad telegrapher, you say? Who
was he? "

" Say, you just ask anybody in Los
Angeles about Rufus Haines. He died
the other day, aged eighty- two. Yet, up
to the day of his death,, he was as hale,
as you or I. He was strong enough to
vote for Taft on Election Day — and a
few 'hours later he sank into the long
sleep. He used to love to come up this*
mountain. How he did enjoy . himself
up here, where he said he could get the
proper perspective on life.

"He came from Bath, Maine, where
he first learned telegraphy. He came to
California as a pioneer long before we
ran the first railroad through this val-
ley—rthe Los Angeles and San Gabriel
Valley Railroad, that was. And when
the railroad came, he worked on it as
an operator — and the other day the big-
gest bunch of railroad telegraphers ever
seen in one house at one time hereabouts
gathered at his bier.

" Yes, Rufus Haines was a pioneer.

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

547

He came to California in the time of
the Vigilantes. Well, so long!'"

"Just one moment, Mr. Pooh Bah,"
I said. '■ Didn't Rufus Haines ever tell
you something in particular about the
Vigilantes? "

" I should say he did— often. He

Haines said that it rang altogether too
vigorously and persistently for a mere
fire. Haines sprang out of bed to see
what the rumpus was about, and this is
what he learned :

" First of all, with the ringing of the
bell, the members of the Committee of

"YOU'VE BALLOONED TO A POINT AS HIGH UP AS VESUVIUS."

told me the story of Tom Tanner. Tom
Tanner, you see, was one of those rogues
that the Vigilantes put to death for
stealing. It was at Marysville, Cali-
fornia— that town having its Committee
of Twenty-Five.

'.'■Rufus' Haines told me how, one
night, lie was in Marysville when the
fire-bell was given a terrible ring.

Twenty-Five jumped from between sheets
and assembled to find that the midnight
call was to the release, on bail, of a man
who had been captured in the act of.
stealing a sack of potatoes. That was
Tom Tanner.

" Tanner's house had been searched
previously by some of the committee,
and great quantities of stolen merchan-

548

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

dise unearthed. And now he was caught
red-handed swiping a . sack of potatoes.
Tanner was taken before a judge named
Wilkins, who let him go on -a two-thou-
sand-dollar bond. This act of the judge
displeased the Vigilantes. Justice was
deemed not swift enough. Indignation
spread among the townspeople — and
they rang the fire-bell, calling out the
committee members.

" All night they searched for Tanner.
In the early morning they caught him
trying to escape from town. They
caught him in the act of throwing some-
thing into a stream — a buckskin bag,
containing four gold watches.

Tanner Gets His.

" Those gold watches shortened Tan-
ner's life by some years. The Vigilantes
had intended only to put him back in
jail, and compel Judge Wilkins to keep
him there by canceling his bail bond.
But the gold watches — that settled it.
The Vigilantes determined to hold Tan-
ner as their own prisoner and try him
themselves.

" The committee formed itself into a
court. Within fifteen minutes the pres-
ident of the committee, who had acted
as judge, came out and reported to the
great crowd that had assembled "in front
of committee headquarters, that Tanner
had been found guilty of grand larceny.

"'Hang him!' shrieked the crowd.
And it was never recorded, Haines told
me, as a lynching, for the Vigilantes
commanded Sheriff Gray to do the job.

" Meantime the thief's wife, with her
two children, passed through the crowd,
pleading piteously for mercy for her
husband, all in vain.

" That was not all. Haines said that
the Vigilantes sometimes dealt out jus-
tice to bad men thus swiftly, yet ven-
geance did not end even with death. In
Tanner's case, the Vigilantes drew up a
petition and got the mayor of Marysville
to refuse to allow the body of Tanner
to be buried in the cemetery. As a re-
sult, all that was left of the thief was
given to earth in a lonely spot outside
the town limits.

" Nor was that all. Body-snatchers,
that very night, stole up on their awful
errand — only to sneak away when they

saw the widow of Tanner standing
guard at the grave.

" Next morning, the widow had the
body brought to her home and interred
in her back yard, where she watched it
night after night for weeks.

" Well, so long ! Remember me to
Mr. Deering."

I now began the tortuous rail journey
up to the Alpine Tavern. Around
curves and along fearsome .precipices
the car wound its way — it was an over-
head trolley, by the way-^and sometimes
as many as four levels of the railway
could be seen at once.

Arrived at Alpine Tavern, I found it
standing in snow, though I was barely
an hour from the flower-beds of the val-
ley. In the log hotel, I pulled a rock-
ing-chair up to the log fire on the hearth,
and, while wanning my feet, read this
sign over the fireplace:

t'e Ornament of a House Is Ye Guest Who
Doth Frequent It.

" A new ornament has arrived, I see,"
said a voice behind me. I turned and
beheld a man wearing miner's boots,
polo riding-breeches, a corduroy hunting-
coat, a red sweater, and a golf cap.
_ " My name's Deering," said he.
" Memphis is my home town. I'm in
cotton. What's your line?"

" Railroads. Glad to know you, Mr.
Deering. That Pooh Bah, on the slight
declivity one must hazard to get here,
wishes particularly , to be remembered
to you."

California's Only Cotton Crop.

"Bully for him!" cried Deering.
" Did he tell you that story I told him
of the first and only and last cotton
crop ever raised in California?"

" No ! Wasn't aware they had ever
raised so much as a spool of cotton in
this State."

"Wasn't aware? Let me put you
wise. You're in railroads, you say.
Well, you ask the Santa Fe and the
Espee how they once heralded to the
people that they were preparing to haul
a California cotton crop to a waiting

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

549

world. Those railroads informed the acres. He built a house for himself

whole country that a cotton crop cover- right where he could sit and watch

ing six hundred and forty acres was that cotton grow. And, it's a fact,

about to be hauled by them, and that the cotton grew. It quickly came to a

within a year or so they'd be hauling head,

cotton from six thousand acres. Jim Fisher had started the thing

" Those cotton acres were down as an experiment. But here it was real-
Bakersfield way, on the Kern River, ized. He rubbed his eyes — but there
The cotton was there — yes, it was all was. the cotton growing and growing
there; and so were the cars there, ready and getting to the puff-ball point where-
to move it. But the cotton stayed right at it had to be picked P. D. Q., or the
where it grew. winds of heaven would carry it away.

Then Jim Fisher saw that he had

Fisher Gets on the Job. to get right on the job.

" ' Got to provide for some one to

" The man responsible for that lone pick it,' quoth Fisher. He sent to

cotton crop of California was Jim Bakersfield and Fresno and Los An-

Fisher. Jim was a partner of Haggin, geles and a heap of other places, and

the California mine-owner
and horse - racer. Fisher
himself had his own barrel
of money, and he raised the
cotton on his own hook,
too — it weren't none of
Haggin's affair. If he'd had
a partner, he would not
have dared to do what he
did to that cotton, and I
would not have had this
yarn to spin.

" Jim Fisher tapped the
Kern River, much to the
chagrin of agriculturists
down the valley. He built
a big canal and a lot of lit-
tle canals, and he called the
same, an irrigation plat.
When he got square miles
upon s'quare miles ready
for business, he got a bug
in his head. His bug was
cotton.

" ' Why should not Cali-
fornia be a cotton State ? '
he asked himself. And in
the course of his dream he
went to the railroads and
told them what he contem-
plated doing. Could the
railroads move his cotton
at a figure that would leave
him a margin of profit?
You bet the railroads could
do that — and so Jim Fisher
went to work.

" He planted cotton on
six hundred and forty

ordered carpenters to come
forth. The carpenters came,
and Fisher set them to
work building shacks — oh,
just dozens of shacks.

" ' But you don't need all
these shacks for pickers for
just this little six-hundred-
acre crop,' protested the
boss carpenter.

" ' You go right" on build-
ing shacks, all the same,'
answered Jim Fisher. ' I
know what I'm doing.
' Next year, or in two years
at the most, there'll be six
thousand acres in cotton to

CAUGHT RED-HANDED
SWIPING A SACK OF PO-
TATOES." <-^C^~si

550

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

be picked, and I'll need the shacks to
house the pickers.'

" Meantime the railroad traffic men
and the industrial men of the lines came
down to Fisher's irrigation plat, and at
sight of the cotton their eyes bulged out
of their astonished heads. They went
back to Frisco, and wherever else they
came from, and spread the glad tidings

about unionizing those cotton-pickers.
He said to them :

" ' This here cotton of Fisher's simply
has to be picked — now or never. He
can't get other pickers here in time to do
the job ; he's simply got to leave the job
to us fellers on the spot. See? Well,
to-morrow mornin' we'll ask for six dol-
lars a day. See? '

"you boys been sittin' up all night raising the pay-rate, have you?"

broadcast. Cotton in California ! The
thing seemed a miracle, with Jim Fisher
as the magician.

Three Dollars a Day.

" ' I want cotton-pickers,' now said
Jim Fisher to the railroad passenger de-
partments. ' Please get 'em for me — get
a regiment of them. My cotton has to be
picked within a week.'

" Forthwith into that irrigated section
poured cotton-pickers. They asked three
dollars a day and ' found,' and Fisher
gave them all they asked. He installed
them in the shacks ; he fed them right
smart. One Sunday night he said to
them : ' To-morrow, boys, we'll begin
picking.'

" That night the ■ boys ' put their
heads together, under the leadership of
a foreman from the South, who must
have been at some time in his life a very
jim-dandy of a labor leader. He was an
organizer, he was. He knew how to go

" Monday morning came, and there
was Jim Fisher on the field bright and
early, ready to direct the picking oper-
ations. Just as the sun rose that fore-
man went to Fisher, backed up by a
timorous committee and says:

" ' Mr. Fisher, we-all reckon that our
labor's worth six -dollars a day.'

They Raise the Ante.

" Now, Fisher was one of those men
who always had a cigar in his mouth.
He blew out clouds of smoke, took his
cigar out of his mouth, scrutinized its
burning end closely, put it back between
his teeth, then said, very quietly:

" You boys been sittin' up all night
raising the pay-rate, have you ? '

" Yes, Mr. Fisher, the price of labor
on the cotton-fields of California has
riz.'

" ' And have you boys considered the
fact that six dollars a day eats up my
profits on this crop?'

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

551

" ' Don't know nothing about that, Mr.
Fisher. Just know that six dollars is
about our size.'

" ' You do, do you? In that case
the crop is worthless.'

" And — what do you think Jim Fisher
did? He turned to where he could face
his broad acres of growing cotton, took
his cigar from his teeth, nicked the ash
from it, touched its lighted end to the
nearest cotton-puff.

" The puff blazed instantly, and the
fire was carried to other cotton-bolls. In
a' jiffy there was a sizzling and crack-
ling such as you can hear only in a burn-
ing cotton-patch.

A Vanishing Dream.

" You bet the foreman was frightened.
With a shout he ordered his men to
jump in and beat out the blaze, for now
they stood to lose even their three dol-
lars a day.

" ' Stand back ! ' shouted Jim Fisher,
drawing a gun. ' This is my cotton, and
I'll shoot the first man that lays hand
or foot on my property ! '

" By nightfall the whole six hundred
acres had become a blackened smear On
the landscape. Alb* day long Jim Fisher
sat on his porch watching his dream go
up in smoke. The wires ticked the news.
In the railroad offices throughout south-
ern California there was weeping and
profanity."

Here's a tale that might be entitled
" The Adventures of the Paymaster's
Roll." I was " seeking my prey " in the
Espee. yards hard by the Arcade Station,*;
bos Angeles, when one of the yardmen
said: " The signal is set for the Honey-
moon. She'.ll be here in a minute."

I asked him what he meant by " honey-
moon," and he told me that the night-
train from Frisco brought down so many
newlyweds that it had been given the
unofficial name of Honeymoon Limited.
The train pulled in, and one of the
sleepers was cut out, shunted tp a far
siding, and given over to the cleaners.

I stood watching the cleaning process
as applied to that sleeper, when suddenly
a porter leaped from the step and dashed
up the yard, as if his very life depended
upon his getting quickly away from that
vicinitv. •

About ten minutes later a well-dressed
man came running up all out of breath
and crying to the .cleaners at the win-
dows : " Is this that sleeper from the train
from San Francisco?"

On being told that it was the car, the
wild-eyed man asked: " And did you find
anything under the pillow in lower
five?"

" No, sir — we didn't. But the porter
did."

" Porter? Where is he? "

" Don't know, sir. He's gone, ten min-
utes and more."

Here the worried-looking man turned
to me, saying : " I lost my pocketbook in
that car. Think I left it under my pil-
low in the berth. It contained a thou-
sand in real money. Took a motor-car
from the station to the Alexandria Hotel,
only to find I hadn't money enough to
pay the chauffeur. So I got the driver
to run me back here as fast as the law
would permit."

" I think you will find your wallet,"
I said, " if you will go to Pullman head-
quarters up the street. I saw. a porter
make a getaway from here a few min-
utes ago, and the 'chances are a million
to one that he's gone to headquarters to
turn in your wallet."

" Shore Enough " Dough.

" Do you really think so? I'll go
there at once." v

Twenty minutes later the porter re-
turned to the car, smiling from ear to
ear.

" Easy money, boss," he said, display-
ing a yellowback.

" Ah suspicioned that pocketbook con-
tained shore enough real money, and ah
ran mail legs off to get mahself exoner-
ated at the Pullman office. Ah'm goin'
to treat mahself to-day to the fines'
chicken dinner Los Angeles can cook.

" That man is the paymaster of a navy
ship, South Dakota. His name's Nichol-
son, and he rode with me last night from
Frisco, on his weddin' trip. Twenty
dollars ! Don't you go foolin' your-
selves," he added, turning to the cleaners,
" that it don't pay in this business to be
honest."

The Santa Fe station at Pasadena —
thirty minutes from Fos Angeles — stands

552

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

HIS LIFE DEPENDED ON HIS GETTING AWAY FROM
THAT VICINITY.

picturesquely in the grounds of the Green
Hotel. Just outside of the station there
is an artistic summer-house, or outdoor
waiting-place, with comfortable seats for
waiting passengers. There, under the
wide-spreading palms, in the velvety
night characteristic of that semi-tropical
land, I sat in company with one of the
railroad watchmen, or depot policemen.

" It looks to me," he said, " like more
soldiers of fortune come from the ranks
of the railroad army than from any other
calling. There was Jim Leonard, for
instance. It was railroading that made
him a soldier of fortune. He's some-
where in the China seas at this minute —
a sailor before the mast of_a tramp, a
man without a country, without a port
or a flag, just a human derelict Avith a
price on his head.

A Soldier of Fortune.

"Now, the way we came to know of
Jim Leonard's latest move was by a
strange accident. We had given him up-

months ago as dead or lost,
when, only the other day, a
prospector, all dust from the
desert, and all rags from en-
counters with mesquit, comes
into Los Angeles on a Santa
Fe train, displays a letter, and
says :

" ' That there is from a
stranger to me, named Jim
Leonard. I've carried it two
thousand miles just out of
brotherly love for one who,
like myself, is a soldier of
fortune.'

" To go back a little, I
must tell you that Jimmy Was
known to a lot of folks in
Los Angeles and Pasadena,
for he'd been in this country
for seven years. Last April
he applied for a job as a po-
liceman on the Los Angeles
force, and was sw7orn in. By
July, however, he got tired
of walking a beat, and swore
he would become a railroad
man, so as to see something of
the world. Well, he's seen a
heap of the world, and I
reckon he wishes he had
stayed on the police force.

" Resigning his police job, he went to
an employment agency in Los Angeles
that was advertising for men to go to
Mexico to work on. the railroads there.
He was promised a job as foreman of a
section-gang of peons, if he would drop
down to Guaymas.

Quits Being a Cop.

" According, he got a free ride to
Guaymas — just what he was looking for.
He wras seeing the world. They were
building a railroad down there, and Jim-
my got the job, as promised. It was a
good job, too, if only Jimmy had held
on to it and had left the mescal alone
on the Sabbath.

" The next thing we knew Jimmy was
lodged in the Guaymas jail charged with
murder ; and then we heard no more from
him, and gave him up for a goner.

" Months passed, and jus? the other
day, as I've said, a miner comes into
Los Angeles with a letter in Jimmy's

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

553

own hand. How that miner came by
that letter beats all fiction. He found it
in an old sack under a lot of rubbish, in
a box car, on the railroad way down on
the west coast.

" Jimmy himself had left the letter in
that box car, in the bare hope that it
would be found by an American, and
somehow get to Los Angeles.

Jim's Last Letter.

" The miner was beating his way up
to the Rio Grande ; and as he had read
enough of Jimmy's letter to get him into
sympathy with Jimmy's plight, he hung
on to the document till he delivered it to

the man to whom it was addressed, in
Los Angeles.

" You see, Jimmy had no money for
a postage-stamp ; and, besides, he would
not dare trust that letter to the post-
office in Mexico at just the time it was
written, anyway.

" Well, I've seen the letter, and I know
what it says. Jimmy tells how he came
to be charged with murder. He had
been celebrating the Sabbath in town,
with overmuch mescal, and on the road
back to camp he overtook a peon, who,
he says, picked a quarrel with him, and
attempted to draw a gun.

" Jimmy says that he shot the peon
dead. He then went back to the railroad

?*'^>

JIMMY SAYS THAT HE SHOT THE PEON DEAD.

554

THE RAILROAD MAX'S MAGAZINE.

camp, a decidedly sober man, and con-
fessed to the superintendent, telling all
that had happened. The superintendent
told him that the safest thing for him to
do would be to get out of the country.
Jimmy hid in a box car, and got almost
to the Rio Grande, when he was cap-
tured.

Stay in God's Country!

" Thev took him back to Guaymas and
locked him in a filthy prison, where he
was chained in his cell. Then they con-
demned him to serve a long term at the
salt mines, which almost surely means
death. While awaiting transportation to
the mines. Jimmy, with the aid of some
Mexican friends, managed to escape
from jail. Again he hid in a box car,
and he writes how he suffered cruelly
from extreme heat and thirst and hunger.

" He tells, too, how his friends had
arranged for him to ship before the mast
on a tramp vessel from some port on the
Mexico west coast ; and how, if ever the
letter reached Los Angeles, we'd know
what had become of him, as the vessel
was bound for the China seas. Jimmy
assures us that he killed that peon in
self-defense.

" But the part of Jimmy Leonard's
letter that interested me most was where
he spoke of leaving us to see the world.
' Railroading is all right,' he wrote, ' so
long as you railroad in God's country.
But don't any of you get the idea that
you'll see a whole lot of the world
through going to some other country to
railroad. For you'll only see trouble and
suffering like I have. If only I had
stayed a policeman, with the job of hunt-
ing criminals, instead of being myself
hunted at this moment, with a price on
my head, and with no country and no
flag, I would have remained a happy
man. Tell all the railroad boys who
knew me that I say to them : Stick to
vour job like the postage-stamp does,
and don't think of going railroading any-
where else, for happiness is right- in your
own dooryard.' "

The Worst on Record.

When I reached the arroyo, I went
to the foreman of the section there, and

asked him if he remembered the terrible
wreck on the night of May 21, 1907. I
had been told of this particular wreck,
and the ingenious and fiendish device by
whiclvit was accomplished, and I wanted
to see -with my own eyes just how that
trap was sprung.

"Do I remember?" answered the
foreman, one O'Mara. " I should say I
do. I ought to know, because I was
called out of my bed at one in the morn-
ing.

" It was the Espee's Coast Line Flier.
One man was killed and twenty-two
wounded, of whom three afterward died
in hospital. In all my railroading days
1 have never seen such horror or such
suffering, mor have I ever seen or heard
of any trap for wrecking a train so dia-
bolical as that we found had been sprung
that night.

" Along comes the flier, three hours
late. Janis was in the cab, and going
like mad. It was pitch-dark, and how
could he be expected to see a trap?
Come out on the trestle, my boy. and I'll
show vou exactlv where the trap was
set."

When the Crash Came.

He led me out on the trestle over the
Arroyo Seco, and pointed to a certain
fish-plate. " Here," he said, " is the ex-
act spot at which the engine ran off the
rails, and here it is where the tender, the
diner, the buffet-car, two Pullman sleep-
ers, and the mail and express cars plunged
off the trestle, and tumbled the sixteen
feet to the bottom of the arroyo.

" Three of the cars were completelv
overturned — the buffet, the express-car,
and one Pullman. All the other cars
landed on their sides.

" By the time I got here, the cries of
those pinioned under the wreckage and
the moans of the wounded was something
terrible. With axes we hewed away till
we made holes in the cars for the pas-
sengers to climb out, I myself meanwhile
helping women and children to climb out
of windows and doors.

" Then along came a relief -train from
Los Angeles, with doctors aboard, and
the wounded were carried off to the city.

" With the wounded out of the way.
I went with the trainmen to try to dis-
cover what had happened to that flier.

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

555

I would have sworn the trestle itself was
all right, for I had been over it just
before sundown. But, all the same, the
trouble lay in the trestle, and not in the
engine or cars. What do. you think we
found ?

The Telltale Wires.

" You see this fish-plate here? Well,
it — or the one that was here when I in-
spected this trestle that evening — to-

of Los Angeles. You can inhale the fra-
grance of San Pedro before you fairly
get within her limits, for she smells of4
pine lumber — smells of it while you are
yet afar off. Not even in Oregon or

STORNI STEALS UP BEHIND THE READER, REAL SLEUTH FASHION

^t>

gether with- its bolts, had been removed.
The fish-plate connects these two rails,
of course. Through the holes in the
rails from which the bolts had been re-
moved those' dastardly rascals, whoever
they were, had drawn heavy wires — one
wire for each rail.

" Then the two wires had been joined
into a single strand, and the strand itself
Avas what we found that night, leading
away into the bushes on the steep em-
bankment there.

" Now, see how the trap worked.
When the flier reached the trestle, all
those wreckers had to do was to pull on
the wires, thus spreading each one of
these connecting rails out toward the edge
of the trestle.

"I'll wager you'll travel this country
over, and never anywhere else hear of any
such devilish trap as was sprung on us
that night. The Espee put up ten thou-
sand dollars reward for the arrest and
conviction of the fiends ; but, so far as I
know, the reward is still unclaimed."

I went down to San Pedro, the port

Washington, where most of that lumber
comes from, had I seen so much wood- .
stuff in one place at one time.

That lumber was consigned to a hun-
dred different places in the Southwest,
and a huge instalment of it was started
on its journey each day, hauled by en-
gine No. 2791 of the Southern Pacific —
an eight-drive-wheel compound, one of
the biggest on the Pacific coast.

The day I was at San Pedro an Espee
lumber-train stood ready to pull out. It
was in charge of Conductor Gilbert, with
Engineer Cram up at the head. If I had
wanted then to walk from the caboose^
where I met Conductor Gilbert, up to
Engineer Cram's cab, I would have had
to walk exactly half a mile ; for that
train was twenty-five hundred feet long.

" Now, don't tell me you ever saw a
logging train or any other kind of wood-
stuff train just as big as this, because you
didn't, not even in Oregon," said Con-
ductor Gilbert. " We've got fifty-six
cars loaded with 1,100,000 feet of lum-
ber, weighing 4,500,000 pounds, and

556

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

worth $2 7,500. '. And what will surprise
you most ' is that we pull a load
just like this out of San Pedro every
day of the week. We're no slouches
when it comes to lumber."

Two Thousand Tons Daily.

I walked that half-mile, just the same,
up to 2791.

" Ain't she a beauty ! " exclaimed En-
gineer Cram, meaning his eight-drive-
wheeler. " She hauls her two thousand
tons of wood out of here every day, and
the prettiest thing about her is this little
lever here," indicating the " handle "
connecting the air-brakes.

" By merely touching this lever," went
on Cram, " with a child's touch, I con-
trol a half-mile of cars with their pro-
digious weight. But, say, you going up-
to Los Angeles now? Well, if you think
you see wood here, just go down to our
yards there, and take a look at more
wood in one place than you'll ever see
anywhere else, no matter how much you
travel."

In Los Angeles I went to that part of
the Espee yards mentioned by Engineer
^Cram, and there indeed was a city of
wood. There were no less than thirty
acres of railroad ties. I speak of them
as a city, because those ties, piled up as
high as the highest two-story bungalow,
were arranged symmetrically in blocks,
like the streets of a city.

Those ties were brought to Los
Angeles, by ship and train, from the
Northwest, and there piled up to dry,
after which they would be treated to a
bath of zinc oxide and shipped to all
parts of the Harriman system. I was
told that it was the largest collection of
railroad ties on earth.

/ A City of Ties. ,

Now, through the streets of this city
of ties ran railroad tracks, and over these
rolled freight-trains, here unloading,
there loading, more and more ties, so that
the millions of ties seemed never to be
reduced in number.

" Welcome to our City of Sleepers,"
said an old brakeman, with a winning
smile. " I saw you either making notes
or reading from a book as we came up,"

he added, " and you reminded me of that
chap we overhauled the other day in the
yards at Santa Barbara. Queer case,
that ! " •

The brakeman sat down on the side of
his flat car, took a chew of tobacco —
lighted cigars and the like being prohib-
ited in this City of Sleepers — and then
proceeded :

" Yes, queer case ! Say, can you tell
me what on earth a thief wants to steal
Bibles for, and only Bibles? I mean,
why does' he want to steal' only Bibles
when he might have stolen other things
— prunes, for example?

The Espee Bible Thief.

" Well, that case up at Santa Bar-
bara was one of theft of Bibles only,
when the thief might have taken other
things of the kind I have mentioned.
No. 244 of our line was running some-
where between San Luis Obispo and
Guadaloupe, when some one busted a car-
seal and ransacked the car and made off
with a heap of Bibles.

" When the train got to Santa Bar-
bara, the broken seal was discovered —
the Bibles were gone. But all the prunes
and other things in that car were left
where they were, though all the cases
containing them had been mercilessly
smashed open.

" And here comes a joke on Bill Stor-
ni — he's a constable at Santa Barbara.
Storni, one day soon after the robbery,
Avas walking through the Espee yard be-
tween a lot of lumber-cars, when he espies
a tramp reading a book. , Storni steals up
behind the reader, real sleuth fashion,
to see what sort of literature was there
on exhibition.

" ' A Bible, by Jove ! ' cries Storni.
pouncing upon the reader. ' I reckon,
friend, you are wanted in this precinct.
What you got to say for yourself ? '

"'Wanted for what?' inquires the
Bible class of one member, meeklike.

" ' For stealing Bibles, of course, out
of that Espee car the other day, up San
Luis Obispo way.'

" ' My good friend and brother,' says
the Bible class in a psalm-singing, sanc-
timonious tone, ' let me remind you that
persons who read Bibles do not steal
them.' "

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

BY EDWARD BEDINGER MITCHELL,
Author of " An American Knight Errant," " The Yellow Rose," Etc.

Several Bluffs are Called, but Nobody
-r Manages To Rake In All the Pot.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

STEPHEN PAGET, a retired newspaper man, and his friend. Marshfield, are at-
tracted by the sight of a beautiful girl in a poor building opposite Paget's apartment.
A few minutes later a middle-aged woman in the street below is heard to scream
hysterically, and on Paget rushing down to find out the reason, she says she has seen
the evil one, indicating as the place the room in which the two men have just seen the girl.
Paget escorts the woman to her store in the basement of the cheap house, where he learns
that her name is Rosa, and that she and the girl, Maria Bigontina, live in the room above.
Some days later, Paget finds the girl in a park, homeless. Rosa has disappeared and
Maria's brother is also lost. Paget arranges for her to stay at the Walton until her
people can be found. He goes to interview the landlord, who has turned her out, and
in her room has an adventure with several Italian cutthroats. Dining with Maria, he
is warned by a Hungarian orchestra leader not to take the first cab or walk when going
home.

The cab they do take breaks down, and in the confusion they are actually led into
taking the first cab. The driver tries to abduct them, but Paget thrashes him, and after
seeing Maria to the Walton he changes coats with the driver and goes to the place the
latter was instructed to drive them to. He sees his enemy, but fails to learn anything.
Next morning,- with Maria, he dodges- the spies and carries the girl to the seclusion of
his cousin's home.

As Paget is going' home he is met by Marshfield, who" insists that he go to his house
to dinner. A 'scheme is on foot through which the elder Marshfield may purchase' valu-
able mining property in Abyssinia, and it is practically settled that Paget and young
Marshfield shall go to look things over. Paget sees one of the guests at the dinner in
conversation with one of the Italians of his previous adventure, and, later, he and Marsh-
field overhear a conference of the cutthroats, in which it is planned to get possession of
Maria.

Maria sees Paget with Signor Rocca, her enemy, and thinks he has betrayed her.
Rocca invites Stephen and young Marshfield to lunch, and afterward asks Stephen to go
and see some Abyssinian specimens at his warehouse. It is the same address as they
had attempted to lure Paget and Maria to before.

CHAPTER XVI. some mask for my feelings was necessary.

TI .. r iv/r u * ^ne napkin and the cough Avere the first

I Learn More of My Host. ^ich occurred tQ me> anbd T ^^ un_

^HE hand that was about to til my face was purple.

raise the cigar to my lips "Some water, Mr. Paget?" . With

fell to my side, my jaw the greatest solicitude Rocca filled a glass

dropped, and I stared at the from the carafe and handed it to me. I

man, white and gasping, took it from him, drained it, and set it

Then abruptly I snatched down,
the napkin from the table, buried my face " Thank you. Something caught in

in it, and fell to coughing. It was an old my throat — most disagreeable."
device, as old as social hypocrisy, but I pushed back my chair and rose to

Began in the August Railroad Man*s Magazine. Single copies, 10 cents.

557

558

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

face him. My mind was clear now. " In
Barent Street, if you know where that
is." The words were the key to all the
puzzles of the past. At their sound the
mysteries which had so perplexed me
fell into orderly ranks like well-drilled
troops, ready for my inspection.

Rocca was the chief with whose name
Ghedina had terrified the scoundrels of
the Auvergne. He it was who wanted
both the girl and the missing " key "
locked in my desk. It was his warehouse
to which I had driven in the clothes of
the cabman.

And Rocca had been in the cab with
me when I stopped in Eleventh Street to
talk to Mrs. Noyes and Maria. It was
from hini she was fleeing, and she had
seen him in my company. That was why
I was " vile." That was enough for me.
My heart leaped and my love sang in my
breast.

I did not stop to piece together the
puzzle. T knew now why Maria had
turned against me, I knew from whom
came the blows aimed at her. It was
enough ; the rest — Abyssinia, the ""missing
Pietro — all could wait.

" Well, Mr. Paget, if you have recov-
ered, we might start."

"Oh, yes; certainly."

I dropped the napkin clutched in my
hand on the table and turned away.
Nothing was further from* my intention
than to visit 78 Barent Street in this
man's company. Inwardly I blessed the
cabman who had given me the informa-
tion. Without it I should have walked
blindfold into the trap so carefully pre-
pared.

It was for this that David had been
politely removed — the son of old Marsh-
field Rocca did not dare to touch, but
the obscure Stephen Paget was easier
prey. My one protection, as Ghedina
had said, was my knowledge of Maria's
hiding-place. That knowledge I had un-
masked to Rocca ; there was nothing now
to prevent my being put out of the way
as an unwelcome intruder who knew too
much.

All this I realized ; there was one
thing I did not know — how to free my-
self from the spider's web into which I
had so rashly ventured.

" I will call a cab," said Rocca. He
walked over to the telephone in the-

library of the apartment and I heard
him summon a carriage while I sat rack-
ing my brains for some excuse which
would not betray my knowledge to my
host.

"It will be here in a minute." The
Italian turned from the instrument with
his affable smile. " Will you have some-
thing while you wait — whisky and soda
the Americans like, I am told."

" Thank you. Like my friend, I fear
I have also forgotten an engagement.
It just occurred to me while you were
telephoning," I added hastily, catching
the sudden chill in Rocca's deep-set eyes.

The smile on his lips was still there ;
had I known nothing of Barent Street
I would never have thought to have
watched his eyes.

"An engagement? Do you young
men have so many engagements or so
few that you can not remember them
an hour in advance?"

"It does seem rude." I rose to my
feet, answering the apparent and natural
pique of my host. " You must give me'
another opportunity to apologize. This
afternoon I can only ask your indul-
gence."

It was clumsy I knew, as clumsy as
the cough, but I preferred to be clumsy
rather than dead. Rocca's gang was not
going to " get " me in 78 Barent Street,
and the quicker I was out in the broad
light of New York's afternoon the better
for me. My host merely smiled in
gentle disappointment.

"It is unfortunate. I had looked for-
ward to a pleasant and profitable hour
or two. But youth will be served. Vic-
tor, Mr. Paget's coat and hat. You left
them inside, I think."

"Si, signorei3 At his master's sum-
mons Victor had appeared from the hid-
den regions of the apartment and now
stood in formal respect before us. Hav-
ing declined Rocca's invitation to walk
into his trap, it seemed that I was to
follow in Marshfield's footsteps and be
eliminated by sheer, cold courtesy from
his presence.

I could ask for nothing better. My
one desire was to return to Maria, tcr ex-
plain my association with her foe, with
her aid to unravel the tangle of the situa-
tion, and then to act. Expecting to be
helped into my OA-ercoat. I half turned

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

559

to Victor. The servant stood there,
silent, decorous, obviously efficient, and
perfectly trained. He held neither my
hat nor my coat.

" Where are Mr. Paget's things, Vic-
tor? I told you to get them."

Rocea's voice was sharp with com-
mand and displeasure. Apparently lack
of attention to a guest caused him more
concern than all the black crimes my
mind was laying at his door.

" I did not understand, sir. I took
them -inside to brush them, but I have
not as yet had the time. Shall I fetch
them, .or will the gentleman wait?"

" You are stupid ;, the gentleman does
not wish to wait. Stay ! We will get
them ourselves. This way, Mr. Paget.
I want to show you some of the possi-
bilities of a New York apartment, since
you have not the time to investigate the
possibilities of Abyssinia."

I cared nothing for his apartment,
but I cared less about marching into the
street hatless and coatless. Also I was
anxious to delay the inevitable arousing
of his suspicion. His ignorance of my
knowledge" was a weapon I meant to use,
and I followed him obediently as he led
the way from the dining-room into a
small pantry.

Rocca flung open another door. In
a space that was half closet and half
room, lighted only from the pantry, I
saw hanging on a wall two or three hats
and coats.

"Which is yours, Mr. raget?"

Rocca stood with his hand upon the
knob, waiting ; behind him Victor
blocked the entrance to the dining-room.
Why had the butler turned himself un-
asked into a tailor for niy benefit, and
why was the great Italian now doing his
servant's work for him?

There was nothing to show any one
in a coat-closet and a pantry. I looked
sharply, not at the row of garments hung
up for my inspection, but at the impas-
sive face of my host. He moved a little
impatiently.

" Will you see which is yours, Mr.
Pa—"

His great form flattened against the
door as I drove my fist into his moving
lips. His left hand had risen to the back
of his neck. It was the signal with which
Cagno had hurled his ruffians on me in

the attic. Once more I was beforehand
with them.

Victor leaped as I struck. I felt his
arms wrap themselves about my body,
felt myself falling backward into the
hidden peril of the' closet. Clutching
wildly in the air, my hands closed about
the head of the man I had dazed with
the blow. For an instant the three of
us swayed unbalanced on the threshold;
then the mass toppled and fell.

Rocca was used to fighting with his
brains, not his hands; to that fact I am
convinced I owe my life. What my blow
had begun the fall completed, and he
lay inert and more than half-stunned
upon the floor. The valet was made of
sterner stuff. His arms were about me
like the coils of a serpent. I could
writhe and kick at nothing, but I could
not loosen that paralyzing grip.

His dark face was close to mine as
we tossed about the floor. The eyes
which had been so veiled with quiet
deference blazed above me and I felt
his hot breath on my cheek. Suddenly
the coils about me loosened of their own
accord. One hand shot to my throat,
pinning me to the ground, choking the
very life from me ; the other ' reached
back for the knife — the silent, beloved
weapon of the Mediterranean outlaw.

He could have strangled me there
without a sound, strangled me and none
of the hundreds hurrying along the side-
walk a few feet below would ever have
heard a cry. He couldhave — but he did
not. The Latin does not murder with
his naked hands ; the man had spent his
life with the knife, the thought of it
and the use of it were born in his blood.
Now, in the moment of his triumph, he
readied for it.

It was a disastrous blunder. Though
the grip on my throat never loosened,
his weight lifted from my body, as he
rose, striving to free the useless weapon.

My knee shot up. It caught him an
inch below the ribs and every rigid
muscle of the man shriveled. The
weight of the body fell back upon me,
but now it was a dead-weight. Before
the breath returned I bad flung it from
me and staggered up to reel, gasping
and black-faced, into the pantry.

Instinctively I slammed the door upon
my assailants, falling against it with a

560

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

sob of joy. My knees shook under
me, my whole body heaved in a desper-
ate fight for air — but I knew that I was
safe. The click that came to my ringing
ears as the door closed told the story.
The closet was a trap ; Rocca and his
man were my prisoners.

From within came a series of thuds
as of heavy bodies hurled against the
door, but the faint sounds were strangely
muffled. As I listened more of the truth
dawned upon me. Once within that
closet I could have screamed until the
Day of ' Judgment and no sound would
have penetrated the deadened walls.

Possibly they had meant to suffocate
me there ; possibly there was a trap-door,
another entrance, something — Heaven
knows what. Whatever it was they had
prepared for me, they would have to
face it themselves.

It was a convenient apartment— very.
Rocca's words came back to me as I
gasped for breath against the door. It
had come close to- being too convenient
for me, but now I was master of it.
Slowly my strength returned, and at last
I moved away to examine my conquest.

Save for the prison-closet it was an
ordinary New York apartment of the
most expensive class. The furnishings
were more than ordinarily luxurious, it
is true, but except for their cost there
was nothing noteworthy about them.
From one room to another I wandered,
secure in my conviction that my two as-
sailants were harmless, reluctant to sum-
mon the police until I had learned all
that the home of the " chief " revealed.

In a small den off the sitting-room,
which I took to be Rocca's private sanc-
tum, I found a roll-top desk. It was
locked, but I tugged and pulled and
beat upon it without compunction until
the lock was forced. They had tried to
kidnap the girl I loved, they had tried
to lure me to an unknown fate in this
web of iniquity; I had no qualms of
conscience in thus forcing my unwel-
come way into their secrets.

On the top of the desk, in plain sight
as the cover rolled back, were two maps
and a bundle of formidable legal docu-
ments, lying there as though their owner
had been too pressed for time to deposit
them in their proper resting-places.; The
familiar and detested word, " Abyssinia,"

caught my eye and I thrust the maps
into my pocket.

Though still unexplained, I was con-
vinced that there» was some connection
between that far-off wilderness and my
own adventures ; a little documentary
evidence would do no* harm. The legal
papers were in Italian. I did not stop to
decipher them, but they too joined the
maps for safe keeping in my pocket.

Then, deliberately and systematically,
I sat down to examine the contents of
the desk. Under my hand was a scrap
of paper with a few figures on it. It
was nothing but an address, "*27 W. 11,"
but my lips whistled with satisfaction
as I looked at it. It was the address of
Mrs. Noyes ; Rocca must have written
it down on his return from that fatal
drive with me.

It was the concluding touch of proof.
Maria had not reviled me, Stephen Pa-
get, but the man she had seen in Rocca's
company. Well, that was settled; slie
would never see me there again.

I ran through the contents of. the desk,
emptying drawer after drawer, search-
ing for I knew not what. The papers
I dragged into the light were nothing to
me — mere lists of names and street num-
bers, occasionally columns of figures
that evidently represented sums of
money, documents written in an Italian
hand that it would have taken me hours
to translate and might perhaps have re-
sisted all my efforts, for the little that
I did read conveyed no meaning to my
mind and I met with strange combina-
tions o-f letters never encountered in
print.

One thing, however, encouraged me
to persist. On a separate piece of paper,
standing out clear on the white surface,
I read the words : " Pietro Bigontina —
78 Barent — X." There was nothing
else on the sheet, but somehow I gath-
ered the impression that it was of im-
portance to the oAvner of the desk.

To me it meant but one thing : The
missing boy was, or at' one time had
been, at the warehouse to which I had
driven and to which Rocca had so cor-
dially invited me for the second tune.

The paper joined the maps* and the
legal documents in my pocket as I bent
once more to my task. Then suddenly
I sprang from the disordered desk.

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

561

startled by the sudden buzzing of the
door-bell. Again it rang, and now my
straining ears caught the sound from the
hallway beyond the murmur of voices.

My visitors were impatient. For tb ;
third time the bell sounded and I smiled
grimly. They could ring through the
afternoon and they would not disturb
Victor in his muffled closet. No sleek,
deferential serving-man would bow be-
fore them as the scoundrel had bowed
before me. ,

The smile died abruptly. Who knew
what secret exits there might be to that
prison into which I had thrust Rocca
and his servant? While I was poring.
in fatuous satisfaction over his papers,
who knew what that all-powerful ser-
pent had been doing? I had been a con-
ceited fool, and if I was not quick I
might have to pay heavily for my folly.

The bell clamored more loudly than
ever as I dashed to the telephone. If
they kept that up I would have the po-
lice upon them while they were still
pressing the button with frantic energy.
My 'iand was on the receiver, but I jerked
it back. The bell had ceased to ring,
and from the hallway came a new sound
— the sound of a key being thrust into a
lock.

It flashed over me in a second. " A
friend " had secured the apartment for
Rocca ; he was the chief " and the
friend probably one of his lieutenants
whom he had ousted from his quarters.
Out of respect for his master, the friend
had been ringing; now, satisfied that
something was wrong, he was letting
himself in with his own key. md I was
caught-.

While I stood arguing with the lazy
clerk at police headquarters, they would
be upon me. Much chance I would have,
with my back turned to them, talking in-
to the impassive telephone !

It takes long to tell it; it did not take
long to think it. The key was still rat-
tling in the lock when I was back beside
the door. Twice I had saved myself
by superior speed, and it was speed on
which I would rely now.

The key turned, the door swung open,
a head was thrust cautiously forward as
though its owner hesitated to intrude
upon sacred precincts. That misplaced
reverence was a godsend. Overlooking
12 RR

me as I crouched by the side of the door,
the eyes were still searching the deserted
calm of the apartment when I struck.
My fist crunched against the head, the
head against the wooden door, and then
I charged.

How many of them there were I did
not know — I have never known. My
fists shot out again and again to land on
soft, yielding flesh. Futile, surprised
blows fell upon me in return and I was
through them — through save for one
man. In the rear of his companions
Ghedina stood, blocking my retreat. I
pitched into him headlong, and the little
man went down with me on top of him.

For such an onslaught he had been no
more prepared than the others. He
struck feebly at me, a walking-stick
clutched in his hand, but if the blow
landed it did no damage. With one
hand I caught his wrist and with the
other I struck savagely at the evil face.
The stick dropped from his hand and
clattered down the stairs as I sprang
after it, clear and free.

A few steps below me lay the cane
and I stooped to seize it as I ran. A
bullet whistled past my lowered head
and sank into the wainscoting.

On the corner a blue-clad giant raised
his hand and the hurrying traffic of the
avenue halted. For a second I gaped
at him, an unspoken cry for help trem-
bling on my lips. He was the police, he
was the law, and he spent his day in
regulating trucks and . broughams, vic-
torias and hansoms, while men were mur-
dered and women stolen ten doors from
him.

, My mouth opened, but the call did not
come. Ghedina and his . friends were
in the apartment now,* the door of the
prison open, Rocca free. To summon
the police was to involve oneself in end-
less legal technicalities — and all the
time Maria was exposed, her refuge
known and open.

CHAPTER XVII.

A New Use for a Telephone.

T^HE policeman I left to blow his
-*• whistle and wave his hand undis-
turbed. A new scheme had come to me,
startling in the vision of brilliant tri-

562

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

umph, daring, and yet too rich in possi-
bilities to be flung aside as foolhardy.

Fascinated by it, I stood for a minute
staring at the stick in my hand, my mind
leaping over the difficulties in the path
to the dazzling reward. The vision was
too bright for me to turn my back upon.

Mrs. Noyes herself answered my call
from the' nearest telephone-booth.

"Yes, .this is Stephen." I found my-
self speaking quite calmly, even slowly,
though my heart was jumping with ex-
citement. " I've found out some things,
Cousin Lucy; I'll tell you what they are
later. Now I want you to do exactly as
I say.

" Yes, yes, I know you do ; but this
is very important. Don't go out of the
house yourself, and don't let anybody
in on any pretext — no gas-men or tele-
phone-men, or anybody. Oh, it's all
right, Cousin Lucy— -don't worry. I
.can't explain over the telephone. I'm in
a hurry, anyway. . Yes, I'll see you very
soon. Good-by."

I hung up the receiver with the feeling
of one who has burned his bridges be-
hind him. That was attended to ; now
for Marshfield. His house was but a
short distance away, and I went' there as
fast as a cabman dared to drive through
crowded streets.

Dave was at home — the most unlikely
place to find a New York man in early
afternoon ; but he was a law unto him-
self, and he was there.

" I want you,"- I cried as he answered
the footman's summons in person. "Come
on."

" But I have something — "

" Cut it. There's no time to talk.
Come."

David's eye rested on my excited face
for a fraction of a second before he
reached for his hat. Deliberately he se-
lected a heavy stick from the rack while
the astonished servant held his coat. ~-

" After you," he said, as the man
opened the door, and then we were out-
side. It had taken less than ten minutes
to get David. Time was precious, but
his company was worth more than that.

" Seventy-eight Barent Street," I
called to the cabby, " and drive fast."

A shrill whistle came from Marshfield,
already seated in the cab. " What is it,
Steve? " he demanded as the driver's

whip curled over our heads and we started
on our journey.

" Rocca tried to take me there after
you left.. He didn't know that I had ever
heard of the place. When I wouldn't
come, he tried to fix me in sonie sort of
a trap he's got there. I put him in in-
stead, and got this " — I held up the
slender yellow walking-stick, with its
round silver top, curiously hammered.

" You remember, the musician said he
knew them by their sticks. This is one
of them. We'll get into the warehouse
with it. The boy Pietro is there. We'll
get him out. I'll bring him back to Ma-
ria."

The short sentences told the story
clearly enough. Marshfield's eyes light-
ed at the sheer audacity of the thing, and
his hand gripped my knee in rare ex-
citement.

" We'll do it. By Heaven, we'll do
it ! " he cried. Suddenly his grip relaxed
and a smile softened the firm ' mouth.
" ' We'll get him out. I'll bring him
back to Maria,'" he quoted. "Where
do I come in, -Paget?"

" You come in as the best friend a man
ever had," I cried. " I wouldn't ask it
of you for myself ; it's for her,- Dave —
it's for her, I tell you."

" Oh, that's all right," Marshfield
growled, with obvious embarrassment.
" Leave the sentiment until there's noth-
ing else to talk about. When we're
through with this, I'll call in state and
congratulate you both. What do you
propose to do down here? "

" Heaven knows," I answered. " It's
a big bluff, that's all. We'll go as far as
we can, .and when we're stopped we'll
wave the stick at them.""

" And then I guess we'll fight," retort-
ed Marshfield. " You ought to be good
at it by this time. You've had practise
enough."

We planned no further, for there was
nothing to plan. Truly, it was all a
bluff, and in the light of David's cool
vision another fight did seem to be all
that we would gain by it. But, as
Marshfield had said, I was used to fight-
ing with them. Hitherto I had won, and
this time I had David with me. We
would win again, if it came to that. And
there was joy in the thought that we went
to strike in Maria's cause.

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

563

David seemed to read my thoughts,
for his cool tones -broke into them as
we reached the spot where I had over-
thrown the cabman :

" Do you happen to know whether you
are a Lancelot or a Quixote? In other
words are you a hero or a fool? Oh,
don't look at me like that — I'm not half
as crazy as you are. What I mean is,
how do you know this young cub wants
to be rescued? "

" He's her brother," I gasped. This
view of the case had not presented itself
to me for a long time.

" Oh! Then you're in love with the
whole family? That's very nice."

" Confound you, what do you mean? "
I cried hotly, too jealous of my new love
to remember how ineradicable was David
Marshfield's affection for a jest. He
viewed the world through the glasses of
his humor, and it was inevitable that his
language should reflect the spectacle.

He had spoken as he would have had
we been driving to the sedatest of din-
ner-parties ; but when he saw that he had
touched me, his tone changed.

" Pardon me, Steve," he said, a wealth
of affection in the quiet words. " But
really, now, how do we know that this
Pietro isn't playing some kind of a weird
game? From all accounts, everybody
else in the party is — except his sister, of
course," he added hastily.

" That's the whole thing — except his
sister. We don't know," I went on
thoughtfully, " but we can guess. From
what we've heard, I'm sure of it. I've
heard them talk about having the boy,
and wanting the girl now. Well, the
girl doesn't want to go; why should the
boy?"

" I guess you're right. Anyway, we'll
rescue him first and talk about it after-
ward."

It was all very well to speak of the
rescue with sublime confidence in its com-
ing. To David the expedition was a
game — a more exciting game than any he
had yet played, but still a game — in which
the stakes were his life, and the prize help
to his friend, and for himself the joy of
conflict and danger.

Barent Street in the daytime was a far
different place from the deserted, rain-
swept solitude I had driven through be-
fore. Trucks jolted along with deafen-

ing clatter, the narrow sidewalks were
blocked with packing - cases and hurry-
ing men, the warehouses which had risen
silently into the night were teeming with
life and noise now — and Seventy-eight
had awakened with its neighbors.

Just what we had expected, I do not
know ; but it was certainly not this. We
had come prepared to storm a citadel of
crime, and we found ourselves in a place
devoted to prosaic business, with no busi-
ness of our own to explain our presence.

For the moment it seemed that our
journey was to end in a humiliating dis-
missal on the ground that Ave were wast-
ing the time of busy men.

The cab drew up in front of the door
from which I had seen Cagno emerge,
and we descended. A shabby individual,
armed with no more formidable weapon
than a broom, paused in his task of rais-
ing clouds of dust about his head long
enough "to ask us, in broken English, what
we wanted.

What did we want ? I looked helpless-
ly at him and was silent.

Had he halted me with a revolver, I
would have thrust the magic stick in front
of him, or risked the accuracy of his aim,
in a sudden rush. But he was nothing
more than a humble hireling, sweeping
out the hall in front of a warehouse of-
fice. I looked at his simple, stolid face,
and thrust the stick behind my back.

"What you want?" he demanded
again.

There was nothing suspicious about the
question. It .was exactly what every one
of the thousands of ignorant immigrants
in the city would have said under similar
circumstances.

Marshfield recovered himself first.

" Lemons ! " he muttered, his head
thrown back as he sniffed the heavy odor
of the place. " It's lemons."

" Eh — what? " asked the sweeper, star-
ing with dull eyes from one to the other
of us. " What do you want? "

His command of English, it seemed,
did not extend beyond that phr-ase.

" We want lemons," declared Marsh-
field, with a solemn face. " Where's the
manager of this place?"

The fellow pointed with the handle of
his broom to the dirty ground-glass of. a
door behind him, on which the letters F
and E remained to indicate that it had

5G4

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

been labeled office. Then, satisfied
that he had done all that was required of
him, he went on with his sweeping.

We pushed open the door and walked
in, imannounced.

Crouched over a desk in the corner,
an ill - favored cigar smoldering in his
mouth, was an individual in shirt-sleeves
and a gaudy waistcoat. Coarse, close-
cropped hair stood up like black stubble
on his bullet head ; a thick neck reached
down to sloping shoulders and a flabby
frame.

The only other occupant of the room
was an insignificant young man perched
on a high stool, with one enormous ledger
in front of him, another by his side, and
a vast number of papers stuck on a cluster
of spikes about him.

The man at the desk looked up at our
entrance, took the cigar from his lips,
and growled an inarticulate and surly
greeting.

In return Marshfield beamed upon
him.

" Business looks good," he said af-
fably.

" Huh ! Fair." The grunt was scarce-
ly more distinguishable than the previous
growl of welcome ; but I made out two
things from it : first, that the man had not
spoken English from his cradle ; and,
second, that missing teeth and a scarred
lip made speech of any sort difficult to
him.

"Prices pretty high?" continued
Marshfield.

" Not so very. What do you want?"

" Lemons," said David shortly. He
knocked a dirt-covered newspaper from
the broken cane seat of a disreputable
chair, pulled it close to the desk, and sat
down. "You sell them, don't you?" he
asked, as the round eyes of the man in
front of us protruded, and the sweeping
mustache bristled upward at his visitor's
assurance.

" It's no corner grocery," retorted the
fellow.

" I know it isn't." David's manner
changed abruptly. " Look here, friend,
are you in the fruit business, or are you
not? We haven't got the whole day to
waste here, you know."

" Can't you see I'm in the business?
What do you think all these trucks are
doing? "

" Well, why don't you talk business,
then? " retorted Marshfield. " I want to
buy some lemons."

" You ought to go to .the office on
Stone Street. This is only a warehouse."

There was still, to put it mildly, noth-
ing gracious about the man, but there was
at least some interest in his voice. Either
he was telling the truth, and rude merely
because a lifetime spent in wrangling
with truck-drivers does not teach cour-
tesy, or else he had decided that for the
sake of appearances he must assume some
attention to our mission.

Gradually he permitted himself to be
persuaded that he could further the in-
terests of the Continental Fruit, and Im-
port Company by listening to us, and he
and Marshfield were soon deep in a dis-
cussion of the intricacies of shipping a
car-load of lemons to Cincinnati.

Taking advantage of his superior's ab-
sorption, the young man with the ledgers
slipped down from his stool and marched
out into the courtyard on some errand of
his own. We were alone with the man-
ager— and as far from Pietro Bigontina
as when we started.

Marshfield was nearing the end of his
rope. In a minute or two more he would
either have to close the deal or reject it.
In either case he would have no further
excuse for lingering in the office ; and
where we were to go when we left was
beyond my power to perceive. The very
commonplaceness of the den was for us
the most impenetrable of barriers. Any
door, however strongly guarded, would
have been easier to pass than this dead,
blank wall of insignificance.

For a minute I was tempted to seize
the manager by his fat neck and choke
the truth out of him. But I began to
doubt if the truth was there. He looked
like the very vulgar superintendent of a
warehouse, and it was quite possible that
that was exactly what he was.

" I will think it over/' Marshfield was
saying when the telephone interrupted
him. The manager thrust his injured lips
to the instrument to growl in his indis-
tinct voice :

• "Hallo, hallo! Who is it? Why
don't you speak louder? I can't hear
you — I say. Ah, si, si. signore" Lie
was speaking Italian now, and had evi-
dently recognized the other. " No,

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

565

slgnorc, nothing out of the ordinary. It
has been qu^et. I am listening, Signor
Cagno."

He did not listen long. If it was
Cagno who was talking, I proposed to
have him' talk to me. The last word had
barely left the man's lip when my two
hands shot out, and the fingers fastened
in the soft flesh of the red thxoat. The
receiver dropped to the desk, there was a
deep gurgle, and the thing was done.

Jerking the helpless lump from the
chair, I flung him heavily on the floor.

Marshfield fell upon him before the
wretch had time to scream, and I picked
up the receiver. From the torrent of vol-
uble and profane Italian which flowed
into my ear, I gathered that Signor Cagno
was anxious to know what all the row
' was about, and why, when he condescend-
ed to talk, various kinds of pigs and
scoundrels did not listen to him.

I was very sorry. A drunken teamster
had interrupted meat a most inopportune
moment. It was annoying, but Signor
Cagno knew the cattle one had to deal
with in Barent Street. Would he be so
good as to repeat what he had been say-,
ing?

The sole reason that my voice sounded
peculiar to him was the atrocity of the
connection. Also, Signor Cagno was
aware that I had the misfortune to be
afflicted with an accident to the mouth.
If it disturbed him it was a thousand
pities, but I regretted that I knew of no
remedy.

All this I mumbled into the receiver
in a voice as much like the indistinct
rumblings of my victim as I could con-
trive to make it, while David's relent-
less knee and fingers held the manager
silent, though squirming, on the floor.
My verbose ^apologies stopped the flood
of abuse. Still angry, but somewhat re-
strained now, Cagno's words came to me:
"Let it pass this time; in future I
want more attention when I speak.
Now listen. You will tell Antonio that
the goods on the top floor are to be
shipped by the rear door at four-thirty
exactly. Do you understand?"

" I am afraid that I do not." It was
the most truthful thing that either
Marshfield or I had said since we en-
tered the precincts of the warehouse.
"What are the goods?"

A wild splutter of rage was my an-
swer. When its first violence was spent,
I heard the scoundrel's voice shrieking :

"What is it to you what they are?
Who are you to ask questions? Do as
you are told, or you will suffer for it.
You know Antonio — tell him what I say.
And, mind you, don't talk to any stran-
gers and don't listen to any fine
schemes. The man who blunders this
time will pay for it."

The receiver at the other end of the
wire was hung up. Cagno had given
his orders and was through with me..
On the floor by the desk, Marshfield put
a little more of his weight upon the
crushed form of the manager as he
looked up at me.

" Did you learn anything?" he asked.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Goods on the Top Floor.

C OMETHLNG I had learned. " The
^ goods " were on the top floor.
They could be no mere boxes of lemons ;
there was more than a fair chance that
they were the missing Pietro. Who
Antonio was as yet we had not discov-
ered, but the efficacy of the walking-
stick was- still untested.

In the meantime there was the flabby
wretch on the floor. The moment Marsha
field's grip upon him relaxed, his
screams- would bring the whole horde
about our ears like bees from an over-
turned hive. David was looking at me
inquiringly, but no inspiration came to
me from the swollen, choking face
pinned down in the dust of the office.

" Well," said my friend at last,
" what is it to be? "

" I don't know," I muttered. " We've
got to find a man named Antonio. But
what are we to do with this?" And I
pointed to the sprawling manager.

" Take him with us," suggested David
with a sudden chuckle. " We came to
buy lemons ; I. guess he's the stuff, all
right."

" He won't come," I replied a little
doubtfully, for the project was not al-
together impossible.

" We haven't asked him yet. You
will come, won't you?" Marshfield
turned back to his captive with a tight-

566

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

ening of his fingers and a fierce snarl
that boded no good to the unfortunate
rascal. David could act as well as joke.

No answer was ever given to his cor-
dial invitation. Before the manager
could do more than gasp and sputter,
the office-door opened and the young
clerk entered. He was well on his un-
obtrusive way toward his place in front
of the ledgers before he noticed anything
unusual about the dreary den. Then he
fell against the high desk, his thin face
a dead white, his hands spread out as
though to ward off a blow.

" Great Heavens ! " he gasped.
" Great Heavens! "

I blocked him as he sprang in tardy
panic for the door.

" You keep still," I ordered sharply,
" or it will be the worse for you."

It was no fighter whom I faced down
so easily. Long hours of weary drudg-
ery on a high stool had not reddened
his blood or steeled his nerves. I was
a more powerful man than he, and the
knowledge of it was to be read clearly
in the panic-stricken eye fastened on me.
For a moment I menaced him in si-
lence, and then sheer, childish fright
forced him to cry out :

" What is it? We haven't any money."

" Shut up. We don't want your
money. We're the police."

It was a happy inspiration born of
the boy's terror. If he continued to
think he was about to be murdered, he
might take it into his head to indulge
in a death-scream that would ruin,
everything. If he imagined it was the
hand of the law that held him, he
would, I hoped, seek refuge in abject
obedience.

But the effect was greater than I had
anticipated. With a gasp of dismay,, he
shrank away from me, his lips twitching.

" The police ! " he moaned. " I
knew it. I said there was something
queer about the place. But I haven't
done anything." His voice rose in shrill
protest. " I haven't done anything, I
tell you. I'm only a clerk here. I don't
know anything about them. It's no
crime to make a living. What could I
do? Where—"

" You shut up." My savage order
checked the loud, quavering appeals
which threatened to pierce the grimy

windows' of the offices and penetrate into
the turmoil of the court. " Nobody's
going to hurt you — not yet, that is. Do
you know who Antonio is ? '.'

" There's a man named Antonio up-
stairs. But I don't know, I say. I'm
only the shipping-clerk. I haven't — "

"How do you get up?" Marshfield
interrupted curtly from his post on the
prostrate manager.

" There's a freight-elevator behind
there. They never let me go up. I — "

" Give me that cord, Steve."

With a nod of his head, David indi-
cated some heavy twine under the desk.
Then, whipping out his handkerchief, he
jammed it into his victim's mouth, rolled
the miserable wretch over on his back,
and tied his hands with the cord I hand-
ed to him.

" Now " — he rose with a sigh of re-
lief— " now he'll stay quiet for a while.
In the meantime, we can go up-stairs."

Instinctively I started toward the
door, to be stopped by a new thought.

" What are we going to do with
him? " I asked, pointing to the terrified
youth by the desk.

" Use him," retorted Marshfield swift-
ly. " Look here, you ! " He strode over
to the boy like the personification of
avenging justice. " You say you don't
know anything about this business?
That's a pretty fishy story. Do you want
to spend the night in the police sta-
tion?"

. A shudder passed over the clerk's
slight frame, and his chin twitched. As
the pitiful figure rises before my eyes
again, I am convinced that he was be-
deviled with the horror of scandal and
disgrace rather than by actual physical
fear of what Marshfield or I might do
to him.

Quite likely he had a family skilled
in the art of arranging unpleasant do-
mestic scenes ; possibly he fancied him-
self in love, and was appalled at the
thought of the intervention of the police
in his suit. At any rate, I have never
been able to persuade myself that he had
any guilty knowledge of the secrets of
the warehouse, and I know that he was
as clay in Marshfield's rough hands.

"You don't care about it, eh?"
David glared at him with a protruding
jaw and a frown that would have done

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

561

credit to his father's sternest .moments.
" Well, we'll give yon a chance. If
you make good, you may square yourself
yet. You stay here. Don't you let any-
body in. Tell them the boss is out. If
the boss moves, kick him till he keeps
quiet. Come, Steve."

With a farewell scowl, David turned
on his heel. The office-door closed upon
us, and we were in the hallways once
more. The sweeper and his rubbish had
advanced into the court ; the road lay
open.

Far back in the freight-strewn, dimly
lighted recesses of the warehouse we
found the elevator. A stolid, surly por-
ter, lounging against a packing-case,
looked at us in some surprise as we burst
in upon his leisurely pipe, but he fol-
lowed us into the heavy car, and started
the machinery without objection.

Past two floors we went in silence.
At the third he stretched out his hand
and stopped the car without vouchsafing
any explanation. A glance upward into
the gloomy tunnel of the shaft showed
that we had not reached the top.

" Go on," cried Marshfield. " What
are you stopping here for?"

The porter simply pointed at the
empty floor in front of us.

" Go on," ordered Marshfield, more
peremptorily this time. "We want to
go to the top."

" No go more."

It was as though a statue had spoken.
No change came over the wooden face
in front of us ; there was no expression
in his voice. * The man merely stood and
pointed as if there were no question
but that we must go.

" You take — " David tpok an angry
step toward the fellow, and the sentence
died on his lips. The wooden statue
had sprung into life. From the corner
of the car, half crouched like 'a beast
about to spring, he glared at us, and in
his hand was a long knife.

"The deuce!" Marshfield measured
the distance with the trained eye of the
boxer and stopped. His fist could not
reach the man, and fists against knives
was poor business at best. What he
would have done I do not know — David
was no lover of diplomatic retreats —
for while the two faced each other, I
stepped forward.

"Do you see that?" I cried in Ital-
ian, thrusting Ghedina's stick almost
into the man's face. " Do you see that,
imbecile? Take us to Antonio."

The porter stared at the hammered
silver head of the cane, and the knife
dropped to his side. It would have been
an easy matter for us to have rushed
him then, in the first moment of his sur-
prise ; and David, I know, was sorely
tempted. Luckily, he stood motionless;
the stick was more powerful than our
fists.

From the cane the man raised his eyes
to me. " I do not know," he muttered
stupidly. " I do not know."

" Of course you don't know. Who
are you to know? Pig, are we to stand'
talking to you? Take us to Antonio."

I had heard Cagno talk too recently
not to have caught something of his
manner, and there was no ingratiating
politeness in my speech. If abuse was
the diet these men were accustomed to,
my Italian vocabulary was extensive
enough to give it to them.

My method was successful. With a
rough growl of apology, the porter
reached past Marshfield's grim face and
grasped the ropes of the freight-ele-
vator. " I never saw the signore," he
muttered as the car started upward. " I
had my orders^"

"The car stopped at the next landing,
and he stepped out on the top floor of
the warehouse. In tense excitement,
Marshfield and I followed him, only to
choke back our disappointment. There
was nothing here. Under the sloping
walls of the roof a few cases were re-,
vealed in the dim rays from a dirt-en-
crusted skylight above ; in the wall, over-
looking the yard, a wooden door closed
a large opening which had been cut for
the admission of such wares as did not
come, as we had, by the elevator.

A few paces along the floor our guide
stopped to whistle shrilly. In the shad-
ows beyond him we heard a door open,
and the figure of a man advanced toward
us. He exchanged a word or two in an
undertone with the porter, and then the
two of them turned back to where we
stood by the elevator.

" Antonio, signore," was the brief in-
troduction.

The newcomer peered at us under

568

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

heavy brows, a squarely built, stocky
figure of a man whose strength lost noth-
ing by being only indistinctly suggested
in the scanty light. We studied each
other for a second before I spoke in cold
command :

" You are to ship the goods at once
by the rear way. We will go with
them."

"Who are you,- signore? " The
man's tone was respectful, but as firm
as mine.

" That is nothing to you. You see
this." I raised the wizard's wand I had
won from Ghedina.

" Si, signore, but the orders were to '
'come from Signor Cagno."

" There are others higher than Signor
Cagno. We have changed our minds.
Come, you have your orders — "

With Marshfield by my side, I stepped
with an assurance that it was difficult to
feel, past the man and down toward the
door from which he had emerged. My
back was cold in anticipation of the
knife-thrust I more than half-expected,
but it did not come ; only a few hurried,
whispered sentences, and then :

" It is right. There was no warning
from the office, and I was told to be
ready."

Antonio slipped past us to fling open
a door in our path as the elevator
creaked its way down to the bottom floor.
Before us was a small room furnished
with a range, some kitchen utensils, and
a cot-bed. Another door led from it,
and at this Antonio paused.

" Will the signore see him, or shall I
prepare him to leave?" he asked.

" We will see him." And without
further ado, I pushed open the door
Antonio unlocked and walked in.

,It was the prison of Pietro Bigontina.
No second glance was needed to tell us
that -we had reached our goal at last.
The slender boy of eighteen whp turned
from the window at our entrance to face
us with dark eyes gleaming ~f rom a pale
and suffering face, was Maria's brother.
There were the same clear-cut features,
the same sensitive mouth,' the same
rounded chin, only — Well, what is
delicacy in a girl may be weakness in a
boy, and Pietro Bigontina, unaided, was
hardly the man to fight his way clear of
such enemies as his.

There was a frightened defiance in his
eyes as he faced us that went to our
hearts, but neither David nor I dared to
reassure him, We must play our parts
a minute or two longer ; if we played
them well, we could afford to indulge
in sympathy hereafter.

" You must come with us," I ordered,
" and at once."

" I will not 1 " The boy's voice was
shrill with hate and helplessness. " I
will not."

" Eh ! " It was more like the growl
of a bulldog than the mild voice of
David Marshfield, and involuntarily I
jumped as I heard it. Justly doubtful
of his Italian, David had refrained from
speech after his unsatisfactory ^-inter-
view in English with the porter in the
elevator. Now, with the wonderful per-
ception that was like a sixth sense with
him, he took from my shoulders the bur-
den of bullying the brother of the girl I
loved.

"Eh!" The word might have been
Italian or English or ancient Sanskrit.
Flung at him with all the browbreating
violence that had" made the elder Marsh-
field wealthy, it came to the wretched
Pietro like the signal of his doom. The
captive wilted as the clerk had wilted ;
what was more important, the last trace
of suspicion vanished from the jail-
er's brutal face as he watched. But
Marshfield Avas, after all, only a dumb
terror and I was forced to the front
again.

" The rear way, Antonio — show it
to us."

" Si; signore, but do you care for
this?" He stepped back into the
kitchen to emerge in a second with" a
small bottle and a napkin. " It keeps
them quiet," he remarked with an evil
grin.

It might ; certainly the sight of it did
not. A cry broke from the boy's lips,
and he leaped into the corner of the
little room, as far as he could get from
the abomination. Sick with the knowl-
edge of what it all meant, unnerved by
the horror of that scream, I yet had
presence of mind enough to turn upon
him with an oath :

" None of that. Silence ! Put that
down, Antonio ; he will come quietly
without it. Show us the way."

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

5G9

As docile now as though I had been
Rocca himself, the ruffian restored the
drug to its resting-place, taking up, in-
stead, a slouch - hat. This he jammed
on the boy's head, pulling it low- over
the twitching face. Then we were ready
to leave the den of iniquity.

The. rear way, it appeared, was a
spiral iron staircase, winding down
through the gloom of the warehouse, and
closed on the top floor by an iron door,
which Antonio unlocked with one of a
bundle of keys he drew from his pocket.
I had already begun the descent, and
Marshfield wasjnishing Pietro after me,
when a sudden noise checked us ab-
ruptly.

It was the warning whistle which had
produced Antonio for our benefit a min-
ute or two before. Through the echoes
which broke the dusty silence of ' the
isolated floor we heard the creaking of
the elevator close at hand.

David reached out a powerful hand
and grasped the jailer by the wrist that
held the keys. " Come," he ordered in
gruff Italian, -and pointed down the
winding stair. Antonio's feet braced
like the legs of a stubborn donkey as
he stood in the little doorway, his head
turned to listen.

In the stillness there rang out. the
shrill voice of Ghedina: "Care, An-
tonio ; care ! "

Marshfield' s hand was already upon
the Italian's wrist. At the first word
he bent it viciously backward, and a
howl of pain mingled with the last of
Ghedina's warning cry. A twist of his
foot and a thrust of his arm completed
the work, and I heard him shout :

" Run for it, Steve! "

The slight weight of Pietro fell
against me as Marshfield shoved him
down the stairs, and then I ran. Be-
hind me I heard the panting of our res-
cued prisoner, the heavy steps of my
friend, and a chaos of shouts and curses.
The stairs seemed interminable as I
leaped on through the gloom till my
head was dizzy with the sharp turning
and the dark world swimming about me.

I came to the bottom at last — and
the bottom was a locked door. For a
moment I beat upon it with my naked
hands, the hot breath of Pietro upon

(To be co

my neck ; then I was thrust aside, and
David's voice, hoarse with his running,
' came to me :

"Where the deuce is the thing?
Ah ! "

A flood of sunlight burst upon us as
he flung open the door. Scarcely ten
feet away, waiting in a narrow alley,
was a closed carriage, and behind us,
as I glanced back, I saw the shadow of
the foremost of our pursuers.

With a cry, Pietro sprang out into
the daylight. David's hand closed upon
his collar in a second, but I saw no
more. Jerking the keys from the lock
into which Marshfield had thrust them,
I slammed the solid door in the face of
the ruffian who was almost on me, held
it with my weight for a second, and
heard the bolt snap into place as I
turned the key on the outside.

" West Eleventh Street," I ordered,
and the words reached the driver above
the thud of men throwing themselves
against the locked door. " West Elev-
enth Street," 1 cried again, for the
coachman was motionless in surprise.
" Can't you see there is no time to
waste? "

Apparently he saw, for the door had
not yet closed after me when the car-
riage dashed out of the alley and was
speeding northward. Marshfield's hands
left the boy and rose to mop the per-
spiration from his streaming face.

" Infernally lucky I got those keys,"
he panted. " How about it, Bigontina?
You understand English, eh?"

Pietro's big eyes fastened themselves
on the face of his new captor.

"A little," he gasped. "You are not
one of them."

" Not by a darned sight ! " David's
laugh of sheer triumph seemed to blow
from us the last clouds of danger. "You
tell him about it, Steve. It's your turn
now. I told you the sentiment would
come after the fighting."

He was wrong there. To my first
hurried sentences of explanation the boy
listened in vague bewilderment, but to
no more. "She is safe; I am free," he
repeated over and over in absolute ex-
haustion until, out of pity, I desisted.
He was free, but, as we were soon to
learn, Maria was not safe.
n tinned.)

The Railroad Man's
Brain Teasers.

Here Are Three Hard Nuts to Crack During the Cold

Winter Nights, Boys, and, Perhaps, You Can Send

Us Some That Are Equally as Good.

HEN we closed the puzzle department some
months ago we feared that the puzzle
ground was pretty well worked over. We
are still waiting to find out whether this
is true or not, and hoping it is not. In
the meantime, we are indebted to Mr. A. K. Sedson, of
North Pomfret, Vermont, for the two that follow :

( i ) When in action, which moves fastest, the top or
the bottom of a' locomotive's drive-wheels?

(2) Two trains of equal tonnage and an equal capacity
for starting eighty loaded cars, and not one pound more,
are connected, tender to tender, by means of a link capable
of sustaining the strain of starting eighty cars, and not one
pound more. The engines are started at full capacity in
opposite directions. Will the link stand the strain?

Of a similar nature to the first of these puzzles is one
forwarded by Mr. H. F. Brown, of Chattanooga, Tennessee :
Given a spot in the rim of a five-foot driving-wheel
touching the rail at each revolution, how far will the spot
travel while the locomotive is traveling one hundred miles?
We await solutions from our mathematically inclined
readers.

570

ON THE EDITORIAL CARPET.

Well, Here's Looking at You, Boys ! And Wishing
You a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

A HAPPY NEW YEAR.

NEXT month is the time of resolu-
tions, new leaves, and good inten-
tions. It is the time when we send our
consciences to the shop for an overhauling
— and usually we find that they have been
drawing a load twice as high as their ra-
ting, that the cylinders need packing, that
the tubes are leaking, that the bell is
cracked, the headlight smoky, and the draw-
bar so confoundedly strained that nothing
but a New Year has saved us from being
ditched on a down grade. 9

And then the remarkable thing is the
comfortable amount of credit we take to.
ourselves for sending this leaky old tea-
kettle of a conscience to be jacked up and
repaired.

Just because it hasn't actually blown up
or smashed a side-rod and sent us under a
tombstone, we patronize it like a poor re-
lation, and think how good we are to take
a look at it at all.

It will, of course, be clearly understood
that we are not now speaking of the edi-
torial conscience. That is the one infat-
lible, well-oiled, high-pressure piece of
machinery that always behaves itself be-
cause it is constantly attended to.

When we don't^ attend to it ourselves
our readers do it for us, and when our
readers set the sand running you bet the
editorial conscience gets such . a grip on
the rails that it's a wonder the track
doesn't curl up behind us.

For us, New Year comes every month,
and we believe- that the good intentions
announced monthly in this department are
usually lived up to, judging from the letters
we get from our friends.

The headline of this item has probably
led you to believe that we are going to
wish you a Happy New Year, so, having
got off our little reminder of good resolu-
tions and consciences, we will proceed not
only to wish for you, but promise to do
our best to insure for you, A HAPPY
NEW YEAR.

We could, if we would, tell you of many
good things for the New Year, but we

like to be conservative in our promises
and liberal in our gifts.

Still, we would just like, to assure you
that there isn't going to be any need for
a pusher on even the steepest grade. We
are going to climb them all at the same
speed we have kept up from the first.

We've got a tender full of anthracite
and water, and we are not on any short
allowance of oil, so we don't hesitate to
say that we can give you as smooth a
run as you can desire.

True, we very rarely use the brake, but
we are always under control, nevertheless,
•and the reason we never set the brakes is
that we have a clear track and no cross-
ings.

.Perhaps it strikes you that we are a
little early with our New Year wishes, as
we have not yet wished you a Merry Christ-
mas.

Right in front of this are 186 pages, wish-
ing you that in every line, and following it
are 2,204 pages that are waiting around the
corner to carry out the sentiment that heads
this item.

Take, for instance, the January number,
which led us to think of the New Year. In
that number " The Spider of Palermo "
draws to a thrilling climax, which should
not be missed by any reader.

We don't remember that we ever had a
story that made a better finish at the end
of a long run than this one. She's just
as strong and fresh, hot at the boiler and
cool at the bearings as she has been
throughout, and it seems a shame to send
her to the roundhouse.

Mr. Stone's heroes and heroine in " The
Daughter of the Idol " continue to have a
sirenuous time of it, while " The Treasure
of the World " and " The Dam-Builders "
have absolutely no high joints and low cen-
ters.

In the way of short stories, we have a
screamingly funny yarn by our new friend
E. Florence, who has delighted us with his
pleasing impossibilities, in the November
number and in the present issue. It is en-
titled, "What Did Dugan Do to Him?" A
story called " The Disappearing Diamonds "

572

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

will also catch your funny streak, as will
"The Telegraphic Twins." Then there is
another yarn which is as funny as a fire-
man in a uniform. It is by a new writer,
F. H. Richardson.

Other stories of a more serious nature

will be along to keep "the risible journals

' cool, and they, are just as valuable to us

in helping us push our pilot over the ties

at full speed.

In the line of specials we have a true
story about a race with the Sunset Limited.
If we are not mistaken you will feel the
throttle lever in the palm of one hand
and the brake, lever in the palm of the
other, and you'll see the ties skipping
underneath you and being swallowed by
the train all the time you are reading this
story.

Mr. Herr will continue to tell, of his ex-
periences while "Being a Boomer Brake-
man," and Mr. Smith and Mr. Willets need
neither introduction nor explanation here.

Another hummer we shall probably run
is a true story of how a flyer made up lost
time. We should like to tell you more
about this story, but after thinking of " The
Race with the Sunset Limited," we are diz-
zy, and dare not risk our editorial dignity
by taking them both together.

Altogether we have done our level best
to give you a bright fire and a clear track
on the run for A HAPPY NEW YEAR.

The 1910 is ready to take the main line.

TWO NEW POETS.

WITH more than usual pride we intro-
duce to our readers, through this
month's Carpe't, two new poets — singers of
the rail who know whereof they sing. None
of your hifalutin Kiplingese, but just
the plain, simple song of the man who has
lived the part. The first is James A.
Crowell, Atlanta, Georgia. His verse is
dedicated to the knight of the key, whom
we all familiarly know as a " ham."

OH, YOU HAM!

Out in a lonely office,

Before the break of day,
A ham lay snoozing gently,

A getting good old hay;
He lay upon the table,

As just as good as dead,
For he never heard a single word

The clicking sounders said.

Chorus.

He was in a better land —
A land all clear and bright,

And there he had a day job,
For they didn't have no night ;

Only one train ran a day,

His pay was but a gift,
For this here solitary train

Ran on the other shift.

The despatcher he was- swearing —

As all despatchers do —
For Nurqber Nine was waiting

For the block to go on through.
The ham he kept on snoring,

His job he couldn't shirk —
For he was in that sunny land

Where he didn't have to work.

X^horus.

Hark ! Number Nine is whistling !

She wants to go on by !
She has ten cars of perishable

And fourteen cars of rye.
The ham awoke and looked around,

And spied the waiting train,
Just then he heard the sounder:

" You are discharged again."

Chorus.

THE second poet is Roy L. Nichols, of
the Oregon Railroad and Navigation
Company. His, like Mr. Crowell's, was
evidently inspired by that wanderlust classic,
" The Dying Hobo."" Mr. Nichols modestly
informs us that this is his first and last ef-
fort as a fall poet, but that he may write an-
other next spring. We -like to encourage ge-
nius when it swings onto our right-of-way,
and if any poems by Mr. Nichols comes our
way next grass, we will certainly put the
arm against them. Here is Mr. Nichols's
poem:

TWENTY YEARS AGO.

Beside a Western water-tank,

One cold November day,
Outside an empty pigpen-car,

A drunken hobo lay;
No pardner stood beside him.

But he heard a warrant read,
And listening to all the words,

The drunken hobo said :

" Marshal, please go and let me sleep,

For I'm now feeling right ;
I have been trying for so long,

And now I'm good and tight.
Tell your chief and policemen many,

When they meet to ' look around,'
That you found me 'on the level' —

I was lying on the ground.

" I want to dream of sweethearts many —

And one whose face no more I'll view,
For I left her out in Denver,

And I'm glad that I came through ;
I know she'll not weep for me,

Nor sob with drooping head,
For I was aye a truant bird

While by others she was fed.

" I used to call her sweetheart,

She was such a buxom kid,
She had eyes just like a Sappho,

And she'd never bat a lid :

ON THE EDITORIAL CARPET.

573

Her form was sylphlike — ways confiding,
Face like artists love to paint —

Just one more drink, bartender,
For I think I'm going to faint.

" Ah ! the memory of that female,

With her face so good and true ;
What, you think that I am nutty

That I made the grand skidoo?
Well, you see, pard, it was this way —

I haven't always been a bo,
All this happened back in Denver,

And 'twas twenty years ago."

FROM A REAL OLD-TIMER.

Editor The Railroad Man's Magazine :

I SEE by your Light of the Lantern De-
partment that good, bad, and indifferent
men are out for records. Good, bad, or indif-
ferent, I think that I have a record myself.
I have worked. I am sixty years of age
and have worked on twenty-six different rail-
roads, not counting four plantation roads.
I began by braking on the Northern Central
out of Baltimore in 1869. I am now road-
master of the Ferrocarril Central Domini-
cano. I have had a varied experience.

During all this time and hard work, I
have found time to marry and raise a fam-
ily. Can any one beat it? I am one of
the real old-time railroad men of the West,
and have seen more ups and downs than
usually fall to the lot of even a railroad
man. Still, I find young men who have never
seen anything but a ballast switch, who try
to tell me what a railroad man's work is.

Sich is life.

I am a subscriber to The Railroad Man's
Magazine since the first number, and I
think that it is all to the good. No blind
sidings about it.

While Mr. Willets was writing about the
railroads of the Southwest, I could follow
him right along, and I was a participant in
some of the shindigs that he described.

Incidentally, if any one else writes and
says that " Billy the Kid " was killed in San-
ta Fe, or that he flourished in 1887, they are
in error. " Billy the Kid " was killed by
Pat Garrett near Fort Sumner, New Mexico,
in the year 1881. I was there.
Yours truly,

William G. King,
Roadmaster, F. C. D., Puerto Plata, Do-
minican Republic.

SAME TIME, BUT LESS EFFORT.

THE general manager of The Coal Trade
Journal, Mr. Fred W. Saward, has
sent us, with his compliments, several very
interesting matters of railway importance
for which he has our sincere thanks, and
which we will be pleased to publish. In

his letter to us he has the following to
say regarding the Salt Lake project of the
late E. H. Harriman. We believe it to be
of special interest to all our readers because
Mr. Saward is a man who knows whereof
he writes :

The general idea of railroad improve-
ments is the quickening of time, but it would
appear that the Central Pacific reconstruc-
tion across Great Salt Lake had equally in
mind the doing of the same amount of work
as before, in the same time, but with less
effort. For instance, a comparison of old
and new time-tables will show that train
No. 3 saves one hour and fifty-five minutes
by crossing Great Salt Lake, but it only
saves twelve minutes in the through run to
San Francisco, showing that it loses one
hour and forty-three minutes on the far end
of the line.

Train No. S saves an hour by crossing the
lake direct, but loses one hour and three
minutes on the far end of the route, so that
the net result is a loss of three minutes.

Train No. 1 has really been quickened to
some extent. It gains two hours and fifteen
minutes by- crossing the lake, and also gains
thirty-two minutes at the far end of the trip,
so that the total saving is two hours and
forty-seven minutes. If I am not mistaken,
however, the connecting train leaves Chi-
cago at the same time now as for many
years past, 6 p.m., so that any saving west
of Ogden is used up in the section east of
Ogden.

In view of the discussion of Harriman
methods from many. standpoints, it seems to
me that this phase of the matter may possess
some interest to the practical men among
your readers. By making the requirements
of a certain task easier, a financial saving is
secured, and thus the company is compen-
sated for the heavy expenditure of such a
work as the Great Salt Lake bridge and em-
bankment undertaking.

OUR SILENT HEROES.

ROBERT H. ROGERS'S article, " Silent
Heroes of the Rail," in our October
number, created more than the usual amount
of notice. We wish that we had the space
to publish all the letters relating to it that
have come to the Carpet. Whenever an
article creates a controversy like unto the
much-mooted question, " When to Jump ? "
or the Cook-Peary North Pole affair, we
feel pretty good about it. It would be a sad
old world if there weren't two sides to every
question.

Editor The Railroad Man's Magazine :

Apropos of " Silent Heroes of the Rail,"
I for one give very little credit to a hero
who would go out on a run when he knew

574

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

his mother was a corpse, and that the fore-
man had held the letter so notifying him two
days.

What he should have done was to knock
the foreman's block off for asking him to
go, after delaying the letter as he did. By
so doing he could have ascertained to a
minute just exactly how long it would have
taken them to get another fireman to fill his
place, and how much the noble company
appreciated him. I think he was afraid of
losing his job.

As to the fireman who fired on the funeral
train, he was a pin-head for standing in
front of the leaky throttle, and his engineer
was a bigger one for asking him to do so.
Mr. Patrick Collins was as dead as he'd ever
be; and had the packing all let go suddenly
and cooked his eyes out, the company would
have put him in the scrap, and if he'd had
one eye left they would have given him a
crossing job at about twenty per.

I am favorable to giving credit where due,
but I am satisfied that very few railroad men
approve of that type of heroism.

A Hoghead.

Editor The Railroad Man's Magazine :

AS I have been a reader of your maga-
zine for something over a year, I feel
safe in saying a word in its favor, and an-
other reason is because I seldom see any
correspondence from the Lone Star State.

In the October number, 1909, I notice a
little talk by Mr. Robert H. Rogers, " Silent
Heroes of the Rail."

Well, in my opinion (which doesn't count
much) Mr. Rogers is not very well ac-
quainted with hogheads. As a fireman,
brakeman, and operator, I believe I can tell
him a few strange tales.

He speaks of Engineer E. T. Parlett,
who cut off a couple of fingers, threw them
out of the cab-window, and kept " pounding
them." Also, of Mr. Daniel Smith, who, with
a broken arm, kept 'em " batting," which re-
minds me of an engineer who came limping
into my office one night when I was doing
the owl in Louisiana, and wanted to know
where the engineer of a work-engine that
was tied up on the passing track slept.

I gave'- him necessary directions and he
limped out.

The tallow-pot, whom I knew very well,
came in and told me the story.

They were rolling along at about thirty
per, on an Extra North, when Mr. Engineer
spies a switch-light on the curve, " big
holes " her and unloads right in a cattle
guard and lets the fireman take care of her.
He had knocked the skin off himself in a
place or two, also bunged his ankle up and
wanted to get the engineer on the work-
train to run his engine and let him rest in
the little red dog-house behind.

There are some brave ones and some aw-
ful big cowards among the engineers.

I guess this is enough knocking, so will
speak a good word. I think your magazine
the best on the market, and am always glad
to see it shown up on the news-stands. May

it live long and continue to prosper. Let's
hear some more from Spike Makme.

G. E. Carey.
Silsbee, Texas.

FOUND IN A JUMPER.

TO H. W, Claiborne, South Bend, In-
diana, we send sincere thanks for an-
other old railroad epic, " The Night That
Kearney Died," to which we gladly give
space. Mr. Claiborne found it in the pocket'
of an old jumper of a relative who had
been an engineer on the Texas and Pacific
for fourteen years. Here goes :

THE NIGHT THAT KEARNEY DIED

The wind was howling wildly
Through the hand-rails on the side,

And the fireman stoked in silent, e
On the night that Kearney died.

The headlight shone through whirling flakes,

On snow-banks deep and wide,
And the whistle's shriek was muffled

On the night that Kearney died.

We could see the snow acoming
As we went through Key's Divide,

But we couldn't see the broken rail
On the night that Kearney died.

Kearney drove old Number Eight —

The heaviest, and his pride —
But the broken rail it killed her

On the night that Kearney died.

Kearney threw his sand and air-brakes,
But her weight still made us slide,

So we uncoupled big old Number Eight —
On the night that Kearney died.

The coaches landed safely, but

Old Eight lay on her side ;
She'd filled the gap and saved a wreck — '

On the night that Kearney died.

They told his blood-relations,

And his newly married bride,
How he left us like a hero —

On the night that Kearney died.

"VERY ENGLISH" QUESTIONS.

WE have just received a very welcome
letter from an English friend who
signs himself " Very English." With it he
encloses a newspaper clipping showing the
splendid record of the English railroads in
the matter of accidents to passengers dur-
ing the year 1908. This record of no pas-
sengers killed fires his patriotic zeal, and
when patriotic zeal is fired the usual result
is an endeavor to make ashes of everybody
else's patriotic pride.

ON THE EDITORIAL CARPET.

575

We could not hope to give our readers
an idea of how " Very English " this letter
is, nor how hot and consuming is the
patriotic zeal, without reproducing it word
for word, so here it is. He begins by call-
ing us " Gentlemen," a concession which we
never claimed, but for which we are duly
grateful. Then, after granting so much for
the sake of argument, he gets after us.

What is the ratio per thousand of rail-
road travelers in the States who get killed
or maimed by accident? I enclose a clip-
ping on this subject about the English rail-
roads, which speaks for itself. When freight
has arrived at its destination do any of your
railroads deliver it to consignees, at their
store or house? In English we would say,
" Do the railroads ' cart ' their freight to the
consignee"; you can turn this into. Ameri-
can for yourself. Why do not your trains
whistle when leaving a station or depot? In
England, when a train is due to leave a sta-
tion, the " guard " first looks at his watch,
then compares it with the station clock.
Next he waves a flag, by day, or a lantern
by .night, to the driver; then the driver
whistles to the guard, who is busy slamming
•the open doors of the carriages, and finally
dives into his " van " as it passes. In Eng-
land the starting of a train is a' serious
performance, and should you be in the
vacinity (?) you could not help but know
that it has started. Why Railroad Man's
Magazine? Should it be "Man's" or
" Mans' ? "

Yours, etc.,

"Very English."

The date is 12-9-09 ! Why should you put
it 9-12-09?

We fear that " Very English " is not seek-
ing information. We fear that his notes
of interrogation, as well as his notes of ex-
clamation really represent that sound which
caused Peter to go out and weep bitterly.
In short, we fear he is crowing over us.

But who could be offended at such inno-
cent crowing, in which boyish enthusiasm
struggles nobly with some facts, nobly ig-
nores other facts, and nobly mutilates
others upon the altar of- patriotism? Not
we, in sooth !

In the first place we have an unbounded
admiration for English railroads ; or rather,
as our friend Very fails to point put, " rail-
ways," an admiration which nearly twenty
years' experience of them failed to extin-
guish. Their record is a thing we cannot
be led into disputing, but, Very, if you will
permit the affectionate abbreviation, is there
not some difference between 26,000 miles of
railroad and 130,000 miles of railroad?

Of course we have not the passenger con-
gestion to deal with that the English rail-
ways have, but neither have they the
difficulty of laying perfect roadbeds, with

perfect signal devices over thousands of
miles of practically unpopulated, non-
revenue-producing country, some of which
was not even explored until the railroad
surveyor pushed his way through its sealed
silences. "Neither have the English rail-
ways the difficult problem of maintaining
discipline and obedience to rules through
an army of over 1,500,000 men scattered
oyer an area of over 3,000,000 square miles.

" In English we would say, ' Do the rail-
roads cart their freight?'" Very, this is
awful, really! You know you wouldn't say
any such thing. You would say, " Do the
raihvays cart their goods?" No, Very, they
do not. In the first place we have excellent
and cheap express service, and, in the sec-
ond place, as our freight-rates are little
over half, and in some cases one-third those
of our British brothers, we feel that this
system of collection and delivery is a form
of extortion which our railroads have done
nobly to resist,

The chief reason that our trains do not
whistle when they leave a station is that
they ring a bell instead, as Very would
doubtless know if he had ever been in an
American station long enough to take a
good look around. It may not be as posi-
tive, but anybody who has stood by an Eng-
lish locomotive, thinking dreamily of better
days to come, and has been brought back
to the present by the announcement, per
siren, that the engine was about to start,
will agree with us that the bell is easier on
the nerves. Frankly, Very, we do .not ad-
mire your whistles.

The elaborate method of keeping an Eng-
lish train-crew awake long enough for the
train to get out of the station is excel-
lent. We have often made special trips to
the station to watch it, and we are fully
convinced, not only that it is an effective
method, but that it is the only effective
method. We have watched, with palpita-
ting heart, the guard make that " dive " into
the van, and, honestly, it is the most won-
derful and thrilling thing we know.

The guard is always very stout, he is
always extremely flat-footed, and extremely
knock-kneed. We do not mention these
facts in disparagement, but merely to ac-
centuate the glo,ry of his feat. It is spec-
tacular. Truly, if by nothing else, " you
could not help but know that the train has
started."

" Why," asks Very, " Why Railroad
Man's Magazine? Should it be Man's or
Mans' ? " Very, wc fear you are hopeless,
and we are sorry to say it, because we like
you. We had previously noticed in your
letter the curious indifference which all
Englishmen seem to feel toward the Eng-

576

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

lish language, but we fear that under a
question Kke this you should have signed
•' Very Bad English."

Let us explain. " Man " is a singular
noun, the plural of which is " Men," not
" Mans." A noun not ending in " s," in the
possessive case is indicated by an apos-
trophe and an " s," not by an " s," and an
apostrophe.

As for " Why 9-12-09? ", Very, we do
not know. We are afraid that question is
not our gage, so it will have to stand on the
blind siding along with the historic ques-
tion, " Why eat ice-cream with a fork?"

&
OUR REGRETS TO CANADA.

UNWITTINGLY we ruffled the feelings
of " Canadian " by allowing an appar-
ently slighting remark on Canadian money
in Mr. Roach's article on " Fighting the
Ticket Scalpers " in the October number. In
coupling Canadian money with Mexican and
Confederate money we beg to assure " Ca-
nadian " that no slight was intended.

We merely had in mind the inconvenience
of changing it into United States currency in
towns not on the border, and the small fee
charged by the banks for making the ex-
change. We would not for a moment cast
a slight on the financial responsibility of any
part of that wonderful empire whose chief
jewel is our northern neighbor and friend.'

THE PAY OF ENGINEERS.

Editor The Railroad Man's Magazine:

I am an interested reader of your maga-
zine, and notice" you are constantly being
questioned as to the rate of wages paid en-
gineers in this country.

In your answer to G. D., Montreal,
Quebec, that the highest pay you know of
any engineer receiving was $17945- I wish
to "state that when business is good freight
men in chain-gang service make $200 and
over a month.

We have a five-car passenger run that
leaves Rincon, New Mexico, at 7.20 a.m.,
arrives in Silver City at 12.15 p.m.; and
leaves Silver City at 4.30 p.m., arriving in
Rincon at 8.55 p.m. The man on this run
is home every night and draws $255 for a
thirty-day month if he works every trip.

There are three crews on the Belen cut-
off, between Albuquerque and Clovis. New
Mexico, and each engineer draws $220 a
month and only works twenty days, so they
have every third day at home.

At the rate of $4.80 and $5.10 per hun-
dred, with divisions 151 miles long and very
little local work, it does not take long to
make a good check.

Thanking you for the many delightful

hours I have spent reading your magazine
and the information I have received from
it, and trusting I may some time be of serv-
ice to you, I remain,

Santa Fe Locomotive Engineer.

OUR SONGS AND SINGERS.

SO far we have received only one answer
to our request for the song, " My Jolly
Railroad Boy," and that is not a very full
one. One verse of the song is sent to us
by M. F. S., Taunton, Mass. It reads : __

Now I am going to praise my love;

I'll do it if I can.
He has as nice a well-shaped foot

As any other man.
He has two red and rosy cheeks,
. And two black rolling eyes;
And for his sake my life I'd take;

My jolly railroad boy.

An enthusiastic reader in Atlanta,
Georgia, writes us :

Please allow me room in your valuable
book to say that ever since I picked up one
of yrour magazines I have not been without
a copy. I am not a regular subscriber, but
I am a constant reader. I have started a
scrap-book and want to get all the poems
and songs that I can, so if you can help me,
I certainly will appreciate it. Here's hoping
that your magazine will run forever, and
that it will finally turn into a weeklv.

C. M. P.

Much obliged C. M. P. We would like
to give our readers the pleasure of reading
the magazine every week, but, we imagine
that a hundred and ninety-two pages week-
ly has more attractions for the readers than
the prospect of making it would have for
the editors. As for the songs, we hope you
will be able to get as many as you want.

WE ARE CARPETED.

WE have just received a little call-down
which we admit is well merited. We
allowed a reference to Chief Counsel Dick-
son, of the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers and Firemen to read " Brother-
hood of Railroad Trainmen." We apologize
to the engineers and firemen for inadvertent-
ly robbing them of the honor of possessing
as chief counsel this remarkable man.

We are indebted for the correction to
Brother A. J. Buffinton, Mechanicville, New
York. Mr. Buffinton says :

I can't stand by and see the trainmen
get away with anything like this. The order
in general feels too proud of him. It is all
O. K. except for the name of the order,
and I want to tell you there is a lot more
due him. He is a wonder.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

A LIVING FROM POULTRY

$1,500.00 FROM 60 HENS IN TEN MONTHS
ON A CITY LOT 40 FEET SQUARE.

PHILO
SYSTEM

is adopted.

THE PHILO SYSTEM IS UNLIKE ALL OTHER
WAYS OF KEEPING POULTRY,

and in many respects just the reverse, accomplishing' things in poul-
try work that have always been considered impossible, and getting
unheard-of results that are hard to believe without seeing.

THE NEW SYSTEM COVERS ALL BRANCHES
OF THE WORK NECESSARY FOR SUCCESS

from selecting the breeders to marketing the product. It (ells how
to get eggs that will hatch, how to hatch nearly every egg and how
to raise nearly all the chicks hatched. It gives complete plans in
detail how to make everything necessary to run the business and at
less than half the cost required to handle the poultry business in any
other manner. r*

TWO POUND BROILERS IN EIGHT WEEKS

are raised in a space of less than a square foot to the broiler without
any loss, and the broilers are of the very best, quality, bringing here
three cents per pound above the highest market price.

OUR SIX-MONTHS-OLD PULLETS ARE LAYING
AT THE RATE OF 24 EGGS EACH PER MONTH

in a space of two square feet for each bird. No green cut bone of
any description is led, and the food used is inexpensive as compared
with food others are using.

DON'T LET THE CHICKS DIE IN THE SHELL.

CHICKEN FEED AT 15 CENTS A BUSHEL.

Our book tells how to make the best green food with but little
trouble and have a good supply, any day in the year, winter or sum-
mer. . It is just as impossible to set a large egg yield without green
food as it is to keep a cow without hay or fodder.

OUR NEW BROODER SAVES 2 CENTS ON
EACH CHICKEN.

TESTIMONIALS.

Bellefontaine, Ohio, June 7, 1909.
Mr. E. R. Philo, Elmira, N. Y.

Dear Sir:— I just want to tell you of the success I have had
with the Philo system. In January, 1 909, 1 purchased one of your
Philo System books and I commenced to hatch chickens. On the
third day of February, 1909, I succeeded in hatching ten chicks. I
put them in one of your tireless brooders and we had zero weather.
We succeeded in bringing through nine ; one got killed by accident.
On June 1, one of the pullets laid her first egg, and the most re-
markable thing is she has laid every day since up to the present
time. Yours truly, R. S. LaRue.

205 S. Clinton St., Baltimore, Md., May 28, 1909.
E. R. Philo, Publisher, Elmira, N. Y.

Dear Sir: — f have embarked in the poultry business on a small
scale (Philo System) and am having the best of success so far, sixty-
eight per cent of eggs hatched by hens, all chicks alive and healthy
at this writing ; they are now three weeks old. Mr. Philo is a public
benefactor, and I don't believe his System can be improved upon,
and so I am'nbw looking for more yard room, having but 15xoO.
where I am now. Yours truly, C. H. Leach.

Osakis, Minn., June 7, 1909.
Mr. E. R. Philo, Elmira, N. Y.

Dear Sir: — You certainly have the great-
est system the world has ever known. I
have had experience with poultry, but I
know you have the system that brings the
real profits. Yours

Jesse Underwood.
Brockport, N. Y., Sept. I 2, 1908.
Mr. E. W. Philo, Elmira, N. Y.

Dear Sir:— I have had perfect success
brooding chickens your way. I think your
method will raise stronger, healthier

South Britain, Conn., April 14, 1909.
Mr. E. R. Philo, Elmira, N. Y.

Dear Sir: — I have followed your system
as close as I could; the result is a complete
success. If there can be any improvement
on nature, your brooder is it. The first ex-
perience 1 had with your System was last
December. I hatched 17 chicks under
two hens, put them as soon as hatched in
one of your brooders out of doors and at
the age of three months I sold them at 35c
a pound. They then averaged 2 1-2 lbs.
each, and the man I sold them to said they

Cdiii, diHI LUC nielli A sum liiciii 10 3.1IU tin-y , . , , . ,, . — . . ,

were the finest he ever saw, and he wants chicks than the old way of using lamps and
all I can spare this season. besldes lt s\ves so much work and nsk. .

Yours truly A.E.Nelson. Yours respectfully,

M. S. Gooding.

Send $r.oo dived to the publisher and a copy of the latest
revised edition of the book will be sent you by return mail.

THREE POUND ROASTERS TEN WEEKS OLD E. R. PHILO, PUBLISHER, 348 THIRD ST., ELMIRA, N.Y.

In answering this advertisement it is desirable (hat you mention The Raii.koad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

What Position

Is there some position "higher up" that you have your eyes on, but which requires
special training to secure and hold ? Is there some line of work that appeals to you more
strongly than the one in which you are now engaged, but which calls for expert knowledge?

Summed up — is lack of training keeping you back? If so, the International Corres-
pondence Schools have a way by which you can advance — a way that is within your
means — that doesn't rob you of your working time — that doesn't necessitate your leaving
home — that doesn't mean giving up the little pleasures of life — and that doesn't require
you to buy a single book.

Mark the attached coupon and learn how the I. C. S. can advance you. Marking it
costs you nothing and yet brings you information and advice that will help you shape
your career — information and advice that you cannot get elsewhere at any price ?

Men Who Have Won

With the help of your Course in Chemistry, I was able to gain a
sufficient knowledge of Sugar Chemistry while working as elec-
trician, afterwards getting a position of Assistant Chemist, and have
now advanced to the position of Assistant Chemical Superintendent
in a Sugar House making 300,000 bags of sugar each crop.
HERBERT W. ANDEM,

Preston, Oriente, Cuba.

When enrolling in the I. C. S. I was engaged as a common
laborer with no regular employment. Some time after enrolling I
was offered a position as Fireman in the Union Utility Company, in
which I am employed as 8th engineer, to which position I was pro-
moted in six months. The Chief Engineer, 2nd Engineer and one of
the two Foremen are I. C. S. students, and other I. C. S. students
have gone from this plant to take up better jobs.

I can thank the I. C. S. for the advancement I have made and
can heartily recommend it to anyone.

EUGENE C. BOWMAN, 33 Kingwood St., Morgantown, W. Va.

I took a Course with your Schools for about four months before
taking an examination on May 11, 1908, and on Feb. 8, 1909, I com-
menced my work as Clerk to the Cashier of Customs with a salary
of $1,000.00 a year.

I have a very pleasant position in contrast with my former
position, which was a teacher in the Public Schools, with an in-
crease of over 100 per cent in salary.

JOHN M. SNOOK,

Care of Custom House, Baltimore, Md.

A Course in the I. C. S. is well worth its study. I know the
price of my Course has been returned to me many fold.

When I started this Course I was employed as wireman for the
Pennsylvania Railroad Company, in Jersey City. In January, 1906,
I was appointed Chief Electrician of Greenville Power Plant,
with an additional $25.00 per month in pay. I am sure that it is
only on account of I. C. S. training that I am able to fill this position
satisfactorily. I am, therefore, glad I started to study and will
recommend the Schools to any one.

J. P. APELDORN,

24 Garrison Ave., Jersey City, N. J.

I held the position of second-hand to overseer in a Cotton Mill
when I first began with the International Correspondence Schools.
I now hold the position of Superintendent in the Cotton Mills of The
Courtenay Manufacturing Company.

The I. C. S. have been a great aid to me.

G. B. BYRD, Newry, Oconee Co., S. C.

At the beginning of my study for Architecture I was working as
a Cow-Puncher, "Z-Y" Ranch. After receiving my diploma, I
went into partnership with an Architect and was very successful,
and later dissolved partnership and moved out here where I am
running an office of my own.

I have good prospects ahead, and am already snowed under
with work. It has increased my salary ovar 100 per cent since I
enrolled with the I. C. S.

R. R. PAIGE, Blanca, Colorado.

In answering this advertisement it is desirable that you mention The Railkoad Max's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

Do YOU Want

Mark the coupon and learn how the I. C. S. can change you from a dissatisfied to a
.satisfied man — how it can fit you for your chosen occupation — raise your salary — make
you successful.

The 1. C. S. can do all this. This is proved by the 300 letters received every
month from students who VOLUNTARILY report better salaries and positions as the
direct result of I. C. S. help. During August the number was 387.

Your advancement rests with YOU. The first step forward is the marking of the
coupon. The I. C. S. method is adapted to meet your particular needs and means.
Read the following testimonials and mark the coupon NOW.

Positions "Higher Up"

When I first took up your Course I was a Machine Shop Clerk at
Montreal Cotton Company, Valleyfield, P. Q., Canada. After finish-
ing, I obtained a position of Draftsman there, opportunely just
vacant, stayed there 18 months and then a change of management
caused me to leave. I obtained a position as Draftsman in the en-
gineering Department at Howard & Bullough's, Cotton Machinery
Makers, Pawtucket, R. I. I kept my position all through the late
time of depression and I know I am giving satisfaction.

CHARLES EDW. FOSTER, Chamber St., Valley Falls, R. I.

Within a few months after enrolling I started making show-cards
for merchants. The business increased so much that a day did not
have enough hours for the work I had on hand. When I was 16 years
I was making regular card writer's wages on every card I made, and
during the last two years my income increased to double. If my
business continues to increase as it has in the last two months, I will
be clearing $100 a month by the end of the year.

J. KING FORREST, 305 E. Ruby St., Argentine, Kans.

I think the International Correspondence Schools is the greatest
institution of its kind, and I would not hesitate to recommend any
of its Courses of study to anyone who might be interested in the
same. When I started to study through you I was earning $9.25 per
week, and in less than three years was earning almost three times
that amount, and I hope to make still more in the near future.

I would also like to state that on May 1, 1909, another Architect
and myself will open an office in New York City.

E. E. SEDILLE, 230 First St., Newark, N. J.

Better Positiori'Coupon

INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOLS.
Box 1003 1), SCRANTON, PA.

Please explain, without further obligation on my part,
how I can qualify for the position before which I have
marked X •

General Foreman

Banking

It. K. Shop Foreman

Electrical Engineer

It. It. Traveling Eng.

Machine Designer

It. It. Trav's Fireman

Electrician

Locomotive Engineer

Mining Engineer
Mine r oreman

Air-Brake Instructor

Air-Brake Inspector

Foreman Machinist

Air- Brake Repairman

Chemist

Mechanical Engineer

Assay er

Mechanical Draftsman

Architect

RR. Construction Eng.

Bookkeeper

Surveyor

Stenographer

Civil Engineer

Ad Writer

Employed by_
Employed as _
Street and No.
City

In answering this advertisement it is desirable that you men/ion The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

Triple ActionMeans
Absolute Safety

Ask your dealer for the Triple
Action Safety Police. 32 and 38
cal., 4 inch barrel, nickeled finish,
with Walnut Army grip, $9.50; blued
finish, $10.00. If your dealer doesn't
have it we'll ship direct post-paid on
receipt of price.

Send for our free 1909 Gun Guide
and Catalog. This catalog also
shows our other lines — the most
complete range of high-grade, low-
price firearms made anywhere in
the world. Write for it. It's Free.

Have your dealer show you the

& allen Triple Action Safety Police

The only time it shoots is when you want it to

The Triple Action is the real safety action. The first movement
cocks the hammer, the second fires the shot, the third lifts the hammer
completely out of the danger zone and lodges it against a wall of solid
steel. There the hammer stays until you wish to fire.

The HOPKINS & ALLEN ARMS C0.,58Chestnut St., NORWICH, CONN.

I am King,theTailor

We will send for your
approval a genuine % Karat, com-
mercial white, perfect diamond,
in any style 14 karat solid gold
mounting, express prepaid, for
$30— $5 down and $3 per month;
or a % Karat diamond of like qual-
ity for $60; $10 down and $5 per
I month.

If you are interested in a reliable
watch, we offer a gentleman's O. F.
12, 16, or 18 size, or lady's 6 size,
plain or engraved, 20-year guar-
anteed gold filled case, fitted with
genuine Elgin or Waltham move-
ment at $12.50; $3 down, $1.50
per month. With hunting case $16.75.

Write today for free catalog No. I, S7. Remit first payment wilh order
or have goods sent hj- prepaid express CO. D. for your inspection.

Herbert LJosepMCo

I tailor clothes to order, dealing di-
rectly with tbe consumer. You pay
no middleman's profit. My custom-
tailored suits cost you less than ordi-
nary ready made clothes. I'll make a
snappy, stylish, perfect-fitting suit or
overcoat to your measure — a better
looking, better wearing garment than
you can possibly get from your local
dealer or tailor — and save you mon-
ey besides.

This Suit to $1 £
Your Measure ^^

a suit that your tailor would ask $30
for. I make Suits and Overcoats to
measure for $12.50 to $25.00 and prepay
the express. My system of home
measurement is so easy there is abso-
lutely no chance for mistakes. I take
all the risks. I actually make it easy
for you to order stylish, tailor-made
garments by mail at less than ready-
made prices.

Style Book & Samples FREE

My Style Book contains samples of

the newest weaves and designs for Fall

and Winter, and also fashion plates

showing the latest New York modes.

It is FREE— send for it today.

For ten years, in the same location, I have made clothes

I for thousands of satisfied customers; I'll satisfy you, or

refund your money. The Wisconsin National Bank of

Milwaukee, with resources of over $20,000,000, and with whom

I have been doing business for over ten years, will tell you

I am responsible.

Let me be your tailor. Write for style book; it is Free.

King Tailoring Company

195 West Water Street.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Railboad Maw's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

STOP!

Stop Those
Trust Methods!

It is up to you, Mr. Con-
sumer. You, the buyer of
the goods must insist on fair
treatment and honest values
if you expect to reap the benefit of the great national struggle against the trusts.

We have fought trust methods, the unfair contracts, and price-boosting methods
of the giant watch factories, and now we have found the way by which you, the consumer,
can secure anti-trust prices for yourself. We have decided to offer direct our finest and
most superb watch, the genuine Burlington "Special." While this offer lasts you can get

this watcli direct, and at the identical price that the wholesale jeweler himself must pay.

Trust Prices Eclipsed

Yes, completely
eclipsed

this great special offer. Now, right now, is your opportunity to
secure the world's masterpiece of watch manufacture direct from
us and ata sirnply-Jta^g^rzK^anti-trustprice. Weare deter mined to push
our independent line. Hence our direct offer. Some trusts
are legal and some are not. We do not state that the watch
trust is illegal, but we do know that its price-boosting con-
tracts and its methods are very, very unfair — unfair to you
and unfair to us. So, in order to fight these methods most
effectually we have decided to give our finest watch, the superb
Burlington "Special" direct to the public on such an amazing
liberal offer that competition would be absolutely annihilated.

So Here is the Offer

We will ship direct
to you, the genuine
Burlington "Special,"

our very finest watch, and at the same price which the wholesale jeweler himself

must pay. We do not ask you to risk any money at all— we will allow you to take

your choice of either ladies' or men's size and will ship the watch to you on approval, no

money down, for an absolutely free examination — returnable at our expense. We ship you the watch ^

without any obligations at all so that you can see with your Own eyes the overwhelming superiority

of the Burlington " Special" watch over even the highest priced trust product on the market;

And at a price within the reach of all — our anti-trust direct price! Absolutely the ACTUAL wholesale price

to everybody. The very finest watch it is possible to produce now within the reach of everybody.

anti-Trust Watch Book FREE

coupon or in a postal or letter will bring you a copy
Watch Book by return mail, free. No one who wants a
afford to be without tin's book. All the details of our
including our startling $1,000.00 challenge to our gia
completely explained. Don't pay an enormous price
watch or be content with a "bargain" in a worthless timepiece.
Send for our Anti-Trust Watch Book — drop us a postal or letter or
merely send this coupon.

BURLINGTON WATCH COMPANY

Dept. 1109 19th & Marshall Blvd., CHICAGO

JOfiTNotice to 'Friendly Dealers: While we realize that many high-class *& ^^ fy 6- ^*
jewelers do not favor the long-profit trust j>roducts,we can not at the prices noiv A x«^ 4 ^ O 0+^
quoted direct allo-.u any discount to either retailer or wholesaler. 7 he jewel- «?► ^» % ■ ,»> -$>•
trs should Seel that our direct offer is not aimed at tkem, but against Trust At? •<* & i$' ^

methods, and that the direct offer is NECESSAR Y.

e.'

r©

In answering this advertisement it is desirable, that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

STUB OR ANY STEEL PEN
Sanford Fountain Pen $1.00

Everyone who uses a pen ought to know about the Sanford Fountain
Pen, which uses any steel pen. Patented Feb. 25. 1908. Aremark-
able improvement in fountain pens. Office Men — Book-keepers
— Shorthand Writers use and endorse It enthusiastically.

10 DAYS
FREE TRIAL

Pocket
Clip

10c

"Don't Drop a Drop of Ink"

It Is made of best hard rubber. In
styles, chased, plain barrel and short-
hand size — Gives a smooth steady
flow ofink — Positively will not
leak ordrop ink. Pens can
be changed easily.

The price of the Sanford Fountain Pen Is

SI. 00 — a pen of the highest quality at a very low

price. We know that it is equal, if not superior, to any

high-priced pen made. We are willing to prove this to

you. Mail us one of your favorite steel pens, and we

will send you a complete Sanford Fountain Pen postpaid. Try it 10

days — test it thoroughly. After 10 days trial, if you are satisfied, send

us'the regular price, 31.00 — if not, return the pen to us.

he Best $51. OO Christmas Gift.

The Sanford Manifolding Pencil Is a great convenience for users of In-
delible pencils. All parts hard rubber — dust proof — no stained fingers. Price 50c postpaid.
Including set of indelible leads. AGENTS WANTED EVERYWHERE. Send for Booklet.
THE SANFORD PEN CO.. Inc. 686 East 105th Street. Cleveland. Ohio. U. S. A.

No. 114 lKt. Gem Solid Gold
Tiffany, $10.00

No. 103 lKt. Gem Solid Gold Stud, 810.00

See Them Before Paying

.We will send you
either rings or stud
illustrated— by express C. O. D. all charges
prepaid — with privilege of examination. If you
like rt, pay the express man — if you don't, re-
turn it to him and it won't cost you a cent. Fair
proposition, isn't it? All mounted in solid gold,
diamond mountings. .^^Send for Booklet.

Our Proposition

WHITE VALLEY GEM CO.

P.O. BOX 41 11 INDIANAPOLIS, IND.

MaisCdtldm

NO MONEY D0WN--$1 A WEEK

Buy Men's Stylish Fall and Win-
ter Suits and Overcoats direct
from our factory by mail, for

$15 an(l $18

<J We require no security,
and trust any honest person
anywhere in the United
States. We send garments
on approval—you don't pay
a penny rill you get the
clothes and find them satis-
factory— then pay $1.00 a
week. We are the largest
CreditClothiers in theworld.

1701717 Send to-day for our
T I\£i£i line of stylish Fall
and Winter samples, self-measure-
ment blank, tape, and full particu-
lars of our convenient payment plan,
all free. Commer. rating. $1,000,000

RENTER & o0M
ROSENB^CO.

6SO Cox Building, ROCHESTER. N.

ON CHARGE ACCOUNT
i At. CASH PRICES

iiSi'j- • ^

These Are Samples of the Christmas Bargains We Offer

90— Daisy Pattern Ring $G0
91— Helcher Scarf Pin 50
92— Tiffany Bel. Ring 25
S3— Fancy Tooth Ring 42
94— Embossed Tif. Bel. 35
95— Diagonal Tiffany 55
96— All Diamond Cluster 40
97— Tif. Ear Screws, psir 60
OS— Belcher Stud 40

99— Tiffany Solitaire 45
100— Heaiy Tarred Bel. 75
101— Flat Belcher Ring 90

Just write us which one of these beautiful, sparkling. Pure White Gems you
would like to see. No deposit or credentials required — we'll send it at once.
If it isn't the finest and snappiest diamond you ever saw, send it back at our
expense. If it pleases, pay one-fifth down, balance in 8 monthly payments.
What a beautiful Christmas present it would make for your loved one,
whether she be sweetheart, wife, mother, sister or daughter. You can also
buy fine watches on same easy terms. We guarantee all transactions strictly
confidential. Order today or write for FREE CATALOGUE of
DIAMONDS. WATCHES and JEWELRY. (1)

THE WALKER-EDMUND CO.

Importers and Manufacturers, Dept. B, 205 State St., CHICAGO

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazin3.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

The Best of Xmas Gifts- A DIAMOND

Is there any gift for man or woman so accept-
able, so much to be desired, or so perman-
ently valuable as a really fine diamond ?

If you wish to confer upon anyone this most beautiful
of Christmas gifts or to have for your own use the very
finest grade of Blue White stone in any setting you
wish, our system of selling you

DIAMONDS ON CREDIT

At Lowest Importers' Prices

Brings our goods within reach of all.

We are one of the largest diamond dealers in the

world. We import our stones in the ' ' rough ' ' and finish

them here. We buy for spot cash in enormous quantities.

Instead of counting on a few sales at big prices, we figure

on a mass of sales at small profits. That's why we can

sell you diamonds 20% lower than any other dealers.

We furnish diamonds on credit to any

reputable man or woman on these terms :

20% with order and 10% per month.

You have the privilege of exchanging your purchase at
its full value. All transactions strictly confidential..
Any article here illustrated or in our catalog No. 97
sent express prepaid for your examination, returnable at
our expense if not perfectly satisfactory.

Send at once for our beautiful 65 -page

Christmas catalog No. 97 It's free. Select your

diamond before Christmas and get it on credit.

Special Holiday Discount of 10% on all Cash Purchases.

J. M. LYON & CO.

71-73 Nassau Street New York City

2208

Salesmen Wanted

We receive calls for thousands of Salesmen and have assisted thousands of men to secure good posi-
tions or better salaries. H undreds of them who had no former experience and who formerly earned
from $45 to $75 a month now earn $100 to $1000 a month. No matter whether you are a new be-
ginner or an old hand at the game, our eight weeks course in Salesmanship by mail will enable
you to increase your earning power from two to ten times what it is at present; and our
FREE EMPLOYMENT BUREAU will assist you to get a good position. Thous-
ands of good positions will be open for the early spring rush; prepare for one of them
now. Salesmanship is the most independent, delightful, well paid profession i n the
world, and the demand always exceeds the supply. Scores of the wealthiest, most
famous men in the U. S., such as Marshall Field, the great dry goods merchant
of Chicago, Ex-postmaster General John Wanamaker, the great merchant of
New York and Philadelphia; several of Andrew Carnegie's millionaires and
scores of others got their start selling goods on the road. Your chance is
as good as theirs was. Thousands of Traveling Salesmen earn from
$2500 to $10,000 and up as high as $25,000 a year and all expenses. If
you are ambitious and want to enter the best paid profession on
earth, fill out coupon tind send for our free book, "A Knight of -
the Grip" today — it will tell you how to do it. Address Dept
403 National Salesmen's Training Association,
Chicago, New York, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Son Francisco, TJ. S. A. /A*

In answcrin.y any advertiacmenl on this payc it is deiirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAX'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

Brass- Graft

OUTFIT FREE

J|ON

Let us send you this Complete outfit consisting of 1 Stip-
pling and Veining Tool, 1 package Polishing Powder, 1 pack-
age Coloring Powder, 1 Fine Sandpaper, 1 piece Polishing
Plush, and complete material for Handsome Brass-Craft
Calendar (see illustration) as follows: 1 Brass Panel, 1
Wood Panel, 50 Round-Head Brass Tacks, 1 Brass Hanger,
1 Calendar Pad. Furnished with stamped design and full
directions for making Calendar worth $1.00 — all in neat box.
FREE and prepaid, to anyone sending us 25 cents to pay
cost of packing, shipping, etc.

Ask for FREE CATALOG R.R.64

THAYER & CHANDLER

737-739 Jackson Blvd.

CHICAGO, ILL.

Automobile Jackets, BHzzartt Proof

Outside texture so closely woven it resists
wind and wear alike. Lined with wool
fleece that defies the cold. Snap fasteners,
riveted pockets.

PARKER'S

ARCTIC JACKET

Registered in U. S. Patent Office

Better than an overcoat for facing cold
and work together. Warm, durable,
comfortable. Ask your dealer or sent
postpaid on receipt of $2.35.

JOHN H. PARKER CO.,

27 James Street, Maiden, Mass.

FREE

WRITK AT ONCE

FOR GENUINE NATIVE

ARIZONA RUBY

RUBY

Remarkable Offer !
Don't Miss It!

' will send it to you absolutely FREE prepaid, to introduce our genuln*

i Diamonds. These Diamonds exactly resemble finest gen

white Diamonds, stand acid tests, are cut by experts, brilliancy guaranteed

l» manent, and yet we sell at 1-10 the cost. Best people wear them.

SPECIAL OFFER — For 50c deposit, as guarantee of good

faith, we send on approval, registered, either *4 or 1 carat

Mexican Diamond at special price. Money back If desired.

Illustrated Catalog I'REK, Write todav and get Ruby FREE.

MEXICAN DIAMOND IMP. CO. Depl., ER-12, Las Cruces, New Mex#

Pay Us Just
As Best Suits You

Take your pick of 300 beautiful styles
of all-wool Suits and Overcoats offered in our
bier catalogue— "Pay us just as best suits you."

Use Your Credit

villi.-

.it.

v no hes-
buyins

Special
Offer

rtiis 3-piece,
worsted suit i_ -
of beautiful palter:
l-tailored

needha\
itancy i
anythin
want of i

you're able." You m^ilm^l

„ .. A . ,, antee.i a perfect

ought to be well Talue »»5. Our P™-saS.
dressed and you on offer on
can be if you buy easy terms ^lO.yD
everything of us. _^^_^^^^__
Woolf 's great Encyclope-
dia of Bargains for Fall
__«« and Winter is ready.
This great book contains 300 magnifi-
cent half tone illustrations, picturing as
many styles of men's and women's man-
tailored garments. Every household
ought to have tliis^book and use it as a'
•chase guide for clothes. We save you about half and sell on

FREE!

liberal payn
Sit down now

this book. We

...lough for auy one to meet
..._ your pen in hand— write a postal for
nd it absolutely free to everyone.

WOOLF'S (Inc.) %2£\i^ol2vStreet'

S. A,

Will You Accept This

Business Book if We

Send it Free?

Sign and mail the coupon below. Send no money!
Take no risk!

One hundred and twelve of the world's master business
men have written ten books — 2,070 pages — 1.407 vital business
secrets, ideas, methods. In them is the best of all that they
know about

iship

—Position- Getting
— Position-Holding
— Man- Handling1
— Man-Training
— Business Generalship
— Competition Fighting
and hundreds and hun-
dreds of other vital busi-
ness subjects.

explaining, picturing

— Purchasing — Salesmn

—Credits — Advert!

— Collections — Correspondence

—Accounting —Selling Plans

— Cost-keeping — Handling Customers

-Organization -Office Systems

— Retailing — Short - cuts and

— Wholesaling Methods for every

— Manufacturing line and department

A 9,059-word booklethas been published describ
the work. Pages 2 and 3 tell about managing businesses great and small; pages
4 and 5 deal with credits, collections and -with rock-bottom purchasing ; pages
6 and 7 with handling and training men : pages 7 to 12 with salesmanship, with
advertising, with the marketing of goods through salesmen, dealers and by
mail; pages 12 to 15 with the great problem of securing the highest market
price for your services — no matter what your line; and the last page tells how
you may get a complete set — bound in handsome half morocco, contents in
colors — for less than your daily smoke or shave, almost as little as your daily
newspaper. U'Uiyou read the hook if we send it free?

Send no money. Simply sign the coitpon.
The System Co., 151-153 Wabash Ave., Chicago'

If there are, in vour books, any new ways to
my salary, I should like to know them. So ;
descriptive booklet. I'll read it.

Name

Address __

Business

Position

end on y<

f business or
16-page tree

241-12

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that yon mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

tC$$

EARN
$25.00 to $50.00 Weekly
IN AUTOMOBILE BUSINESS

Chauffeurs, Automobile Salesmen and Repairmen get
big pay for pleasant work because the demand for
trained men exceeds supply. We have taught hun-
dreds (without mechanical ability) and we can teach
you in ten weeks if you study a few hours a week. It
Is interesting. Our simple mail course guarantees
thoro efficiency because it's personal. Ask our gradu-
ates who are earning $25.00 weekly or more in positions
we obtained for them.

Send to-day for first lesson— It's free.
Chauffeurs and competent men supplied owners and garages.

Empire Auto. Institute, KJffifc.'gft:

The Original Automobile School.

Mothers of Puny Babies
Try Holstein Milk

YOU are anxious about your baby and would do most
anything if you could only see the color come into
baby's face and its strength increase. Just try plain
fresh Holstein Milk. It is simpler, safer and far more
beneficial to give your child Holstein Milk, either with
or without modification, than to try various artificial
foods or " formulae." Most any baby can digest Holstein
Milk who can digest mother's milk, for Holstein Milk
acts much the same in the stomach as the milk of the
normal human mother. Your baby will probably thrive
on Holstein Milk in a way that would surprise you.
Your milkman can get Holstein Milk for you. If he can-
not supply it, write us, and give us his name and address
as well as your own, and we will send you a booklet about
infant feeding and help you to get Holstein Milk in your
own town.

HOLSTEIN-FRIESIAN ASSOCIATION

ID American Building

Brattleboro, Vt.

Here at Your Hand

Are the Absolute Facts About
Every Business Matter

HERE is a clear and complete picture of the
greatest power in the world — BUSINESS —
^^mm the processes by which it works — the ends
each department must accomplish — the inside of
every important detail, from the organization of a
concern to the conduct of its most private affairs.

Cyclopedia of

Commerce, Accountancy,
and Business Administration

Ten Big Complete Volumes — over 3,500 pages— 1900
illustrations, full page plates, etc.

As Comprehensive as Business Itself

A great business reference library for the business man who would
become a "captain of industry" — for the superintendent who wants to
know how every department is conducted — for the executive who wants
to be able to guide and check his departments — for the ambitious man
who is training himself for advancement — for the widewake man who is
likely to be called upon for work outside his regular line, and who needs
at his elbow, for ready reference, an accurate up-to-date work on the
principles and practice oi business.

Sent Free for Examination

We will send you the ten books, express prepaid, for five days' free
examination ; returnable at our expense, if you like. Just sign and mail
the coupon below. If you keep the books, pay $2.00 down and $2.00
per month until the introductory price of $24.00 is paid. The condensed
chapter heads below will give you some idea of the tremendous
scope of this work ; but only an examination of the books themselves
will reveal their full value. Sign and mail the coupon today.

-Read What this Great Work Comprises

Bnsiness Organization— Advertising— Sales— Collections— Credits

— Purchasing and Stores — Catalogues — Records — Cost Analysis —
Commercial taw— Banking— Clearing House Methods— Partnerships

— Corporations— Securities — Contracts— Methods of Bookkeeping —
Principles of Accounting — Trial Balance — Special Accounting —
Systems — Inventories — Stock Brokerage — Recording and Billing —
Auditing — C. P. A. Requirements— Corporation Accounting— Banking
—Savings and Safety Deposit Accounting— Publishers' Accounting —
Installment Sales and Collections— Brewers' Accounts— Retail Store
Accounting — Mail Order Business — Kollow-up Systems — Stock-
keeping — Insurance— Real Estate — Loans — Contractors' Accounts —
Cost Keeping— Department Store Accounts — Store Management-
Hotel and Club Accounting— Commission and Brokerage, etc.

For a short time, we will include, as a monthly supplement,
absolutely free of charge for one year. THE TECHNICAL
WORLD MAGAZINE. This is a regular Si. 50 monthly, full of
twentieth century scientific facts, written in popular form.

American School of Correspondence, Chicago, U. S. A.
INTRODUCTORY OFFER COUPON

AMERICAN SCHOOL OF CORRESPONDENCE!

Please send set Cyclopedia of Commerce, Accountancy, and
Business Administration for 5 days' free examination. Also Tech-
nical World for 1 vear. I will send $2 within 5 days and S2 a
month until I have paid $24.00. otherwise I will notify you and
hold the books subject to your order. Title not to pass until
fully paid.

Name

Address. . .
Employer.

,R. R. Man's, 12-'09

In answering qny advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Railboad Man's Magazine.

■ ■ i i ■

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

WANTED

AGENTS - SALESMEN
MANAGERS

WANTED

STARTLING OPPORTUNITY TO MAKE MONEY FAST. AT HOME OR TRAVELING-ALL OR SPARE TIME

Experience not necessary. Honesty and willingness to work all we ask. "We will give you an appointment worth
$50 to $75 every week You can be independent. Always have money in abundance and pleasant position
selling greatest labor saving household invention brought forth in fifty years. LISTEN:— One man's orders
$2,650.00 one month, profit $1,650.00. Sylvester Baker, of Pa., a boy of 1 4 made $9.00 in 2^ hours. C. C. Tanner
la., 80 years old, averages rive sales to seven calls. See what a wonderful opportunity! Room for YOU, no
matter what your age or experience, or where you are located — if you are square and will act quick. But don't
delay— territory is going fast. Read what others are doing and be influenced by their success. WORK FOR US
AND GET RICH.

"I do not see how a better seller could be manufactured," writes Parker T. Townsend, Minn. "Called at
twenty homes, made nineteen sales,"— E. A. Martin, Mich. "Most simple, practical, necessary household article
I have ever seen" says K. W. Melvin, SanFrancisco. "Took six dozen orders in four days,"— W. R. Hill, 111.
"Went out first morning, took sixteen orders,"— N. H. Torrence, New York "Started out 10 a. m., sold thirty-five
by 4 o'clock,"— J. R. Thomas, Colo. "Sold 1 31 in two days,"— G W. Handy, New York. "I have sold goods for
years, but frankly, I have never had a seller like this,"— W. P. Spangenberg, N. J. "Canvassed eleven families,
took eleven orders,"— E. Randall, Minn. "SOLD EIGHTEEN f IRST 4lA HOURS. Will start one man working for
me today, another Saturday,"— Elmer Menn, Wis. . .

These words are real— they are honest. Every order was delivered, accepted and the money paid m cash.
Every letter is right here in our office, and we will give the full postoffice address of any man or woman we
have named if you doubt. This is a big, reliable, manufacturing company, incorporated under the laws of the State
of Ohio, and every statement we make is absolutely sincere and true. YOU CAN MAKE THIS MONEY: You can make

THE NEW EASY
WRINGER MOP

$3000.00

Belling this great invention- &
The Easy-Wringer Mop-thep
biggest money maker of
the age. Think of it !
A Self - Wringing Mop. No
putting hands into the dirty-
water. No aching backs. No
slopping against woodwork.
No soiled clothes. No con-
tracting deadly disease from

touching hands to filth and germs that come from floor. Can use scalding water
containing strong lye. Two turns of crank wrings out every drop of water. Makes

house-keeping a pleasure— Makes the day happy. Simple, practical, reliable, it lasts for years. Every
woman is interested— and buys. No talking necessary— it sells itself. Simply show it and take the order.
Could yon imagine an easier, quicker, better way to make money than supplying' tliis
demand already created !

We want more agents, salesmen, managers, to fill orders, appoint, supply coutrol sub-agents,
ISO per cent profit. No -investment required. We own patents and give you exclusive
territory, protection, co-operation, assistance. You can't fail, because you risk
nothing! HUXDBKDS ABt; CKTTUt; RICH. Act quick. Write for your county today.
WE WAST A THOUSAND MEi\ AXB WO.MEiW

SpnH fill MdriW Pnty your name and address on a postal card

New Low Priced Household Article.

The above cut shows mop
wrung up dry, and pictures the
good, s'.rong, substantial material
used thruout. When mop is
raised from floor it auto-
matically straightens out
ready forwringing

for information, offer and valuable booklet
FREE Tomorrow belongs to the one behind— the opportunity is open
TODAY. Write your name and address clearly, giving name of county.

THE U. S. MOP COMPANY,

This smaller
picture shows
mop on floor.
It spreads out-
and is held
down to floor
at all points.

823 MAW ST., IEIPSIC, OHIO.

Pyrography

Send for our Big New 1910 Catalog 64RR-FREE— illustrating
hundreds of beautiful new things for Pyrographic Decoration
on wood, leather and plush, as well as Brass- Craft, now ready.

Our No. 99 $

(go sin OUTFIT
3><£.4<J ONLY

Is complete with fine plati-
num point, Double Action
Bulb, and all other acces-
sories. We include free,
two 3-ply stamped pieces to
begin on— all in handsome
box. At your dealers, or sent C. O. D. by us. 24-page Pyrography
Book included free when cash accompanies order. Money back
if not satisfied. Get our Catalog anyway. Write today.

THAYER & CHANDLER

737-9 Jackson Boulevard .... Chicago, 111.

Largest Manufacturers Pyrography Goods in the World

Railroad Men, Attention

All the aljove movements are warranted to stand a
rigid railroad test or money refunded.

A SAVING of 35 to S3 1-3 per cent off regular prices
is assured.

M. L. COHEN & CO., 29 Washington Ave. South, Minneapolis, Minn.

Established 1619. The largest retailers of Railrn.nl watches at wholesale
prices in the Northwest. Mail orders promptly filled.

AGENTS :— IF I KNEW YOUR NAME. I would
send you our $2.19 sample outfit free this very minute.
Let me start you in a profitable business. You do not
need one cent of capital. Experience unnecessary. 50
per cent profit. Credit given. Premiums. Freight
paid. Chance to win $500 in gold extra. Every man and
woman should write me for free outfit. Jay Black.
Pres.. 36 Beverly Street. Boston, mass.

''WHY NOT BE AN ARTIST?

Our graduates are filling' High Salaried
Positions. Good artists

EARN $25 TO $100 PER WEEK

and upwards, in easy fascinating- wort. Our courses of
Personal Home Instruction by correspondence, are com-
plete, practical. Eleven years' successful teaching. Expert in-
structors. Positions guaranteed competent" workers. Write for
Handsome Art Book, Free.

SCHOOL OF APPLIED ART (Founded 1898)
=s^Ei N 15 Gallery Fine Arts, Battle Creek, Mich. — i

PATENTS

numc nnnk- o«^ t

SECURED OR
FEE RETURNED.
GUIDE BOOK and WHAT TO INVENT.

With valuable List of Inventions Wanted sent free.
ONE MILLION DOLLARS offered for one invention;
$16,000 for others. Patents secured by us advertised
free in World's Progress ; sample free.

VICTOR J. EVANS & CO., Washington, D. C.:

ililv thn+ A,n„ .>,„.,,,',.„ Tun Pinonin \r»l»'.s \{ I n I V r~K IT

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

LOFTIS
SYSTEM

wnm

ON CREDIT

WATCH AND DIAMOND SPECIALS
FOR RAILROAD MEN

18 Size Elgin, Waltham or Illinois Railroad Watches

21 FINE RUBY JEWELS (gold settings); adjusted to temperature;
isochronism and five positions; double roller escapement with
Steel escape wheel, pallet arbor and escape pinion cone-pivoted and
cap-jeweled: exposed pallets; compensating balance: Breguet
hairspring; micrometric regulator. Open face, lever set double
sunk Railroad Dial, large steel hands. In 18 Size Gold
Filled Case, warranted to wear for 20 years. Screw bezel,
solid back, dust proof, with dust proof screw cap; plain pol-
ished, engraved or engine turned. If 16 Size is desired, let
us send you our No. 36 B

16 Size 21 Jewel Special

Dueber-tlampden Railroad Watch

In Gold Pilled, Dust Proof Case, Warranted
to Wear for 20 Years

$30

No.36A. 18Slzo

SPECIAL

PRICE
Pay $3.36 Per Month

$33iQ

Credit Terms: $3 per Honth

Guaranteed to Pass Inspection on Any Railroad
Sent Anywhere, All Charges Prepaid,

On Free Trial

FINEST DIAMOND — A marvel of
brilliancy, purity and color. Not
too expensive for the income of
salaried people, yet of such beau-
ty as to awaken the admiration of
all lovers of Diamonds.

Diamonds increase a man's
prestige and open the door of
Opportunity.

The Loftis System of Credit at Christmas time is a Great Convenience to Thousands

What 1C th<> I flftic Cvctom ? I* ,s tae system which permits the far-away buyers to select the finest Diamonds, Watches and
niiai IS lllC L.UIU3 JjMCIIl S Jewelry from our beautifully illustrated catalog and have them sent to their home, place of
business or express office on approval. You need not pay one penny for express charges or otherwise— we pay everything— leav-
ing you free to decide whether to buy or not after the fullest examination of the article sent. If what we send meets with your
approval, you pay one-fifth on delivery and keep the article, sending the balance to us direct in eight equal monthly payments.
These terms make anyone's credit good, and permit uo to open CONFIDENTIAL CHARGE ACCOUNTS with all classes of people.

Write for Christmas Catalog

Containing over 1500 pho-
_ tographic illustrations of
beautiful suggestions for Christmas Gifts. With its aid you can
select in the privacy of your home suitable gifts for all. Dia-
mond Rings, Pins, Brooches and Earrings, Chatelaine Watches,
Silverware, etc., for wife, sweetheart, sister or mother. Spark-
ling Diamond Studs, Scarf Pins and Cuff Buttons, Watches,
Fobs, etc., for husband, father or brother. Our Catalog is free.

An ArTMint With IrS is a confidential matter. We require
nil niiuuui mm ua no security, charge no interest, im-
pose no penalties and create no publicity. Our customers use
their charge accounts with us year after year, finding them a
great convenience at such times as Christmas, birthdays, anni-
versaries, etc. We have no disagreeable preliminaries or vex-
atious delays. Everything is pleasant, prompt, and guaranteed
to be satisfactory. We want your account.

Olir PHrPC are 1° to 1^ per cent lower than those of the ordi-
vui r I IV.C3 nary spot cash retail jeweler. We are direct im-
porters, buying our Diamonds in the rough, which we cleave,
cut and polish in our own work shops. In buying from us you
save the profits of broker, jobber, wholesaler and retailer.

Diamonds as an Investment &l£g2£u£^£?£g

times the rate of interest. They are increasing in value from
15 to 20 per cent each year. They are better than real estate,
because you can realize their full value at any time at the high-
est market price. A Diamond is the ideal gift for a loved one ;
it lasts forever, and every day reminds the wearer of your re-
gard and good judgment. Our prices are lowest, terms easiest.

Wo Ar» iht> fllrioct largest and most reliable Diamond,
TfC nlC lllC VIUC31, Jewelry and Watch Credit House in
the world. Est. 1858. We refer to any bank in America— ask
your local bank how we stand in the business world. They will
refer to their Commercial Agency books and tell you that we
stand very high, and that our representations may be accepted
without question. Our guarantee has over $1,000,000 behind it.

Our Guarantee Certificate, fg^e r7roadestrand strong-
est ever issued by a responsible house. Our exchange system
is the most liberal ever devised, for it permits you to return
any Diamond bought of us, and get the full amount paid in ex-
change for other goods or a larger Diamond. Buy now.

Tft th(> fash RllVPP nf niamnnric we have a proposition which is thoroughly characteristic of our house. It is nothing
1U lilt vcuil UUJCI VI UlalllUllUa iess than a written agreement to return the full amount paid us for a Diamond— less
ten per cent, at any time within one year. Thus one might wear a fifty dollar Diamond for a whole year, then send it back and
get $45, making the cost of wearing the Diamond for one year less than ten cents per week.

fliir Hanrknmp <\mivpnir Rnoklpf telling all about "How Easily You Can
UUr ndriUbUme souvenir DOOKiei, wear and Own a Diamond on the Loftis
System," will be sent free on request. The Diamond Is the emblem of success.

THE OLD RELIABLE, ORIGINAL
DIAMOND AND WATCH CREDIT HOUSE,

0FTIS

■mrpac o f/v «td Dept.P661, 92 to 98 State St., CHICAGO, ILL.

■ B UKIW Qt UW« I850 RPANPH STORES- Plttuhur*. Pa., and St. I.nu!.. Mo.

BRANCH STORES— Pittsburg, Pa., and St. Louie. Mo.

In answering this advertisement it is desirable that

■ / ' ■

you nun/ion The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE .RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

20G

The Best
Christmas
^ Present
for $175

because all the family

will enjoy it all the year,

is a subscription for the

1910 volume of

The Youth's Companion

SOME GOOD THINGS FOR NEXT YEAR:

50
250

STAR ARTICLES — Contributions to Useful Knowl-
edge by Men at the Ladder's Top.

CAPITAL STORIES — Serial Stories, Stories of Char-
acter, Adventure and Heroism.

UP-TO-DATE NOTES on Current Events and Discov-
eries in Nature and Science.

1000
2000

Illustrated Announcement for 1910 and Sample Copies of the Paper Free

ONE-MINUTE STORIES — Anecdotes,
Miscellany, Children's Page, etc.

Editorials,

CHRISTMAS PRESENT COUPON. -

Every New Subscriber who at once cuts out and sends this slip (or mentions this

magazine) with $1.75 for the 52 issues of The Youth's

Companion for 1910 will receive

(^ \£.L 1 All the issues of the paper for the remaining weeks of 1909,

Vjll t X* including the Beautiful Holiday Numbers.

Gift 2.

The Companion's "Venetian" Calendar for 1910, lithographed in
thirteen colors and gold (an extra copy being sent to any one
making a present of a subscription to some one else).
Then The Youth's Companion for the fifty-two weeks of 1910 — a library of the
best reading that would cost $30 in book form.

THE YOUTH'S COMPANION, BOSTON, MASS.

In answering this advertisement it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Max's Magazine.

TRADE

MARK

FACE

The newer " Ever-Ready "
is even a better " Ever-
Ready " — the best Safety
Razor at any price. The
most remarkable value in all
the world. $1.00 for the
complete outfit means a
safety frame that will last
a lifetime — twelve (12) of
the finest blades ever pro- ■
duced — -a clever stropper f
device and all compactly Ap
arranged in a fine but- fa
ton-lock case — and all -Cl
for one dollar.

Two million users vouch
for the EVER-READY. An
unqualified guarantee that
the EVER-READY will
shave you.

Extra Blades
10 for 50c

Karh hVEB-KKADY lilmle separately
wrapped in pateuu-il package — Ueeii -

blades. Exchange 10 .lull blades lor leu

new oues any time lor :s.lc.

Sold by Hardware, Cutlery, Drug and

General Stores cvirrv where. Be « ise-

retuse imitations. Mail orders prepaid.

American Safety Razor Co., Inc.

320 Broadway, New York
Canada International Distributing Co., Montreal

I d e al

)

Avoid substitutes

Look for the Globe

trade -mark.

A Christmas Reminder

Simple and good as Waterman's Ideals are, they make the best and most useful
gifts that you can select for your friends or relatives. We emphasize the trade-mark
to assist you in buying ; it characterizes the only pen that is carefully made from the
finest materials — to last a life-time. The prices run from $2.50 for the handsomely
finished plain style up to as much as you fancy to pay for the richly gold or silver
mounted styles. Whatever you pay, our unconditional guarantee covers the pen. Gold
Pens to suit every hand are exchangeable. Illustrated Booklet on Request.

All Dealers. L. E. Waterman Co., 173 Broadway, N. Y.

BOSTON. CHICAGO. SAN FRANCISCO. OAKLAND. MONTREAL. LONDON. MEXICO

THE MUNSET PRESS. NEW YORK.

PRICE lO CENT:

BY THE YEAR. $199

MAGAZINE

PASSING

OF THE/

C-^oJ.E,. SMITH

N UAHY

THE FRANK A M1INSFY COMPANY NEW YORK AND LONDOI

e aut y

From a Society

Point of View

Natural beauty makes its
mark in Society where artificial
beauty fails, and Society is right
in drawing this distinction.
Natural beauty should therefore
be promoted by every natural
means, and for this purpose
there is nothing more effective
than the acknowledged beauty
soap of six generations.

It is used in nearly every Royal
Palace of Europe; and Messrs.
Pears are holders of Special
Warrants of Appointment to
their Majesties, the King
and Queen of England, and
the King and Queen of Spain,
and held a similar Warrant
from the late Queen Victoria.
20 Highest Awards held.

atchiess for the

omplexion

OF ALL SCENTED SOAPS PEARS' OTTO OF ROSE IS THE BEST.

il rights secured"

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVER'

A Happy
Marriage

Depends largely on a
knowledge of the whole
truth about self and
sex and their relation to life and health.
This knowledge does not come intelli-
gently of itself, nor correctly from ordinary
everyday sources.

Sexology

. (Illustrated)

By William H. Walling, A. M., M. D.,
imparts in a clear, wholesome way, in one
volume :

Knowledge a Young: Man Should Have.
Knowledge a Young: Husband Should Have.
Knowledge a Father Should Have.
Knbwledge'a Father Should Impart tn His" Son.
Medical Knowledge a Husband Should Have.

- Knowledge a Young Woman Should Have.
Knowledge a Young Wife Should Have.
Knowledge a Mother Should Have.
Knowledge a Mother Should Impart to Her Daughter.
Medical Knowledge a Wife Should Have.

All in one volume, illustrated, $2.00, postpaid.

Write for " Other People's Opinions " and Table of Contents.
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THE RAILROAD MANS MAGAZINE

CONTENTS FOR JANUARY

SERIALS.

Treasure of the World. Part IV Stephen Chalmers .

The Daughter of the Idol. Part III John Mack Stone . . .

The Dam-Buil Jers. Part IV Bannister Merwin .

The Spider of Palermo Part VI Edward Bedinger Mitchell

SHORT STORIES.

Freezing to Death ! (Illustrated.) William Ivory Irvine

They Called Him " Artie." (Illustrated ) Charles Wesley Sanders

" Oh, You Buttinsky ! " (Illustrated ) F. M. Richardson . .

The Disappearing Diamonds (Illuftrated.) Arthur M. Chase

What Did Dugan Do to Him? (Illustrated.) . . . . E. Florence ....

The Golden Serp-nts George E. Hall

The Telegraphic Twins. (Illustrated ) Cromwell Childe

SPECIAL ARTICLES

When the Rules Were Broken. (Illustrated )

Perpetual Motion — the Greatest of Delusions. No. 1.

(Illustrated.)

Close Calls of the Rail. (Illustrated.)

Being a Boomer Brakeman. No 4. Hard Luck on the In

and Out. (Illustrated.) .t

King of the Freight-Trains

Letters of an Old Railroad Man and His Son. No. 2.

Jim Grips a Few Live Wires (Illustrated.)
Help for Men Who Help Themselves. No. 29. Pressing

Problems of Rolling Stock . .

Observations of a Country Station-Agent. No. 20.

(Illustrated.)

Riding the Rail from Coast to Coast. No. 1 1. Out in the

" Great Hot " (Illustrated.)

" Uncle Holly's " Record Run. True Story. No. 40 . .
Railroad and Commuters in Battle of Jokes. (Illustrated ) .

Charles F. Anderson

E. L. Bacon
Olin Crawford

Horace Herr . . .
William Clinton Court

Herman Da Costa

C. F. Carter . . .

J. E Smith . . . .

Gilson Willets .
Sam Henry .
George Jean Nathan

VERSE AND DIVERSE.

By the Light of the Lantern

The Paymaster. (Poem.) Frederick Sanders

Recent Railroad Patents Forrest G Smith

The Railroad Man's Brain Teasers

MISCELLANEOUS

Famous Flying Scotchman .
Up-to-Date Railroad Discipline "' .
A Santa Fe Giant. (Illustrated ) .
The Roundhouse Foreman .
How Railroads Are Built in China
Roll -Call of Veterans ....

586
604
615
656
660
691

Largest Electric Engine. (Illustrated.)
Pennsy Goes to Farming . . . .
Lounging Libraries on Wheels .
Large Salary Too Small .

Railroad Scholarships

On the Editorial Carpet .

605
641
693
749

587
627
657
b70
715
727
735

577

597
616

635
653

661

679

684

705

724
743

622
704
732
758

722
723
742
748
757
759

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THE MILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE

Vol. X.

JANUARY, 1910.

No. 4.

When the Rules Were Broken.

BY CHARLES F. ANDERSON.

ISCIPLINE among railroad men is almost as strict, under normal
conditions, as it is in the army. Where so many thousands of passen-
gers and so many hundreds of tons of freight must be handled daily,
it is absolutely necessary that rules should be stringent and that their viola-
tion should be rigidly punished.

But that does not mean that there is no room left for the individual to use
his judgment. Emergencies arise frequently in which the rules give no
help — when they may, on the contrary, be a direct hindrance. Then the rules
must be broken. So, in addition to being good workmen, railroaders must
have tact and judgment and something of that quality of foresight and inde-
pendence of thought that makes a good diplomat.

Instances Which Show That It's a Wise Railroad Man Who Knows

When to Obey the Rules and When

to Break Them.

,E'LL get that statue
to Memphis if we
have to break every
rule in the code."

Thus spoke an of-
ficial of the Sea-
board Air Line, in accepting for delivery
the huge bronze equestrian statue of
General Forrest, which was unveiled in
Memphis a few years ago, and the Sea-
board proceeded forthwith to break
whole pages of rules set forth in the
Standard Code — the book of regulations
issued by the American Railway Associa-
tion.

It happened in this way: The enor-
1 R R 577

mous model of the statue of the distin-
guished cavalryman, by Charles Henry
Niehaus, a New York sculptor, was sent
to the Maison Gruet, bronze founders, of
Paris. When the statue in bronze was
ready for shipment, its height was such
that it could not be taken to a seaport by
rail, hence was floated down the Seine on
a barge to Havre.

Upon its arrival in New York, the
same difficulty as to rail transportation
presented itself. After weeks of delay,
the Seaboard sent it by sea to Savannah,
thence on its way by rail to Atlanta.
Approaching the Georgia capital, how-
ever, came the supreme difficulty, in

578

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

overcoming which so many rules were
broken.

Bridges of insufficient height blocked
the statue's way. It was side-tracked.
Then followed a powwow of the ship-
ping-agents, members of the statue com-
mittee, and the sculptor, seeking a way
to get the statue past the low bridges
without subversion of rules. The whole
press of the South teemed with sugges-
tions, many of them as humorous as they
were impossible, and still the monument
remained on the siding.

Then came the crucial decision. The
statue must either be got to Memphis or
the company own themselves beaten and
a great public disappointment occur.

It was then that the Seaboard official
said " Break the rules ! " He ordered a
wrecking-train to go ahead of the freight-
train carrying the statue, and " lift the

"get permission from

YOUR FATHER, AND )f
WE'LL DO THE REST.

bridges " — heroic measure in behalf of a
heroic public work of art.

In lifting the bridges, however, all the
railroad rules were broken in regard to
impeding or obstructing road (carriage
and wagon) traffic. Passenger-trains
were delayed by a freight-train, in vio-
lation of an obvious regulation. Load-
ed freight-trains having the right of way
were held up for a time by the ." Forrest
Statue Train," as it was called by the
press, the company thus contravening its
own code as to the movement of trains.
The sacred schedule became tempo-
rarily a thing of confusion confounded.
The customary mathematical precision
of operation called for by the regulations
was suspended, and many railroad men
were compelled to work overtime, in op-
position to the rules laid down.

Finally, however, the statue was run
into Memphis over the - Birmingham
Railway, the road which General For-
rest himself had built.

This incident constitutes one of the
most notable cases of rule-breaking
known to the railway Avorld, but the
Seaboard Air Line rendered a public
service as a common carrier.

AVhen all the Long Island Railroad
enginemen then on trains in the Long
Island City yard blew the whistles of
their locomotives as a salute to the Duke
and Duchess of Marlborough starting
to a Vanderbilt estate on Long Island
for their honeymoon, the men in the
engine - cabs violated
Train Rule 32 —
"The unnecessary
use of the whistle
is prohibited. It will
be used only as pre-
scribed by rule or
law, or to ~ prevent
accident."

A rule may be
violated for several
causes, such as the
public Avelfare or
safety, expediency in
particular circum-
stances of the mo-
ment, humanitarian
reasons consistent
with the Golden
Rule, averting fric-
tion in the working

WHEN THE RULES WERE BROKEN.

579

of the railroad machine called organiza-
tion, reasons of diplomacy. No rule is
so inflexible that it cannot be bent or
stretched, if not broken, in any of these
cases.

Above all, a rule may be broken foi
the good of the railway service. For
example, the very first of rules was
broken in this laudable cause, to make
possible the writing of this article.

The Book of Rules, the Hoyle of the
railroad game, testament of railroad men,
to go counter to which is tantamount to
blasphemy, was loaned to one not a rail-
way employee. A journalist was allowed
to take the " Standard Code," and to
keep it forever and ever. Yet the very
first rule in that volume is that it shall
be loaned only to employees of railways
belonging to the American Railway As-
sociation.

Why, then, was the alpha of rules
broken? Railroad officials seek to edu-
cate the people on railway matters, thus
to induce them to keep on the hop, skip,
and jump. By loaning the rules to
" one not an employee," the railway offi-
cial who gave the journalist the volume
for reference in writing a • railroad arti-
cle saw a chance for further public edu-
cation in respect to railway travel. So
a rule was deliberately broken — for the
good of the service.

Sometimes a minor train rule may be
broken at the discretion of engineman or
conductor ; as, for illustration, by allow-
ing other than the " proper employees "
(presumably enginemen and firemen) to
ride on a locomotive.

Courtesy to the President.

On one occasion, two of the Roosevelt
children, at the Oyster Bay railroad sta-
tion, asked, without previous notice, to
be permitted to " take a ride on the en-
gine." The train was about to pull out,
and the engineman and conductor went
into executive session. On the one hand
was the prohibitory rule ; on the other, a
possible discourtesy to the Chief Magis-
trate of the nation. - Further, there was
Rule 106 of the Standard Code—" In all
cases of doubt or uncertainty, the safe
course must be taken and no risks run."

" We'll compromise," said the engi-
neer to the conductor. And, turning to

the children, he added : " You get per-
mission from your father, and we'll do
the rest."

Forthwith the telephone to Sagamore
Hill was worked " and the youngsters
got a ride to Mineola," said the con-
ductor, afterward relating the incident.

Certain railroad rules are made, not
to be strictly enforced on any and every
occasion, but merely for use when cer-
tain tacit privileges are abused.

For example, to drape a car in bunting,
flags, banners, or signs advertising any
article, company, or organization, is for-
bidden on many roads. Yet this rule is
often broken, with the tacit consent of
railroad authorities. Did the rule not
exist, any manufacturer of pills, porous-
plasters, or other commodity, could buy
all the space on a Pullman and drape the
car's exterior with posters setting forth
the merits of his wares.

For W. J. Bryan's Sake.

When, however, an organization pure-
ly religious, political, or patriotic in
character, goes forth on an excursion
and wishes to display banners or bunt-
ing, it is usually permitted to do so.

A train containing a delegation from
the West, en route to New York to wel-
come William Jennings Bryan (not the
" Nebraska Home Folks," who came over
the Pennsylvania, but a party of Mis-
sourians and others) arrived at Buffalo.
The delegates traveled in a special Pull-
man, which was decorated with bunting
and banners bearing political war-cries.

A railroad authority ordered that the
"offending drapery be removed. Dele-'
gates expostulated. Authority remained
obdurate, quoting the rules.

A discussion ensued,' delaying the train.
Then along came a higher officer.

" Pass that car, war-cries and all ! "
he ordered. " Though I can't guaran-
tee," he added, " that you will get into
New York City with your banners out."

" All or nothing ! " cried the dele-
gates, declaring that they would tear ,off
the banners, despite the permission of
the officer to go as far as they could
unless permission was also granted to go
right through. When the train pulled
out of Buffalo, however, the decorations
still remained in place.

580

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

That officer broke a rule, " for the
good of the service."

On the Harriman roads all general
orders were issued by the late E. H. Har-
riman himself. To disobey a Harriman
order was a crime somewhat analogous
to Use majeste in the realm of the Ger-
man Emperor.

Harriman's Non-Zigzag Rule.

One day the " Czar of the Union and
Southern Pacifies " issued an order de-
creeing that the maps of his lines should
no longer be printed in such a wa_y as to
make it appear that they are all short
cuts, or air lines, but should thereafter
show the exact course of the rails, every
slightest curve and zigzag to be repre-
sented exactly.

The first new Southern Pacific map
that came to Mr. Harriman after this
decree showed the usual air-line course
direct from New Orleans to San Fran-
cisco. Mr. Harriman gazed in wonder.
Had he not with his own voice dictated
to his stenographer an order, and had he
not signed it with his own hand? And
here was a line as straight as the road
to Heaven, when it should have been as
crooked as the road to — well, somewhere
else.

" Send me the man that made this
map!" he thundered.

Into his presence came the guilty
draftsman.

" You are angry, sir, of course ; but
you would have been more angry if we
had issued — this."

And he thrust before his president a
map wherein the course of the Southern
Pacific resembled a Weather Bureau
temperature diagram. Every trembling
curve and zigzag between the Crescent
City and the Golden Gate was limned
forth minutely; even &41 the windings
and twistings and switchbacks in the
scenic approach to the third highest rail-
road bridge in the world at the Pecos
Canon in Texas, were shown on that
map.

-Mr. Harriman crumpled it up and
hurled it into the waste-basket.

Then, turning to the draftsman, he
said softly, with a twinkle in his eye:

" Get me a copy of that order. It
needs editing."

It is better to break a rule now and
then than to cause friction in the rail-
road machine by adhering in every case
to the strict letter of a" rule. Railroad
men vouch for the truth of this axiom,
for they tell of men who have been dis-
charged for not breaking the rules.

James J. Hill discharged two men be-
cause they refused to obey the mandates
of their testament. First, when the
" King of the Northwest " was mana-
ging the St. Paul, Minnesota and Mani-
toba Railway, he taught the lumbermen
in his territory how to pack shingles in
flat, square packages, by alternating the
thick and thin ends of the boards. Then
he put into force a rule that all shingles
shipped should be so packed.

One day, at a station, he overheard an
altercation between a shipper and a
freight clerk, the clerk refusing to re-
ceive shingles that were not packed ac-
cording to regulations.

" But ship the goods first, and com-
plain afterward," the shipper was say-
ing, " for these shingles are wanted up
the road in a hurry, and if they don't
go by this train I shall lose the sale."

Hill Makes Exceptions.

" Can't take 'em," persisted the clerk,
stubbornly sticking to rules.

" You're too fresh at this business,
young fellow," retorted the shipper.
" You're always making trouble at this
point with your everlasting rules."

" See here, young man," said Mr.
Hill, stepping forward, " ship those
shingles as they are."

The clerk gasped — he recognized the
president of the road.

Next day the clerk was discharged by
telegraph without explanation. No at-
tempt was made to remedy his methods
because they were constitutional and not '
curable by regulations. He was simply
" incompetent," for the reason that he
caused needless friction.

" Too much yard-stick." said men
down the line. " will break the best man."
Which, being interpreted means that too
close adherence to the rules will, under
certain circumstances, lead to the dis-
charge of an otherwise valuable man.

In the second instance, Mr. Hill ac-
quired a large interest in the stock of the

WHEN THE RULES WERE BROKEN.

581

WHEN HE HAD COVERED THE QUICKEST MILE OF HIS CAREER, HE SAW THE LOADED FREIGHT
COMING, TEARING ALONG WITH ALL THE SELF-CONFIDENCE OF RIGHT OF WAY.

"St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. While
visiting the main offices of the road, he
glanced into one large room and asked
with some asperity :

"How many clerks here?"

" Eighty-five, sir."

"Can't you do with fewer?"

" No, sir. The rules specify employ-
ment in this office for eighty-five men."

" Rules, eh ! Well, ' I'll get a man
who can break 'em."

Truesdale's Rest-Cure Rule.

On the Lackawanna road an order has
long been in force making it, so far as
possible, mandatory upon its employees
to take at least' eight hours' rest in each
twenty-four.

" In this rule," says President Trues-
dale, " we merely carry into formal effect
a recognized scientific principle. The
railroad business is such that the men
engaged, particularly in the passenger,
freight, and telegraph services, must be
eager, watchful, alert, every minute,
with steady -nerves and in the best physi-
cal condition. When I hear of an acci-
dent, I ask: "Who was directly respon-
sible, and was the man working over-
time?"'

One night during the Pan-American
Exposition, at Buffalo, when the Lacka-
wanna trains were carrying enormous
crowds, a trainman was ordered to " go
out " with two extra cars that had just
been attached to a train. The man de-
murred.

" The rules forbid overtime," he said,
" and I've already put in sixteen hours
to-day. If I go on that train, how am I
to get the eight hours' rest and recrea-
tion out of this twenty-four, as the rules
say I must? "

" All right, Jim, I'll have to report
you."

Now here was a paradoxical situation,
in which to obey a regulation would
render, the man guilty of insubordination.
He chose the wiser course, obeying the
" obedience " rule, yet violating what
Lackawanna men call " Truesdale's
rest-cure rule."

Broken for a Joke.

This was an instance in which, the exi-
gencies of the railroad service called for
the breaking of one rule in order to com-
ply Avith a more important one.

When Senator Depew was president
of the New York Central, he one day

582

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

broke one of the most important of the-. There are railroad men who have
company's rules by stopping a limited broken even a dozen rules at a time, in
train at a small town scheduled only for emergencies, and these are the very men
locals who, by tnus rising to an occasion de-

A joke, nothing more nor less, induced mandirg heroic measures, proved them-
Mr. Depew thus to violate his own rules selves fit to occuny, and row do occupy3

high executive positions
in the railway world.

Prince Michael Hil-
koff, Russian imperial
minister of railways, is
one who in half an hour
broke half the "Rules for
Switchmen " in force on
an American railway.
Coming to this country
as an emigrant and under
an assumed name, he se-
cured employment as a
station - master on the
Philadelphia, Wilming-
ton and Baltimore, now
part of the Pennsylvania
system.

His station was at a
junction. One night when
excursion trains in many-
sections were returning
from the ceremonies of
an Inauguration Day in
Washington, there was a
blockade at his junction
caused by poor switching
arrangements. Excursion-
trains, regular passenger-
trains, and freight-trains
became congested in a
seemingly inextricable
mass, threatening a delay
far into the night.

For months Hilkoff had been study-
ing the switching problem at his station,
planning exactly what he would do to
relieve just such congestion as now exist-
ed. Here, then, was his chance to test
his scheme.

Running to the switch-house, he took

CALMLY RAISED HIS CANE AND STRUCK THE WINDOW-PANE

and render to a friend a service which
otherwise he would have denied. He
received this telegram, dated at an un-
important station near Syracuse :

Kindly have Empire State Express
stop here to. take on Mrs. Piatt and

Me Too.

The request was entirely opposed to possession of the machinery despite the

the regulations regarding that important protests of the switchmen. He switched

train, but at the time the " Me too " joke and switched for half an hour, issuing

was rampant. So, chuckling, Mr. De- commands meantime to enginemen, or-

pew issued the necessary order. dering one train to move here, another

"If you had signed that wire just T. there, until by a series of movements of

C. Piatt," he afterward said to the po- trains backward and forward, he broke

litical leader, " J would not have hor- the blockade and the trains glided by his

rifted the sticklers for rules in the station without further hitch.
operating department." In the performance of this feat. Hil-

WHEN THE RULES WERE BROKEN.

583

koff broke so many of the rules laid
clown for switchmen, that next day the
division superintendent's reprimand in-
cluded such epithets as " high-handed,"
" awful," and " most extraordinary."
At the same time he offered Hilkoff pro-
motion to a job as brakeman.

The prince (or whatever nominal
colors he was then sailing under) after-
ward became a conductor on the same
road. His work that night is another
illustration of the fact that there are oc-
casions on which, rather than follow the
rules slavishly, it is better for the service
to cast them to the four winds.

To Save Human Life.

Accidents have been averted and lives
saved more than once by railroad men who
have had the temerity and common sense
deliberately to break a rule. A station-
agent, who was also switchman and tele-
graph operator, at Moore's Mills,
'New York, on the single-track New-
burg, Dutchess and Connecticut
Railway, received a telegraph order
which, translated into understand-
able English, read :

Keep track clear for No. 10,
loaded freight. Hold No. 8, empty
freight, on the siding till No. 10
has .passed.

When the switchman, who was
also station - agent and telegraph
operator, tried to operate the switch
that would side-track the coming
" empty," it would not budge. The
supporting woodwork had rotted,
permitting the switching apparatus
to sink so that it was jammed.

What was the switchman to do?
His testament told him that he must
not leave his station when trains
were expected, must not forsake his
telegraph-key for even a moment,
but must stand by ready for any sud-
den order over .the wire. Yet two
trains were rushing toward one an-
other and the immovable switch and
the rule-book formed a channel which
threatened to lead both to certain
destruction.

He thought like lightning. How
could he save the situation? Why,
he could side-track the loaded down

freight, instead of the empty up freight,
for the switch at the upper end of the
siding would work. But this course
would be contrary to his own orders and
to those carried by the conductors and
enginemen of both trains. Moreover, in
order to warn the loaded freight of the
open switch at one end of a siding that
was closed at its other end, he would
be obliged to leave his office, thus vio-
lating still another ordinance.

Without hesitation he resolved to
break the orders both as to trains and
station, in the first place by side-tracking
the loaded -freight, and, secondly, by
leaving his post in order to warn the
engineman of the closed switch. Seizing
a lantern, he rushed to the switch at the
upper end of the siding, threw it open,
then ran for dear life up the track,
sprinting like an athlete on a cinder-
path.

When he had covered the quickest mile

THE

STUDENTS TOOK DOWN THE FLAPS AND PACKED
THEM INTO SUIT-CASES.

584

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

of his career, he saw the loaded freight
coming, tearing along with all the self-
confidence of right of way. Planting
himself between the rails, the breathless
switchman swung his lantern horizontally
in front of his body and across the track,
crying thus in railroad-lantern language,
"Stop! "

As the train slowed down he climbed
aboard the engine, explained the situa-
tion in a word to the driver, and hardly
had that loaded No. 10. come to a halt
safely on the siding, when the empty No.
8 thundered by.

" Absent from your post. What's ail-
ing you? "

These were the words with which the
Morse key greeted the perspiring switch-
man when he returned to his station.

" I'll make my own report to the boss "
(di vision superintendent), "and I reckon
I've done a job that means promotion to
the main line for little Willie, though I've
busted the code. Send section foreman
P. D. Q. to repair switch," he clicked
back to the train-despatcher.

An engineer of a flyer who brings in
his train late (through his own fault),
three times in the same week or fortnight,
is likely to find himself transferred to
another and less important train. So, if
you are on a flyer that is behind time, your
engineman is feeling more worried than
you are. ,

For a Speed Record.

On the other hand, Rule 92 forbids an
engineman to make better time than the
schedule calls for. He must not lag, but
also he must not rush in ahead of time.

This rule as to keeping speed in con-
formity with schedule, was broken by an
engineman of the Empire State Express,
though by only half a minute. The
cause was a race with another locomo-
tive.

He was thoroughly conversant with
the rules, but when he beheld a lone
locomotive running on a parallel track
and in the same direction, at Crittenden,
twenty-one miles east of Buffalo, and
then beheld the lone locomotive getting
ahead of his invincible Empire State, and
further beheld the engineman of the lone
engine waving his hand in a derisive " So
long ! " it was too much for the Empire

State. His pride was quickened, and
he gave the throttle a vicious jerk.

Whereupon Empire State cleared the
next mile — mile only, of course — in thir-
ty-two seconds, or at the almost unequaled
rate of one hundred and twelve miles an
hour, a speed not really called for by the
schedule.

And at the peril of suspension, or
even more severe penalty, for breaking
speed rules, the triumphant engineman
told of his exploit at his division . end.
The story was wired to New York, and
lo ! the next morning's papers teemed
with the tale of the record-making mile
run. That engineman, by his daring
rule-breaking deed, lasting only thirty-
two seconds, furnished an excellent ad-
vertisement for the road.

A Time to Forget the Rules.

Often a conductor finds it diplomatic
to ignore a train rule, especially when
such a rule is broken by a passenger. On
a New Haven train, a certain prominent
actor was returning to his home in New
Rochelle. It was a hot night and he
raised his window. To his utter aston-
ishment and amusement, the passenger
in the seat behind leaned over and
slammed it down.

The actor promptly reraised the win-
dow, without so much as looking at the
enemy, and as promptly the enemy re-
closed it with a bang. This time the
actor calmly raised his cane and struck
the window-pane, shattering it, and pro-
ceeded to cane away the remaining jagged
pieces of glass around the edges, then
quietly resumed the perusal of his news-
paper.

The enemy, outwitted by this coup de
main, changed his seat, as he might have
done in the beginning, for the car was
only half filled. Under the rules, the
actor was guilty of a misdemeanor. He
had deliberately " destroyed, defaced,
and otherwise marred railroad prop-
erty," and the conductor saw him do it,
for he had been an eye-witness of the
whole comedy.

General Rule L requires the con-
ductor to protect the company's propertv.
but that conductor was a diplomat, and
knew when to break the rules by ignor-
ing a rule broken bv a passenger.

WHEN THE RULES WERE BROKEN.

"Just' pay the bill when you receive
it," he said to the actor, who was well
known to him.

To have arrested the actor would have
caused notoriety that would not have re-
dounded to the credit of the road.

Again, velvet sashes, or flaps, contain-
ing _the berth numbers in aluminum
figures, were used, until recently, on the
sleeping-cars of a road running into
Boston. After the berths were made
down, the numbered
flaps of velvet were
hung over the cur-
tains, where all might
see them.

The Yale and Har-
vard students had a
happy thought. The
aluminum figures
would make very ex-
cellent numbers to
represent their class
year. For example,
the numbers 10 and
6, dissected and com-
pounded, served the
useful purpose of a
badge for class of
" '06." Now for a
college student to have a happy thought,
expecially if it is not on strictly-orthodox
lines, is to execute it, and, accordingly,
the flaps began to disappear with a per-
sistency, regularity, and boldness worthy
of a better cause.

One night a few years ago, after a
Yale-Harvard football game, Harvard
students filled an entire sleeper. Not
long after the berths had been made
down, the conductor received a shock.
The students, under his very eyes, took
down the flaps and packed them into
sundry suit-cases.

What was the conductor to do? The
rules called for arrest of the perpetrators
of the wholesale robbery, of which" he
had been an eye-witness. Should he take
into custody forthwith the eighteen stu-
dents in the car? What a howl of deri-
sion, from Harvard men, would hence-
forth smite the ears of all connected with
the road ! No, the conductor let the
culprits sleep in peace, and in Boston
he secured new flaps.

When he sent in his truthful report of
the bold filching, including his own

shortcoming in not arresting the men —
mum was the word at headquarters, not
even a demerit mark was charged to that
conductor for breaking the rules.

There are instances in which to obey

HOPED TO SNEAK THROUGH TO NEW YORK.."

a railroad rule would be to break the
Golden Rule, and rules have been broken
entirely for humanitarian reasons. For
instance, a cigar-maker boarded a train
at Jacksonville, Florida, made up en-
tirely of Pullmans. He had his rail-
road ticket, but no money for his Pull-
man fare, and he was on his way to a
new job at Tampa.

• Pullman rules and regulations state
.that the proper cash fare must be col-
lected for seat or berth from each pas-
senger boarding a train without having
purchased a ticket for the same. The
rule, in this case, was broken, and the
poor cigarmaker, who showed a letter
from his new employers enjoining him
to come with all haste not later than that
particular train, was carried to Tampa
deadhead.

Again, a private-car, attached to a
train from the West, which went no far-
ther than Buffalo, rolled one night into
the main station of that city, with the
owner aboard. The owner desired
earnestly that his car be hitched to a
New York express which was about to

586

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

leave, but the official to whom this ap-
peal was made, noticed that the private
car was not equipped according to rules
with the required steam-heat coupler or
the one-and-a-half-inch straight port
steam-coupler.

" Old-fashioned car," he said to the
owner. " Are you in a very special
hurry? "

" Hurry? My wife's in that car dan-
gerously ill, on her way to- New York
for a life-saving operation."

Now that official's rule-book stated
that " cars from connections cannot be
handled except when fully equipped with
the following " — And there followed a
list of " special vertical plane couplers,
air-train signal's," and so on, including
the steam-heat apparatus.

Furthermore, the rules read : " Dur-
ing the summer months, however, when
notified a sufficient time in advance, the
above equipment can be handled regard-
less of steam-heating."

Well, it was certainly summer-time,
but the road had not been " notified a
sufficient time in advance " regarding
steam-heating. Special orders from of-
ficials higher up ought to be obtained
before passing that private car. To get
such special orders would take several

hours, as it was the time of night when
higher officials were comfortable between
sheets.

With these conditions on his mind,
combined with thoughts of that invalid
wife and the imperatively needed opera-
tion, the embarrassed official cried :.
" Here, you fellows, hitch that private
to No. 7!"

And now here is one more instance of
rule-breaking for the sake of the com-
mon brotherhood.

A sailor, in the uniform of the United
States navy, boarded a train at Phila-
delphia, and handed the conductor a
ticket to Trenton. Trenton Avas passed
and still the sailor was aboard. The con-
ductor approached him and said severely :

" You had a short ticket. That's an
old dodge. You'll have to pay cash fare
from Trenton to New York, if that's
where you're going."

" Look here, shipmate," replied the
jackie, " I had only money enough to
make Trenton, but I hoped to sneak
through to New York. My leave's up
and I've got to join my ship at Brook-
lyn Navy Yard by twelve to-night. Say,
shipmate, give us a lift."

Contrary to the " railroad man's testa-
ment," he •got the "lift."

FAMOUS FLYING JSCOTCHMAN.

ONE of the most famous trains in the
world is the Flying Scotchman, the
English Great Northern train that makes a
daily run from London to Edinburgh. We
have collected the following remarkable sta-
tistics about it :

This aristocratic flier has been running
between London and Edinburgh, a distance
of approximately four hundred miles, for
nearly sixty years without an accident. In
ether words, it has left King's Cross Station
daily at ten o'clock with unfailing regularity
for fifty-seven years, the only changes be-
ing in arrival at Edinburgh, and these
changes being caused by constant improve-
ments in the schedule.

In 1852 the distance was four hundred and
two miles, and the running time eleven
hours. In 1863 this was reduced to ten
hours and a half; in 1872 to nine hours and
a half. In 1876 it was again reduced to
rine hours, in 1888 to eight hours and a
and in 1901, the distance being short-
r e hundred and ninety-three

miles, to eight hours and a quarter. This
is going some !

The same engine that makes this run
hauls the return night train to London in six
hours and nineteen minutes. These reduc-
tions in time have been the results of ex-
citing races and keen competition. The
fastest time ever made by the Scotchman
was seven hours and twenty-six minutes, the
result of a series of races beginning August
13, 1888.

On that day she made the run in seven
and three-quarter hours, an average of
fifty-three miles an hour. The next day she
did it in seven hours thirty-two minutes,
and on the 31st she made the run in seven
hours and twenty-six minutes, an average of
fifty-five and a half miles an hour. On this
run she covered four consecutive miles at
seventy-six miles an hour.

Another distinction of the Flying Scotch-
man is that until 1872 she was not com-
pelled to carry third-class passengers, being
the onlv Great Northern train thus favored.

FREEZING TO DEATH!

BY WILLIAM IVORY IRVINE.

How Jennings Held the Fort in a Blizzard,
and How the Chief Despatcher Held Jennings.

OR fourteen hours the
storm had blown the
white flakes against the
little station at Wimmer
Summitt until nothing
else could be seen but the
little weather-worn red building.

Jennings, the relief operator, opened
the door and looked vainly for a break
in the heavy clouds, but nothing could
be seen but the snow. His relief was
now two hours overdue and the chances
for his arrival were very slim.

Cursing the weather, he slammed the
door and walked to the little stove
which was making a brave effort to
warm the bare interior. It was pretty
hard lines to be stuck in such a hole all
right, he mused, pulling the chair up to
the stove, but tough lines were the rule
of the relief operators on the Erie and
Wyoming Valley Railroad.

Wimmer Summitt was known as the
hole of the little coal road which
climbed one side of Eagle Top Moun-
tain and went down the other. No one
ever called there, and it was the only
thing that ever had been built on the
top of the mountain with the exception
of the tracks. It was nothing but a shan-
ty, used as a reporting station, and the
only people the agent ever saw were the
train crews.

It takes more than a snow-storm and
a dreary station to dampen the spirits
of a nineteen-year-old telegrapher, sur-
charged with the desire to make his
mark on the line, and, after piling more
coal on the stove, Jennings ate part of
the lunch he had left from his noonday
meal and busied himself with the time
schedule.

The latter proved to be very compli-
cated, owing to delays caused by huge
snow-banks on the tracks, and it was long
after midnight when he had finished.

The stove had long since forsaken its
warmth and it was some time before
Jennings stirred himself and built a new
fire.

The solemnity of the atmosphere was
disturbed only by the continuous click
of the telegraph machine. At dawn Jen-
nings arose from his desk, stiff and sore
from his long sitting, and looked out of
the window.

.The snow was falling just as steadily,
and showed no signs of abating. The
wind had increased in velocity and the
drifts were plainly visible on the top of
the track. The agent 'was fairly chilled
as he looked on these banks and thought
of the chances for his relief to surmount'
that mountain.

There was not an engine on the road
which was capable of pushing up that
high grade through those drifts. If an
engine could not get up he would have
to stay there until the storm ceased, and,
from the way the wind was now blowing,
it looked as though he would be held
there until the end of the storm.

The supplies for living were slim. He
had nothing eatable except a remnant
of yesterday's meal, a small box of
biscuits, and two cans of sardines left
him by Mason, the regular operator.

He was nearly famished and would
have to use the best part of his meager
eatables to satisfy the pangs of present
hunger. For the first time he realized
the seriousness of his position, and draw-
ing a jack-knife from his pocket he re-
luctantly opened one of the cans.

5S7

588

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Should he eat this now, or should he
save it? Hunger cried, " Now," but
reason called him to look to the future.

Jennings halted in the midst of his
undertaking and proceeded to reason the
situation as it appealed to his innermost
thought. Yes, he would have to divide
these morsels of food into at least six
meals.

Could he do it? For a long while he
stood with a half-opened can clutched
tightly in his hand, the sharp edges of
the metal cutting his skin. Then, as if
his mind had grasped the situation, he
slowly wiped the knife on his trousers
leg and dropped it into his pocket.

His resolution had no more than been
formed when the little instrument on the
desk started to sputter his call :

YES, THERE WAS THE LAMP.

"Ws-Ws- Ws — Co. Ws — Ws —
Ws— Co."

The operator dropped into his chair,
opened the lever, and gave the signal to
go ahead.

" This is Nather," the sounder clicked
under the chief train despatcher's steady
sending. " I can't get a relief up before
to-night; we are all tied up. Can you
hold on?"

" If you can't get one up before to-
night, I guess I'll have to," clicked back
Jennings. "I'm short on meals and will
have to come up pretty close if I am
going to see it through," he added.

"Do the best you can ' and keep a

stiff grip on things and keep awake. If

you go to sleep in that shanty, you will

freeze to death before night. Will call

you later and let

you know h\> w

things are coming

along," answered

Nather.

The sounder was
silent. Now he
would have to
stretch his ~ supplies
as he had expected.
There was no other
way. -

He heated a can
of water, and with a
couple of biscuits
and part of the sar-
dines he made his
breakfast. For the
first time he began
to feel sleepy, .and
calling to Glenside,
he asked the agent
to answer his call if
he was wanted.
Putting on his over-
coat he opened the
door and stepped
out in the snow.

The first blast of
the northeaster
knocked all

thoughts of sleep
out of him and he
started down the
track to fill the sig-
nal-lamp at t he
switch a quarter of
a mile away. His

FREEZING TO DEATH!

589

HE LIFTED THE LID OF THE BIN
AND — THERE WAS NO COAL !

progress was slow. The snow blew
steadily into his face, making it difficult
to catch his breath.

The walking was bad, and by the time
he had reached the lamp he was well-
nigh exhausted from his exertions.
Jennings wished for the station and its
little stove as he struggled with the wind
to fill the lamp.

His task finished, he started on the
return journey. It seemed now as if the
distance was longer than the down trip.
His feet felt heavy and his steps lost
their long stride and now dragged.
Twice he stumbled over a hidden tie,
but he kept his feet, and, after what
seemed hours, he threw open the door of
the station and stumbled in. The little
station was glowing with friendly
warmth and he was glad to pull off his
wet coat and gloves and sit clown in
front of the fire.

If he could only take a little nap, how
much better he would feel. But no ;
sleep was out of the question. Wasn't
that what Nather had told him not to
do? No, he would not sleep. Angry
with the thought that he would sleep on

the job, Jennings walked across the
room and dropped heavily into his chair
and called Glenside to send his car re-
ports.

Routine work kept him busy until
evening and then he started to eat his
meager supper. Oh, but he was hungry.
Hadn't he gone without his dinner, just
to have a good supper?

He would have a half decent meal
and then he would go and light the sig-
nal-lamp. The cracker did not taste
hard now, and sardines never had such a
flavor before. He would like to eat
more, but that was impossible; he must
save some.

Suppose Nather could not get his re-
lief up ? But what was the use of look-
ing at it that way? Nather would do his
best, that was something. The chief des-
patcher liked him and would not forget
him, high up on top of the wind-swept
mountain, snowed in and short of food.

He would go and fix the lamp now ;
wouldn't like Nather to think that he
had forgotten to do his duty, he -thought,
as he put the last cracker that he had al-
lowed himself into the hot water. But

590

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

it was terrible outside; he could hear the
wind blowing, causing the wires to vi-
brate as he wrapped a paper around his
remaining biscuits. He picked up the
oil-can and swung it over his arm, his
mind made up, opened the door and
stepped outside.

The snow was not falling so much,
he thought, as he walked down the icy
ties, but the wind was blowing hard ; yes,
harder than before. He must be getting
near the place, he was sure he had
walked the required distance. Yes, there
was the lamp.

Slowly and painfully he unscrewed
the lamp. It was full. He gave a fee-
ble laugh as he remembered that he had
taken care of it in the'' morning. There
hadn't been any use in his carrying the
oil-can all the way down. He would
leave it there.

Using his body as a shield against the
wind, he lit the lamp. He felt better
now since he had fixed the lamp, he
would not have to bother with it again
for a long while, but he must get back
to the station. He remembered that the
coal-box was empty, and that he would
have to fill it from the bin at the back
of the station.

The thought of the warm stove stirred
his footsteps and he started on his re-
turn. He would go back and fill the
stove with coal, and in case the train did
not get through he would ask to be re-
lieved from "watching and he would go
to sleep.

Jennings succeeded in getting back,
and, without taking off his coat, picked
up the coal-buckets and started for the
coal-bin. At least he would have a good
fire until it was time for the train.

He lifted the lid of the bin and —
there was no coal! The lid fell from
his hand with a crash which was lost in
the roar of the wind. Something must
be wrong with his eyes.

Orders were orders, and they were
long-standing ones with the E. and W.
V. that all bins, at all times, be kept full.
Could the man on day duty have for-
gotten to order coal? It did not seem
possible, but there was no coal in the
bin.

For a long while Jennings stood as
one dazed, unmindful of the wind which
was howling and echoing down the long

corridors of darkness. His one hope
had gone.

Mechanically he picked up the buck-
ets and walked back to the station. At
the door he stopped and gazed down the
track. Below, he could see the little sig-
nal-light throwing its ray into the dark-
ness. He laughed now as he thought of
his earlier struggles.

The stove was still giving a most de-
lightful warmth. ' He would at least
get the benefit of it. But first he was
going to tell Nather a thing or two.
Throwing his coat and gloves on the lit-
tle bench running around the wall, he
walked quickly to" his desk where the
little piece of metal was clicking. Sleep
was forgotten now in his newly aroused
anger, and, pulling back the lever, he
silenced the instrument.

" Co— Co— Co— Ws," he ticked.

After a short delay the " Ws here,"
sounded.

"Is Nather there?" Jennings clicked,
dropping into his chair.

" Wait a minute," the instrument an-
swered.

" Never can get anything or anybody
when you want them," Jennings mut-
tered, as he waited impatiently.

"What do you want?" sounded the
ticker.

Jennings recognized Nather's sending
and throwing open the lever, asked :

" What is the matter with you peo-
ple? Here I am storm-stuck in this
God-forsaken hole without a pound of
coal."
* "What?"

Nather's question came over the wire
with such a rush that Jennings could al-
most see the man shouting at him. One
could always recognize the personality
of the man when Nather got on the
wire.

" There is not a pound of coal here,"
Jennings repeated, " and my fire won't
last more than a half-hour."

" Why, I thought there was enough
coal to last forty-eight hours longer,"
Nather was now sending like he talked
when excited. The words came piling
in on top of each other with barely a
pause between them. The wire fairly
burned with his indignation.

" D-id that fbol let his supply run
down like that?" he asked, and then

FREEZING TO DEATH!

591

waited a moment as though to explain
his position and then started to telegraph
rapidly :

" He ought to be tarred and feathered.
We received his order just before you
took . charge and supposed that he had
some left and were sending some up in
regular order."

As Jennings listened to the explana-
tion, his anger cooled and he thought
with pity what would happen to Mason.
Nathef was a strict disciplinarian, and
when his orders were broken his answer
was an order to call at the office and get
your time.

It was too bad that Mason would lose
his job.1 He was a good fellow, not
much older than himself and had a fine
woman and kid.

What would he do for a job? He
was not strong enough to go into the
mines. The line was the only thing '
that he could do. These thoughts passed
through his mind, and quickly opening
the line he answered :

" Look here, sir. Don't blame the
poor fellow. He is up to his neck in
trouble, and of course- he didn't know
that this confounded blizzard "was going
to set in. He knew that if his coal did
not hold out he could get enough from
the trains to last until it did come."

" We will have to take up his case
later," Nather answered. " The thing
that has got_.me going is that you have
not got any coal. But don't worry," he
added, "the snow has stopped and we
are sending a plow up on both sides and
they ought to reach you before the night
is over. Have you taken care of the
light?"

" Yes," answered Jennings.

" Well, for God's sake, don't go to
sleep."

The sounder stopped. Jennings felt
better now. Nather's assurance that re-
lief would soon be there cheered him,
and with a more hopeful view of the
situation, he arose from his chair and
walked over to the stove and threw open
the door.

How much longer would it hold out?
Fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour;
no more ! It was impossible to think
longer than that short thirty minutes.
The fire seemed to understand that it
could not live much longer and was put-

ting up a brave show, but around the
edges the dead ashes were already show-
ing, and to Jennings's mind, the strug-
gle to keep itself alive reminded him of
a dying man who understood just how
much longer he would exist.

The little red flames seemed to call to
him to help them out, but how could he?
The bin was empty. He felt that it was
impossible to look at the struggle and
not do something.

The flames, to him, were not the off-
spring of a heap of coals ; they were
human beings like himself, trying to
keep awake when it was impossible.
Nather's advice was forgotten. He
would sit down and go to sleep. with the
flames.

Yes, that would be better. He wanted
sleep. Why shouldn't he? It was too
much to ask a man to stay awake as
long as he had; the train would not get
up for hours yet. He would be awake to
meet them and then he could get more
coal and start new life in the fire. But,
how was he going' to keep it alive until
the train came? Maybe he could find
some wood.

Jennings aroused himself with a start
and looked around the room. He must
have been dozing. He did not remem-
ber sitting down. ' The fire was giving
up the fight and nothing remained but
the little red spot in the center, just like
the heart of a man, the last thing to give
up. His eyes wandered around the room
until they stopped before the little coal-
box. Why hadn't he used that before?
That would help the fire.

It was the work of but a" few min-
utes to reduce this to kindling and place
it on the fire. Like the patient who is
nearly dead when oxygen is applied, the
fire started to crack softly and in a few
minutes it was burning cheerily, feeding
itself on the wood as though afraid it
would be taken away before it could fin-
ish. Jennings watched the red flames
shooting in and out of the kindling and
then slowly sat clown.

" Ws— Ws— Ws— Co. Ws— Ws— Ws
—Co."

Again and again the telegraph instru-
ment gave the call, each time more in-
sistent.

Jennings raised his head with a start
and listened. The call was repeated.

592

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Well, he would look and ,then he
would go back to the fire. Picking up
his overcoat he threw it over his should-
ers, and setting his cap 'firmly on his
head he opened the door.

Like an electric shock the cold wind
struck him, and, closing the door quickly
so as not to lose any of the Sow precious
heat, he stepped down off the platform.
The wind was strong, but had stopped
blowing the little clouds of snow into
drifts.

The sky was clear, and here and there
a star could be seen high over his head.
The moon was shining, making it nearly

THE STOVE WAS LIKE A PIECE OF ICE.

Yes, somebody at Colesdale wanted to
speak with him.

Why didn't they let him alone, he
mumbled sleepily, rising and slowly
crossing the room. Pushing back the
lever he stopped the call, and when the
line was closed at the other end he sent
his O. K. After a short space the
sounder started to work.

" Go out and see if that signal-lamp
is lit," it said. ■ " This is Nather, and I
have a plow coming up on both sides.
You flag 87 up from Glenside and hold
it until 29 gets there and then call for
orders."

Jennings repeated the order and then
sent his O. K. and closed the wire.

" Certainly the light is set red," he
muttered, entering the order in the
book. " Why should Nather want to
chase me out in the cold?"

as light as day. He could see the lamp,
which looked like a ruby lying on a
cloth of white, shining brightly, down
the tracks. Now that he had obeyed
Nather's order, there was little use in
standing in the cold, 29 or 87 would not
be up for an hour anyway, and he would
go back and take care of the fire.

It felt good to be inside again, he
thought, closing the door. He could
take a rest now without disobedience.
After placing more wood on the fire he
dropped into the chair with the overcoat
still around his shoulders.

His eyes closed and he pushed his
legs out, one on either side of the stove.
Oh, but it felt good to close his eyes and.
stretch out after his long days and night.

Nothing could be heard in the room
but the soft cracking of the fire. Slowly.
Jennings's head began to nod, his shoul-

FREEZING TO DEATH!

593

ders hunched and he was rapidly losing
all thoughts of his surroundings.

Then the sounder of the telegraph on
the desk began to work. It kept sending
the same, " Ws— Ws— Co— Ws— Co.'"
Colesdale wanted Wimmer Summitt.
Again and again he sent the call, each
time more sharply.

The operator lifted his head with a
start. That sounded like his call. For
a full minute, as though his tired brain
refused to work, he listened, his head
to one side as if to hear better. The
dots and dashes were clearer now ; they
no longer crowded one another and he
could plainly hear now, " Ws — Ws —
Co." Yes, that was Ws, and Colesdale
was calling.

The telegrapher's instinct pulled him
to his feet and, like one blind, he placed
his arms out and walked slowly to his
desk? Why didn't they wait a minute?
He heard them. There was no use

breaking their arms sending his call.
Hadn't he always answered when he
was called? Some 'people made him
tired ; they were always in a rush when
there wasn't any cause. These thoughts
filled his head as he dropped into his
chair, leaned over the desk and opened
the lever and, slowly, as if to impress his
caller that he was taking care of his
work, he sent :

" Ws— O. K.— Co."

" Nather on the wire," the instrument
ticked. " Go out and see if that light is
all right. I don't want any smash-up."

" All right," Jennings answered and
closed the key. What the deuce was the
matter with Nather to ask him to go out
again. He had never before repeated
an order, why should he now? It must
be that he was worried with the work of
getting the road open. His feet felt like
lead as he dragged them slowly to the
door and opened it.

HE HAD ALREADY FORGOTTEN WHAT HAD BEEN SAID AGAINST HIM.

2 R R

594

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" Of course the light is lit," he said
aloud, speaking to the air. " I can see
it plainly. All rot, this going outside. I
won't go again. There was enough oil
in the lamp to last until morning; I saw
to that when I lit it.-"

Jennings stepped inside and closed the
door and then walked to the stove. It
had burned all the wood and once more
was going out. What could he feed it
with just to keep it alive for a few min-
utes? He looked around the room, but
excepting the table which held the in-
struments and the books, there was noth-
ing in the room but the two chairs.

His eyes traveled slowly over the
table, but there was nothing to burn but
the books. No, he could not use them,
but he could use the cardboard backs.
They would burn just like wood and
throw out a good heat.

Filled with this new thought he tore
the backs off, and after tearing them in
halves, threw them on the fire and
closed the door. Almost immediately
the fire burst into flames and threw
out a terrific heat. From his chair,
Jennings could see the flames through
the cracks roaring up the chimney. He
watched them, fascinated.

Now the flames did not show so much
and the roar ceased. He watched the
fire die almost as quickly as it had
started, and, throwing open the little
door, he watched the remaining pieces of
glowing cardboard curl up and then
fall back, white and dead.

It was all over now. There was no
red glow to keep him company. His
last friend had left him, and all that re-
mained was a few whitened ashes.

He looked around the room. It was
beginning to lose its look of warmth al-
ready. In the corners he could see the
cracks here and there which had been
opened by the wind and weather. Al-
ready the wind which had fought so
long to get in was whistling through,
and it seemed to the agent that it was
trying to call his attention to its victory
after the long fight.

With a shudder, Jennings took his
overcoat from his shoulders, where it
had been hanging loosely, and put it on,
buttoning it tightly from the neck down.
Then he sat down in front of the stove
so at to set what little heat remained.

It had been a long fight for him, but it
was ended now. If he could go to sleep
he would not feel so cold.

" Ws— Ws— Ws— Co." .

Again and again the call rang out
through the room. Jennings' turned his
head and watched the little brass ham-
mer as it pounded out the call. What
was wanted now? It surely could not
be Nather again; he would be too busy
to call him.

Some fool at Colesdale who would ask
him something which they could find out
if they'd look at the books! No, he
would not pay any attention to it. Let
them think that he was outside looking
after that lamp.

The sounder was working furiously.
It seemed to him like a' man who spoke
and did not get an answer, and then
called louder each time. It also seemed
as though somebody was shouting into his
ears.

The walls called ; even the wind com-
ing through the cracks stopped and lis-
tened and then started to call to him to
answer. He moved his already stiff
body and turned his back to the table.

Let them keep on calling ; they would
get tired after awhile and Avould stop.
But, what would happen then? He
would get his time. He didn't care.
He hoped that he would never see the
inside of a signal-station again.

He had had enough. He was big
enough now to go into the mines. It
was never cold there, and there was al-
ways somebody near, even if it was only
one of the little blind mine mules. There
would not be any fiendish pieces of brass
calling him every few minutes like it
was doing now. Why didn't they stop?
He would make them, and he would tell
that operator a thing or two.

Gathering his numbed legs, he stood
up. God, but it was cold ! He dropped
his hand on the top of the stove and
quickly pulled it away. The stove was
like a piece of ice !

He leaned against the chair and sleep-
ily looked at the telegraph. It seemed
bigger now. The sounding bar was al-
most as big as his' arm and was going
up and down like a connecting-rod of
an engine, tireless, always doing its work
when the power was put on.

Its ceaseless movement fascinated him.

FREEZING TO DEATH!

5S5

I GUESS 87 DID NOT GET YOU ANY TOO SOON."

he could not watch it any longer. He
must stop it or it would send him mad.

The noise was terrific. With a hoarse
cry he stumbled across the room and fell
into the chair. His right hand dragged
slowly out of his pocket until it rested
on the black-headed lever and threw it
open.

Instantly the pounding stopped. His
fingers slcrwly moved over to the key and
rested there, stiff and cold. How long
they lay there he did not know, and then,
like a beginner, he started to work them
slowly and awkwardly and spelled :

" Ws — O. K.," and after a long pause,
"Co."

Slowly his fingers left the key and
moved over to the table until they rested
on the lever and closed it. The key was
hardly closed when the sounder started.

"Where have you been? A train
could go to Hades before you would an-
swer," it»said. " Go out and see if that
signal is set all right to flag 87."

" I have just been out," Jennings an-
swered slowly. <J It is all right."

" But I want you to go out again,"
Nather replied.

After a long wait and not receiving
any answer he called :

" Go ahead/ Charlie. I am all upset
to-night and I am afraid something
might happen. I will wait at the wire."

Jennings raised himself from his
cramped position and, with a shudder,
walked to the door and looked out. Yes,
it was set all right. Now he would tell
Nather and he would not go out again.

He closed the door and looked at the
station clock. It was stopped. It must
be getting toward morning. What was
the matter with his arms and legs?

Thousands of pins and needles seemed
to be stuck in them, which hurt him every
time he took a step. What was the
cause of all those sharp pains? It was
with difficulty that he reached his chair
and opened the lever.

" It's all right. Is the train coming
up ? " he telegraphed, and after a few
minutes, looking at the silent sounder, he
sent :

" I'm cold and tired; I don't feel
hungry now."

The key was closed and then Nather
started, quickly, to inspire confidence :

596

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" Yes, it will get there soon. Keep
your' nerve and your relief will be there
before you know it."

Jennings heard but faintly, his face
was buried in his arms, which were lying
on the table. His cap had fallen off and
rolled to the floor, forgotten. It was
impossible to keep awake longer, but
why was Nather calling him again? He
had fixed the light. What was he say-
ing? He- lifted his head slightly and
peered forward. His eyes, heavy with
sleep, refused to fully obey him and
would only open part way.

" Jennings, Jennings, for God's sake,
answer me," the instrument was ticking.
Yes, he could hear now, but why was it
so far away? Now, what was it saying?

" You dead, or are you too darned lazy
to answer me — sneak — trying to throw
me down when I'm up to my neck in
work. Well — "

As if shot, Jennings sat up and
opened the key. The line was barely
closed when he started' to operate. He
did not feel so stiff that he could not
defend himself, and he threw his words
over the wire, hot and direct.

" You're a nice one to call me a sneak,
ain't you? Lazy, am I? Trying to throw
you down, am I? Well, when I meet
you, I'll show you. It's all right for you,
in a warm place, ' to keep asking a man
to go outside and look after a light and
a train that never comes.

" I was told that you would do ine if
you ever had a chance, and did not be-
lieve it. I knocked the man down who
told me. But he' was right. You have
no more feeling than a dog.

" Don't open that lever. You listen till
I'm finished, and it won't be long.
You've kept me up here for God knows
how long — I've forgotten — and then tor-
mented me by asking me to go outside.
I won't go ! "

He closed the key and fell back ex-
hausted from his exertions. Nather was
good and mad now, he could tell from
the way he was sending. It was no
longer the even steady roll that he gener-
ally sent. The -dots and dashes were
hardly distinguishable and the words
seemed to be running together. The
sending was of a man excited, angry.
What was he saying now? Jennings
listened.

" Talk to me like that, you cub; well,
I'll show you. I'll get rid of you so fast
that you'll wish you had never seen the
E. and W. V. I wouldn't have a man
like you on the road, you young bully."
Jennings nodded his head as though
agreeing with him. He had already for-
gotten what had been said against him.
His head fell into his arms. He was
too tired to bother now. Just let the C.
D. wait until he had some sleep and
wasn't so cold. He could catch a word
of abuse now and then from the many
that came over the wire, but the rest was
a continuous flow of dots and dashes,
dying away until he heard nothing.

With a start he sat up and looked
around. Everything was changed. He
was no longer in that little shanty of a
station at Wimmer Summitt. It was a
bedroom. He looked down and saw he
was in bed. How did he get there? Un-
able to understand, he dropped back on
the pillows and closed his eyes.

For a long Avhile he lay there, trying
to remember. Then he heard a door
open quietly and some one step into
the room and close the door.

He looked up. Nather stood there.
"Hallo, Charlie!" he said, and sat
down on the bed. "Feel better?"

Jennings could not answer and for
a long while he looked into the train des-
patcher's smiling face. Nather said :

" You've had a pretty rough shift, my
boy, and I guess 87 did not get you any
too soon. But you'll soon be all right,
and can go to a station of your own
now. You've won your spurs and I
hope you'll forgive me for those names
I called you. Won't you?

" I had to keep you awake until 87
could get you ; there was no other train
coming up and the light was not nec-
essary ; that was to keep you on your
feet, and when I found that the light
would not hold you, I called you things
which I knew you were man enough to
resent. Forget the names, old man. won't
you? "

Jennings raised himself on his elbow
and looking into Nather's face, asked :

"How 'bout" my time; did vou mean
that?"

Nather shook his head and then Jen-
nings held out his hand.
" You're white ! " he said.

Perpetual Motion— the
Greatest of Delusions.

BY E. L. BACON.

THE path of fantastic theories has never been the path by which humanity
has advanced. Neither the search for the formula of the transmuta-
tion of minerals, for the elixir of life, nor for the fountain of youth,
ever brought to mankind one useful invention or opened one closed door of
science. Nature sets herself eternally against the theory of something for
nothing. Of all the royal roads to wealth and ease, the one that has sur-
vived longest, because of its seeming possibility to the unanalytical mind, is
the theory of perpetual-motion. In this article is presented a view of some
of the absurdities of the theory, and some of the pathetic tragedies it has led
men into.

No. 1. — The Multitudinous Attempts of a Theory To Upset a Law, and

Some of the Tragic Consequences That Have

Accompanied Them.

^LVING the problem of per-
petual motion was a simple
matter, said an architect in
Parist and he drew a rough
sketch of a wheel that would
be continuously overbalanced.
Seven arms, weighted at the
ends, were fastened to the circumference
at equal distances apart in such a way
that on the descending side they would
fall outward on their hooks or hinges
until they pointed to the center of the
wheel. On the ascending side the weights,
hanging loose, would lie against the rim.
It would be plain, to anybody, said the
architect, that that must insure perpetual
motion, because the weights on one side
would be farther from the center than
on the other. The wheel would have to
keep on revolving until it wore out.

That was seven hundred years ago. If
the wheel of Wilars de Honecort, t,he
architect, had been capable of doing what
be said it would, the industrial world
would likely enough be centuries in ad-

vance of where it is to-clay. Trains, ships,
and factories would run without coal.

The supply of power would be inex-
haustible. It would not take much im-

J. M. ALDRICH'S MACHINE — SHOWING CON-
CEALED CLOCKWORK.

597

598

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

agination to get at least a glimmering
of what stupendous results such a condi-
tion might bring about. And, consider-
ing this Utopian state of affairs has not
come to pass, it should be easy to infer
thatDeHonecort's machine did not work.
But the overbalancing wheel that doesn't
overbalance has been responsible for a

titffir«a(tMtnttMiiHU<ti(\Mu u i uiuuvvsasssss^

ONE" OF BISHOP WILKINS'S INVENTIONS.

good deal of human history during the
seven centuries that have come and gone
since the Paris architect applied his me-
dieval mind to the problem of making
energy self-creative. Many a tragedy it
has caused ; many a life it has wrecked.

Ruin, suicide, insanity are linked with
that fascinating, unsolvable riddle of the
wheel. No other glittering delusion was
ever so disastrous, ever had so many vic-
tims", or has been followed so long and
so tenaciously.

Ages ago men gave up the search for
the Fountain of Youth. Nobody de-
votes his life, like the old - time alche-
mists, seeking a way of making gold. No-
body attempts to square the circle. But
thousands of men are victims even to-day
of the riddle of the wheel.

The First Blow.

One hundred and thirty-five years
have passed since the French Academy
declared that perpetual motion by means
of mechanical arrangement was impos-
sible, and the same declaration has be-
come an axiom in physTcs. But has the
delusion been destroyed? Last year fifty
perpetual-motion inventors, most of them
with drawings or models of overbalan-
cing wheels, sought the services of one
patent agency in New York.

In 1888 John Gamgee, with a plan for
getting perpetual motion by means of a

machine to be run by inexhaustible am-
monia gas, convinced the chief engineer
of the United States navy that he had
solved the problem, and that the coun-
try's war-ships would soon be running
without coal. In 1898 the death of John
Worrell Keely closed the career of a
man who, posing for twenty-five years as
the discoverer of a new force that would
insure perpetual motion, induced capital-
ists to subscribe hundreds of thousands
of dollars to back his project.

In 1899 C. E. Tripler, organizer of
the Tripler Liquid Air Company, with
ten million dollars capital and two thou-
sand stockholders, was hailed as having
solved the problem of perpetual motion
with his liquid-air machine. During the
twelve years that Keely has been lying
in his grave the New York newspapers
have reported the suicides of eighteen
American mechanics who killed them-
selves because after years of experiment-
ing they had failed to solve this riddle
of the ages.

The Wheel of Death.

Fifteen of these suicides were caused
by failure to make an overbalancing
wheel — the thing that Wilars de Ffone-
cort declared, . seven hundred years ago,
was a simple matter. It seems hard to
believe that this wheel of disaster still
holds such an all-absorbing charm over
so many minds.

There is something uncanny about it —
such a long story of failure, }ret year
after year always new victims. But any
one with a mechanical turn of mind has
only to read very little about the attempts
that have been made to make a wheel
revolve continuously by the overbalan-
cing of its own weight before he feels
the fascination of experiments in this
line.

At first it seems such an easy thing to
do, just as Wilars de Honecort thought.
And when one mechanical arrangement
fails another is sure to suggest itself, and
another and another. And it always
seems as if just a little more effort would
surely bring success. And very soon it
becomes easy to understand how so many
men have wasted their lives going on and
on from one contrivance to another.

You beein to realize how a man might

PERPETUAL MOTION— THE GREATEST OF DELUSIONS. 599

follow this delusion through a long life-
time, always sure he was near the goal —
such a man as Isaac Perry, of Jefferson-
ville, Indiana, who worked every day on
his perpetual-motion machine for seventy-
years, until, when long past ninety, death
came to him a few years ago just after
he had announced that another week
would have seen his dream a reality.

The Patience of Hart.

Not quite half a century ago there died
at Wallace River, \Nova Scotia, a man
who had labored almost as long over the
unsolvable problem. He was John Hart,
who when a young man was a good deal
of a hero among his neighbors. They
considered him a great genius.

Farmers came from miles around to
see his overbalancing wheel, which didn't
quite go, but would some day. And
when that day came John Hart, and Wal-
lace River would be known the world
over.

It looked to everybody as if just a few
more improvements would send the wheel
spinning forever. The years dragged on.
There were still a few more improve-
ments to-be made. Another week, said
John Hart, another month perhaps, and
the wheel would go. Still the years went
by. John Hart was growing old. " A
little while longer," he said, " and I'll
have it."

He was never discouraged. He was
beginning to grow feeble with old age,
but day after day he hammered away on
the wheel of his workshop. Men who
half a century before had come to inspect
the contrivance brought their grandchil-
dren around to show them the wonderful
thing that might some time revolve of its
own accord.

He lived to be ninety years old. " If
I could only live a little longer," he said
on his death-bed. The wheel was al-
most perfected.

His death was a great loss to the world,
so some of his neighbors thought, and on
the summit of one of the highest peaks
of the Cobequid Mountains they buried
him as impressively as if his dream had
been realized.

The lure of the overbalancing wheel
for such men as these lies in the fact that
the barrier between failure and success

seems so trifling. The wheel always al-
most goes. -

Study a drawing of any of the simpler
forms of this wheel, and you will perhaps
even wonder for the moment why it does
not go. The weights at the ends of the
hinged arms are farther from the center
on the descending side than they are on
the other. So why does it not overbal-
ance and keep on overbalancing indefi-
nitely?

If you are a close observer you will
soon detect the difficulty. Draw a ver-
tical line through the wheel, bisecting
the center, and you will see that although
the- weights are farther from the center
on the descending side, there are more
weights on the ascending side — just
enough more weight, in fact, to make up
for the advantage in position of the
weights on the other side.

In 1770 James Ferguson, a distin-
guished astronomer, tried to get around
this difficulty by reenf orcing the weighted
arms with sliding weights, which were to
control one another through a system of
"cords and pulleys. In his wheel were
eight spokes, each one jointed not far
from the end, and on the end a heavy
ball. Just before reaching the joint on
each spoke a rectangular frame was fast-
ened, and inside the frame a sliding
weight. From this weight ran a cord
over little pulleys to the jointed arm of
the spoke next but one behind it.

For example: If the spokes were num-
bered, the sliding weight on number one
would connect by cord with the hinged
arm of number three. The weight on

JOHN GAMGEE S AMMONIA GAS WONDER.

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THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

number three would connect with the
hinged arm of number five, and so on.

When spoke number one comes to a
horizontal position on the descending
side of the wheel, the weight in its
frame falls down and pulls the hinged
arm of the then vertical spoke number
three straight out. The weights on de-
scending and ascending sides are then
equal, and it looks for a moment as if
the great problem were solved.

Failure's Impassable Line.

But the wheel does not turn. It is
still an exact balance. Draw a horizon-
tal line through it, bisecting the center,
and the reason becomes clear. There
are more weights below.- the line than
above it. One difficulty has been 'over-
come only to stumble into another just
as great.

When the idea of an overbalancing
wheel got into the head of Captain Ad-
derley Sleigh, of London," he tried to
solve the problem with water-tight com-
partments attached to the periphery of
a wheel and connected with one another
by an elaborate arrangement of tubes,
through which water was to run from
the compartments on one side to those
on the other.

Of course, the compartments on the
descending side were to be filled with
water and those on the ascending side
were to be empty. Consequently, rea-
soned Captain Sleigh, the wheel must
necessarily revolve. It was such a com-
plicated arrangement that it took people
a long, long time to get even a glim-
mering of an idea of
how it was supposed to
work.

The captain got a Brit-
ish patent on it. That
was in 1865, and for four
years afterward the cap-
tain tried to discover why
the thing wouldn't re-
volve.

He wanted to start a
company. He had his
patent, and could go right
ahead if the wheel would
only work, but there was
some little difficulty in the
way. jackson's idea

Not a whit discouraged, he invented
another wheel of much the same sort,
and patented that, too. Again he was
on the verge of fame and fortune, and
the stock in the company was all ready
to be sold, but again the wheel failed.

It simply wouldn't go. It was just a
case of hard luck in encountering some
entirely unforeseen obstacle, said the
captain, and he went to work on another.

Long before the captain was heard of,
a wheel with balls sliding in grooves,
which ran in curves from center to cir-
cumference, was a popular means of try-
ing to solve the perpetual motion prob-
lem. But there was the same difficulty
with this contrivance, as with the wheel
with hinged arms.

While, on the descending side the
balls were lying against the circumfer-
ence, there were enough more balls lying
in the grooves on the ascending side to
counteract the advantage of position.

Exit the Captain.

Then, to get away from the over-
balancing wheel, there was the attempt
to use magnetism. A lodestone at the
top of a pillar was to attract a ball up an
inclined plane. At the top of the plane
the ball was to drop through a hole to
the bottom, then, with the momentum
obtained from gravitation, Avas to run
through a trap-door at the bottom of the
inclined plane, where it would again be
drawn upward by the lodestone. But
the law of magnetic attraction is the
same as that of gravitation, and the ac-
tion of the lodestone upon the ball dur-
ing its ctescent had not
been counted on.

The same man who de-
vised this magnetic ma-
chine, Bishop Wilkins,
who was a well-known
^ man in England two
centuries ago, hit upon the
idea of using an Archi-
medean screw. The
screw was to be fastened
in an inclined position,
with its lower end in
water. A series of pad-
dle-wheels, at regular in-
tervals apart, were to have
of ball motion. the screw as their axle.

PERPETUAL MOTION— THE GREATEST OF DELUSIONS. 601

The revolving screw
would draw the water up to
a trough at the top. From
the trough the water would
run down into a series of
basins placed at the tops of
pillars, each basin being di-
rectly above one of the pad-
dle-wheels and emptying its
water upon the paddles. Of
course, nowadays almost
everybody would realize at
once that the weight of the
descending -water would not
be sufficient to move the
water-laden screw.

To-day every schoolboy
would see the fallacy in the
attempt to solve the prob-
lem by forcing the water in
a narrow vessel upward by
the superior weight of the water in a
wider vessel connected with it at the bot-
tom. Yet in Bishop Wilkins's day that
was a favorite experiment. Of course, .if
the water in the narrow vessel could' be
forced upward it could be emptied at the
top into the larger one and continue to
circle about indefinitely.

The Stone Wall of Law.

If it were not for the- fundamental law
of hydrostatics, that water will not rise
above its own level, we should have had
perpetual motion many years ago, and
the human race would not have to -work
so hard for its living.

On the Western plains the irrigating
ditches sometimes seem to be running up
hill. Of course it is an optical illusion.
An Englishman in Colorado, however,
who thought he observed such phenom-
ena, explained it by remarking that in
rushing down the steep slopes of the
Rockies the water gained such momen-
tum that it could run up hill for long
distances. As long as there is "such ig-
norance injhe world there will be some-
body to continue experiments with the
overbalancing water machine.

All through the eighteenth century
there were hundreds of perpetual motion
inventors in London with such contri-
vances as this and the magnetic machine
and the overbalancing wheel, all claim-
ing that they had solved the problem.

ADDLEY S MACHINE.

There was sad need of a
man from Missouri.

Dr. William Kenriek,
who used to lecture at "The
Devil " and other taverns,
on his discovery of self-
motive' power, would have
found the presence of such
a man in the audience em-
barrassing, for the doctor
was never in a position to
make a show-down. Yet
for nineteen years he kept
in the public eye as the dis-
coverer of perpetual mo-
tion.

In 1770 he went so far
as to publish an advertising
prospectus of a company to
put his discovery on the
market, in spite of the fact
that his machine failed to go. He was
not a swindler, but a fanatic, and all the
money he got hold of, which was not
much, was spent in improving his ma-
chine.

Sometimes he was reduced to desper-
ate straits, and at such times, while
hiding from bailiffs, who wanted to lock
him up for debt, he would send pathetic
appeals to Garrick, the actor. Some-
times Garrick gave him money; some-
times nothing.

The bailiffs were close on the doctor's
trail one day when he sent a frantic re-
quest to the actor for a loan. There was
no reply.

By the time the doctor was able to
emerge from seclusion he got even with
Garrick by writing and publishing a
scurrilous attack on him. After Garrick
had sued him for libel, the doctor hum-
bly apologized and the suit was with-
drawn.

Parkes on " Air."

William Parkes was a professor of
philosophy at Newington, Surrey. He
was another of the swarm of deluded
perpetual motion inventors of the latter
part of the eighteenth century. He hit
upon the idea of using compressed air to
accomplish his purpose.

" Air," said the professor, " is not
formed by art, but by the chemical pro-
cess of nature. It is perpetual, for it

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THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

fills the whole expanse between earth
and the canopy of heaven. It is
obtained without expense, being every-
where present, and it will give motion
to every kind of mechanism."

A grand idea was his. Compressed
air would run his machine, then the ma-
chine itself would continue to compress

FERGUSON S MOTION WITH WHEELS.

air to keep it going. Hence, perpetual
motion.

The world had made great strides for-
ward a century after these monomaniacs
followed the fleeting fantom, but it
was still ready enough to listen with
some credulity to a new idea for perpet-
ual motion, just as it is to-day. " Even
President Garfield went to inspect John
Gamgee's perpetual-motion machine in
Washington, and the National govern-
ment came near giving its official
sanction. In fact, for four months ex-
periments were made with it in the
Washington Navy Yard.

Getting to Headquarters.

" If it succeeds at all," said the New
York Evening Post, " it will be of far
greater consequence than any invention
of modern time."

There was no joke about that. If it
had succeeded it would have startled the
world. It came near startling the coun-
try as it was, for Chief Engineer Isher-
wood, of the Navy Department, had
dreams of running war-ships with it be-
fore many months wore on.

It was called a zeromotor, because it
was designed to operate at a temperature
of about zero.

" My invention," explained Gamgee,
" relates to the employment as a motor

fluid of a liquefiable gas or vapor of
adequate tension, the product of a liquid
which boils at or near the temperature
of surrounding objects. I find that by
working such a gas or vapor expansive-
ly in one or more engine cylinders, its
heat can be converted to such an extent
into mechanical energy or motion that at
the exhaust it will have returned in great
measure to its original liquid condition,
from which state it may be again caused
to assume the condition of a motor vapor
or gas by exposing it to the needed tem-
perature."

A Very Cruel Fact.

The agent Gamgee employed was an-
hydrous ammonia. The ammonia vapor
would expand against and drive the pis-
ton of the machine, then issue from the
back end of the cylinder as a liquid,
which would run to the front end of the
cylinder, where it would expand again
as vapor against the piston. Then it
would run back to the other end, and so
on, in one perpetual round, without any
assistance from fuel. Water would be
fuel enough.

" Water at sixty-six degrees," said
Gamgee, "will give heat enough to yield
one hundred pounds pressure per square
inch on the piston."

" Beyond a doubt this would be power
enough to" drive war-ships," said the
chief engineer of the navy.

" And if it won't be enough," said
Gamgee, " water at blood heat will give
me two hundred pounds pressure, which.
ought to be more than required to drive
•any ship afloat."

Now, as has been proved since to the
satisfaction of everybody, while a motor
vapor during its expansion is a useful
source of power, it is wholly unavailable
after it has expanded. It may be
brought again to the expanding or con-
densed condition, but if the cost of the
restoration be computed, not the smallest
fraction of gain can be discovered.

Gamgee's motor would make one
stroke, but never another of its own ac-
cord. Think of a steam engine that ex-
hausts directly into its boiler and you
will have an idea of the main feature of
his plan — enough of an idea to make
you wonder why it was taken seriously.

PERPETUAL MOTION— THE GREATEST OF DELUSIONS. 603

A fear that some other government
would step in and get possession of this
marvelous discovery haunted many an
official at Washington and spurred the
Navy Department on in its experiments.
Gamgee's supporters were at a fever
heat of excitement. The world was on
the verge of a new era of industrial
development which would be the greatest
in history.

But something was wrong. The ma-
chine almost worked, but not quite.
Suddenly the bubble burst. The experi-
ments were stopped. Gamgee left Wash-
ington in disgust, and not another month
passed by before the latest sensation in
perpetual motion was forgotten.

Differential Fly- Wheel.

A few years later, in 1897, Benjamin
C. Pole, of Washington, District of
Columbia, came into the lime-light with
a bewildering contrivance of wheels,
within wheels. He talked of the discov-
ery of an absolutely new law, which gov-
erned the operation of continuous or
wheel levers. He called his invention
a differential fly-wheel, and announced
that a five horse-power engine would be
made to develop one hundred horse-
power, or in fact any amount of energy,,
limited only by the strength of materials
and the possibilities of mechanical con-
struction.

" We are about to realize," said one of
his supporters, " the most vivid and fan-
tastic dreams of a mechanical Utopia."

Then at last came Tripler, with his
liquid air. Ten years ago people did not
know much about liquid air, and there
was a prevailing impression that it was
going to be the great source of power of
the immediate future. It was such a new
and mysterious and spectacular^ force
that the- public was willing to believe al-
most any fantastic story about it.

One day Tripler announced that from
one gallon of liquid air he would be able
to produce three or four more gallons of
liquid air.

Wilshire Discovers Tripler.

Gaylord Wilshire published a pamphlet
announcing that, with Tripler' s ability
to produce three gallons of liquid air
from one, the age of perpetual motion
was at hand, that people realized what
stupendous results there might be. Wil-
shire headed his pamphlet, " Perpetual
Motion at Last! " and declared that he
would proceed to make a practical dem-
onstration of his ability to make three or
four gallons of liquid air from one.

Henry Morton, president of the Stevens
Institute of Technology, wiped out this
glittering prospect by proving that the
expansion of a given weight of liquid air
in one cylinder, so far from developing
a power capable of liquefying an equal
weight of air in another cylinder, as Wil-
shire had asserted, would be incapable^
of liquefying a single drop.

Surely a long-lived delusion, this one
of perpetual motion. It has outlived the
declaration of the French Academy that
such a thing was impossible by almost a
century and a half. No scientific body
in the world would think of considering
it for a moment.

If the grand discovery should ever be
made, scientists would be thrown into
such a state of bewilderment that they
would be willing to admit the possibility
of upsetting any of the fundamental
laws of physics. They would be willing
to believe that Avater could run up hill,

OLE S CONTRIVANCE OF WHEELS WITHIN
WHEELS.

or that you could put two marbles into

an empty cup and take out four.

It was some time before the public Yet when the first experiments with

grasped the amazing significance of this radium were being made a few years

assertion. In fact, it was not until H. ago, such a distinguished scientist as

604

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Lord Kelvin intimated that this new
mystery might mean the possibility of
producing perpetual motion.

It is true that a grain of radium the
size of a wallflower seed might be made
to swing a tiny pendulum for three thou-
sand years, but at the end of that time
the source of power would be pretty well
exhausted.

Still, not all of the scientists are ab-
solutely safe from an idea that possibly
an absolutely new force will be discov-

ered that will give perpetual motion fo
the world. If a man only has imagina-
tion enough, he is willing to admit the
possibility of anything.

It is to the imagination "that the idea
of perpetual motion appeals rather than
to the reason. It always has some hold
upon the imagination, no matter how ab-
surd it may seem. Some of the most
wonderful swindlers that ever lived have
realized this fact and have taken advan-
tage of it.

Mr. Bacon's concluding paper on this interesting subject will appear in our February issue.

UP-TO-DATE RAILROAD DISCIPLINE.

What the Burlington Is Doing To Remove Personal Feeling from the
," Carpet" and Make Punishment Scientific.

THE system of disciplining men by " lay-
ing off" has lasted a long time, but
there are signs that it is passing into dis-
repute. The wonder is that a system so
unscientific and ■ ineffective should have
lasted so long, and its disappearance is one
of the most promising of the many signs
that the relationship between the roads and
their employees is being placed on a sounder
basis.

Mr. Daniel Wiliard, second vice-president
3f the Burlington, speaking of this recently,
said:

" The practise of suspending a man can-
not make him better, and it deprives him of
the opportunity of earning money with
which, perhaps, to support his family, and
not infrequently when a man has been so
deprived of the opportunity to work the
punishment has borne most heavily upon
those who are dependent upon him. It
does not seem that a proper system of dis-
cipline should cause such results.

" It should be possible to keep such a
fair and, at the same time, accurate record
of men, that it can be made a sufficient basis
for a system of discipline which will satisfy
the requirements of existing conditions.
Such a system will call for greater care
and personal attention on the part of all
officers than has been given in the past, but
it is believed that its importance justifies
the additional effort."

Mr. Wiliard outlines the plan to be pur-
sued in future on the Burlington :
, " A complete and accurate service history
of all employees affected by this order will
be- kept in the office of each division super-

intendent, and also in the office of the super-
intendent of the several employment de-
partments.

" No entry will be made a part of the
record of any man until the case has been
fully investigated, and the employee af-
fected will, if desired, be given personal
hearing in that connection. Whenever a
record entry is made the man affected will
be given in writing an exact copy of such
entry.

" Any employee found guilty of disloyalty
to the company, of insubordination, or
drunkenness, will be dismissed from the serv-
ice, and will not be reemployed. An em-
ployee whose service record clearly indi-
cates that he is not a safe or fit man to
retain in the service will be dismissed.

" Promotion will, in the future, as in the
past, depend upon the service record of the
man involved, and upon- his fitness for in-
creased responsibilities. When these are
equal as between two men, the one older in
the service will be given preference.

" An employee, upon his request in Avrit-
ing, will at any time be given a copy of his
service record.

" Officers direct^ in charge of men af-
fected by this order are especially requested
to report for entry all commendable actions
on the part of such employees, as well as
those actions which may justify criticism or
reprimand.

" The purpose of this order is to assure
constant and permanent employment to those
employees whose service records indicate
their fitness for the positions held, or for in-
creased responsibilities."

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

BY STEPHEN CHALMERS,
Author of "The Cataclysm," "A Daughter of the Armada," etc.

Philip. and Verina Go on a Picnic, and Howells
and His Grew Go Treasure - Hunting.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

PHILIP SAND, being informed that he has a year before tuberculosis will claim him
as a victim, prepares to get the best out of the time. Being financially ruined, he
raises ten thousand dollars on his life-insurance policy of fifty thousand from a money-
lender named Merton Scragg, who opens up on the comfortable promise that Sand will
not be living that day a year. He charters a yacht to go treasure-hunting, sends the
yacht ahead, and himself goes down on the regular liner for- Panama. On board he meets
Miss Verina Harding. They are wrecked. .Sand finds himself on the only fruitful island
of a group. He finds pigs inhabiting a cave containing boxes, which turn out to be the
treasure-chests he is in search of. He builds a lean-to with the gold bars. He is startled
by the presence of Miss Harding, who has wandered from a camp of the shipwrecked
sailors in order to avoid the attentions of an American drummer.

The drummer discovers the house of gold and tells his companions. The cupidity
of Captain Howells and his men is aroused, and they compel Philip to yield up the
treasure.

CHAPTER XII.

Mysterious Doings.

'HEN the dawn of the
next day came, Phil-
ip Sand was alone be-
fore the golden hut.
The hut was empty.
Knowing that they
would be watched, Philip had taken ad-
vantage of the darkness before dawn to
lead Verina to the cave which was to be
her temporary habitation. -He himself
had returned to the hut to await the
coming of Howells's gang. He had a
word to say to them.

Philip was weary as he stood on the
beach and watched the sun come up over
the pile of rocks to the east. It had
been a long night — a night of sweet
agony, self-denial, and wavering deter-
mination.

After that momentary yielding to the
call of the heart, Philip had gently led
her into the hut and whispered one word :
" No."

Began in the October Railroad Man's

605

Then he had returned to the beach
and taken up guard, as on the previous
night. But this time he did not sleep.

At the first streak in the east he
awakened her gently. She arose without
a word and followed him. He led her
by the hand over the rough places of the
beach and through the brush to the cave.
For once, he was grateful that the pigs
had not returned. The air of the place
was clean and fresh and dry.

He left her there. Verina remem-
bered that little parting all her life. It
is strange, but a fact, that the dawn has
a peculiar power of impressing incidents
upon the memory. It was always as
yesterday morning that she saw Philip
standing dimly in the cave-mouth, with
his face half turned to her.

"Don't worry," he said; "it will
soon be light."

Then she heard his steps receding
among the brush, followed by a silence
which was accentuated by the dripping
of the dew outside, the far rippling of
the sea waters on the coral sand, and the
first calls of awestricken birds. The

Magazine. Single Copies, (0 cents.

606

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

light brightened, and, in a rosy bar,
burned athwart the cave-mouth.
* The light had come, but it appeared to
be an eternity before he came. She sat
there, for hours as it seemed, listening to
the throb of his heart, feeling the touch of
his lips upon her brow, and hearing the
soft, regretful —

"No."

Philip heard them coming, long be-
fore they appeared at the edge of the
brush by the pile of barren rocks-. Ar-
rived upon the beach, they stopped.
They saw the defender, and seemed sur-
prised. For a minute they gathered in
a little group and talked excitedly.

Then Philip saw Howells drive his
fist into his palm. .Next moment he
and his men were advancing steadily to-
ward the hut. They stopped, as before,
about twenty paces away. Philip nodded.

"Well?" said Howells. "So you've
decided to fight — eh?"

" No. But I have something to say.
Then I turn the treasure over to your
care. Remember, I don't give up all
claim to it. I merely turn it over to
you, pending a division, as agreed upon."

Howells turned to Higgs, and the two
worthies whispered for a few minutes.
Higgs did most of the whispering. Then
Howells turned to Philip, at the same
time waving his hand impatiently at
Higgs, as one who would say :

" All right ; I'm no fool. Leave it
to me."

To Philip he said : " We agree to
that. I'm mighty glad, Mr. Sand, that
you look at it in the sensible way."

" I do," said Philip. " I put myself
on record as protesting against a down-
right theft. If it were not for certain
circumstances, I would see you all in
blazes before I gave up one gold-brick.
As it is, I am making a virtue of neces-
sity. Once you get this treasure, there
will be no division in which / will figure
— or the lady. And if I may further
"express my candid opinion," he added,
fixing his eyes on the most intelligent-
looking of the five seamen, " none of
you men will figure in the division either.
It will all go to Mr. Higgs and Captain
Howells, unless Captain Howells suc-
ceeds in cheating the estimable Higgs
out of his share, too. The captain, gen-
tlemen, is out for the loot ! "

" If you say another word — " began
the captain ; but Philip thrust a quick
hand into his right-hand pocket.

" It will pay you to be patient, cap-'
tain," said he. " In a few minutes you
will have half a ton of gold to play
with ; but, for the moment, I claim the
privileges of the floor.

" I hope you men will realize the duty
which fate imposes upon you with this
treasure," said Philip half solemnly.
" Remember the needy and distressed
when you come to spend it, for other-
wise it will bring you worse luck than
you ever dreamed of.

" It's an unlucky bit of property —
this treasure," he^ went on. " That's why
I am not particular about having any of
it, or anything to do with it. I wouldn't
saddle myself with bad luck for all the
world. Every one who has ever had
this stuff has had bad luck ever after.

" Even I, as you know, have had bad
luck with it, but I can shake the luck
by shaking the treasure. The original
owners were the Indians, mostly. They,
poor devils, would have had no bad luck
if they hadn't had all that gold. But
+hey had it, and, until the day they all
died, they were oppressed and tortured
and murdered by Spaniards.

" Then the Spaniards had the treasure,
and thought to sail to Spain with it.
They brought in it ships to Panama.
There they loaded it on mules and took
it across the trail to Chagres. On the
way, the men died by the score from
yellow- jack.

"By the time they got to Chagres,
there were hardly enough of them left
to handle the mules, let alone care for
the treasure. And on the way they ran
short of food and bartered golden
images for bits of bacon. You didn't
know that, did you?

" Then other Spaniards loaded the
stuff aboard a galleon and set sail for
Spain. But Avhoever touched that treas-
ure had bad luck. Before they were a
week on the water, an English bucca-
neer came along and fought the Span-
iard. The„ Englishman boarded her,
made the Spaniards walk the plank, took
out all the treasure, drank all the wines,
scuttled the galleon, and sailed away on
their own ship.

" And then the bad luck began to

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

607

work on them. They were afraid to go
sailing about with so much money
. aboard, so they thought to bury it be-
fore the bad luck got its fine work in.
They buried it here, where I found it.
Then they sailed away ; but they hadn't
got rid of the treasure's bad luck, be-
cause they were still owners of it — of
the treasure and the bad luck.

" They never came back for that
treasure. Why? They were either over-
taken by a storm and sunk, or an Eng-
lish "frigate got hold of them and
strung them all up on the yardarm.

" So you're welcome to this treasure.
I hope its bad luck won't follow you.
I've had a taste of it, and enough at
that. Good morning, gentlemen!"

Philip turned and walked into the
brush, leaving seven men staring after
him in dismay, as if the picturesque
word-weaver carried away with him all_
that was worth while about the treasure.

" Bah ! " said Howells, spitting. A Did
you ever hear such swash? Come on,
lads ! The stuff's ours. Let's get it to
our end of the island, to begin with."

The spell was broken. The men be-
gan chattering like children, and fell
upon the hut like a gang of wreckers.
In a few minutes the roof of branches
and turf was torn down, the men cur-
sing _as the dried earth trickled into their
eyes.

Presently they were taking down the
bricks, one by one. They took off their
shirts — such of them as had shirts — and
used them for ropes with which to sus-
pend a load of bricks between two men.

In two hours they had carried the
bulk of the ingots to their camp at the
eastern end of the island. And here
they paused, grinning over their tri-
umph, staring unbelievingly at the
wealth at their feet, while they wiped
the perspiration from their faces.

"And noxv!" said Howells with the
ferocity and force of a nervous man,
" I've got a plan about hiding this
stuff.

" So long as that Sand fellow knows
we have the treasure, he will lodge his
claim with the first shipmaster that comes
along. Then, whether he gets any him-
self — and I don't think he will if a
Yankee trader gets on the job — it will
mean a lesser division for us."

" That's right ! " " It's ours ! " " We
don't mean to share with nobody! " came
as a chorus from the men.

" What I propose is this," continued
Howells, " that we load up the boat and
move the stuff over to that other island
— the one we first landed on. We can
bury it in the sand there. Half an hour
after the job's done there won't be a
sign of the sand ever having been
touched.

" We'll mark it off mathematically,
then come back here and make terms

with Mr. Sand,
keep his mouth

If he won't agree to
shut about there ever
having been such a thing as treasure in
the business, then — well, we won't have
any violence, boys, or anything like that
— not unless he's . likely to be a dead
give-away."

" Knock 'is block off, is wot I ses,"
said the cockney.

"Hear, hear!" sang Higgs with en-
thusiasm.

" Well, we ain't come to that yet,"
said Howells, grinning.

"But wait a minute!" he cried sud-
denly. " There's something else that's
on my mind. None of you has stopped
to think, 'let alone ask, where this treas-
ure came from.

" Sand says it was hid on this island.
We don't know how much there was of
it. Maybe there was more, and the gold
bricks was all he needed for building
the house. How about the rest?

" Before we do anything, I move
that, having the whip-hand, we go back
right now and find out from Sand where
he got the treasure. He's got to show
us! "

" Bill 'Arkaway ! " exclaimed the
cockney. " Didn't I sye so to you —
that there was prob'ly more where the
bricks cyme from?"

" Back we go ! " cried the captain de-
cisively. " One of you — you, Svenson — '■
stay here and keep an eye on the stuff,
though 'tain't likely anybody' 11 be around.
Come on, lads."

They started back, taking the usual
short cut through the brush. As they
came out on the beach, the captain
called a sudden halt, and himself took a
peep along the coast. Then his eyes
traveled out to sea, and he gave a great
start.

608

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Next moment he turned sharply, upon
his men. His eyes were starting from
his head, and his face was white with
nervous dread.

"Look here!" he gasped. "There's
a ship on the horizon, and coming this
way. We've got to do this job — quick
— and thorough! "

He accompanied the last word with a
significant motion of his hand. There
was silence ; then the cockney sailor
laughed :

" That's wot / ses ! " said he.

CHAPTER XIII.

A Picnic for Two.

HPHE moment Philip Entered the cave
-*- he saw that tact was needed to
avert another sweet catastrophe. She had
been listening intently for his coming.
His sudden appearance robbed her of
self-control, and she could only look at
him with eyes in which glad relief was
apparent.

" I'm so glad you've come," she said,
after a moment or two. " I think it was
foolish of you to go back there."

"Of course it was," said he cheerfully.
"That is why it was fun. You see, I
had a chance to make a speech, and I
made it — with great success. I some-
times think, Verina, that if I were wri-
ting a novel I should make my principal
character a man who loved philosophy,
and had certain theories of his own
which he liked to get off on the slightest
provocation.

" Don't you see what a handy man
he'd be in a story — the sort of character
that would fill in gaps, and could be
made to pop up in any old place, at any
old time, to make a speech that would
help along the story. Let's go on a
picnic."

" A picnic ! " she exclaimed. Festivity
of any sort was far from her mind.-

" Why not? " said he. " We are free
as' the air, and as free from care, and —
all we need is three more feet with a lilt
to make that worthy of art-lettering on
a card. It's a fine day. We've got rid
of the troublesome old treasure.

" This part of it " — he kicked one of
the boxes — " will no doubt take care of
itself. Let's go on a picnic. I want to

try my hand at cooking breadfruit, and
I have a great idea that you could make
a stew out of that pawpaw thing. Come
on ! "

There was that about his way of ask-
ing, in conjunction with the warm sun-
light and the relief of his coming, which
made Verina leap to his proposal at once.

" We'll climb the hill," said Philip.
" Bring the fishing-line."

" What on earth do you want the fish-
ing-line for? " she cried, laughing. " Are
you going to fish on the hilltop? "

"Verina," said he reproachfully, "don't
make fun of my fishing-line. Its uses
are manifold. I catch fish with it ordi-.
narily. but it does for a piece of string
sometimes. Then, too, if your vanity
should suddenly attack you, you could
put the chain of pearls on, or adorn
yourself with the ruby brooch.

" Some day, when islands are no more,
you will wear that pearl string around
your — around your neck, and think, be-
tween courses, how Philip Sand used to
use it for a fishing-line to catch the course
before that. But, seriously, I need the
ruby to light the fire to cook the bread-
fruit. Sounds like the house that Jack
built."

And so Philip rambled on as he led
her through the brush. His mind was
really as serious as it ever had been. He
was thinking about Howells and his
gang.

There could be no doubt that the un-
reasoning lust of treasure was upon the
man and his companions. Philip felt
positive that they would not be satisfied
with the ingots. Unfortunately, he him-
self had dropped a hint that the treasure
had not always stood on the spot where
the hut was — or had ■ been — for he had
no doubt that it was pulled down by
this time.

In his mind he followed the move-
ments of the wreckers, and presently ar-
rived, as if by telepathy, at an intuition
of what really transpired at the eastern
end of the island.

They would surmise that the treasure
came from some cache, and they would
naturally reason that there was probably
a lot of miscellaneous stuff where the
gold came from, and that the ingots only
had been of use in building the hut. As
soon as thev had recovered from the ex-

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

609

citement of hauling the gold, they would
burrow in their minds for some new sen-
sation. It was the main symptom of the
disease of acquired wealth-1- more!

Howells and his gang would seek a
new sensation, like a drunkard who
drinks more to offset what he has drunk.
They would seek more treasure, and —
here was what was at the bottom of all
Philip's mental gravity — when they had
cornered all the treasure they would go
a step farther and make the treasure safe.
They would make the secret of it safe,
too ; and murder is only a short step from
theft when discovery is the alternative.

Perhaps Philip had been foolish in
that brave speech of his. Perhaps he had
endangered Verina more when he had
warned the men that he would claim his
— and her — share of the treasure. It
was like throwing suggestion into their
teeth. Perhaps they would chew it over
and decide that the treasure was not
theirs as long as Philip Sand lived.

He did not suppose that they would
do away with such a beautiful creature as
Miss Harding. But they might kill him,
and then — There was Higgs, smarting
under humiliation and thwarted infatua-
tion.

That is why he assumed the light-
hearted manner and took Verina away
from the cave. And away from the cave
he meant to keep her — for a little while,
at* least. During the day he might ascer-
tain the mood and movement of the treas-
ure thieves. From what he learned he
would form his own actions.

Verina suspected nothing of this. In.
Philip she discerned nothing but a kind
of philosophic playfulness and humor. .
As they walked through the brush, he
picked flowers for her, quoted poetry over
them, laughed like a schoolboy because
a flower by any name was somehow not
as sweet ; and presently she herself felt
like a schoolgirl stolen away of a truant
afternoon with some congenial young
person of the opposite sex.

They gathered some young coconuts
and three or four fine breadfruit, with
a few mangoes for dessert. Then they
climbed the grassy hill and found a shel-
tered rock on the leeward side of the
peak. There they sat down, and Philip
proceeded to build a fire and light it with
the aid of his ruby and the sun.
3 R R

When the fire was half burned out and
glowing redly, Philip buried the bread-
fruit. Then began the pleasant game of
waiting for the roast and passing the
time in quiet talk and observation.

It will be remembered that from this
hilltop a view was obtained of the whole
island, with the exception of the beach,
which, save at intervals, was hidden by
the overhanging coconut-palms.

It had taken them some time to gather
their provisions and reach the hilltop
and to settle themselves there. About
half an hour passed before Philip sud-
denly saw, through a far break in the belt
of jungle, a procession of men.

" They're coming back," he thought to
himself. " Now they will find the cave
and get what they are looking for. If we
had stayed, there might have been trou-
ble— and violence."

Just at the break in the belt of luxuri-
ance the profession stopped. Philip saw
the leader, Howells, talking earnestly to
his men. Then they started forward at
a run. In a moment they were gone ; but
Philip's eyes moved to the next break in
the belt of luxuriance, and watched the
splash of white beach for the further
progress of the men.

" Picnics," he observed quietly to Ve-
rina, " are silly things when you come to
analyze them."

" This is very pleasant," said Verina,
almost sleepily.

" Ye-es," said Philip. " But it does
seem absurd " — the group of men flashed
past the second break ; they were still
running — " absurd when you think that
people walk ten miles, say, with the idea
of eating a sugar cookie by a certain rock,
or in the shade of a particular tree."

Verina laughed lightly. " What a
queer brain you have," she said.

" I got it from Grandfather Septi-
mus," said Philip, by way of pleading
not guilty. " Once an aunt of mine came
to visit our house, and she brought her
baby along with her. In the night the
baby cried. Grandfather Septimus lay
awake all night, wondering what ailed
the baby.

" Next morning he asked my aunt.
She said there was nothing the matter
with the baby. Grandfather Septimus
declared that there must be, otherwise the
baby wouldn't have cried.

610

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" ' But all babies cry,' said my aunt, in
a tone of authority.

" ' Then,' said Grandfather Septimus,
' all babies are ailing. It is human na-
ture to cry, but no human thing cries un-
less it is miserable.'

" The thing seemed so logical that my
aunt felt sure that the baby was sick.
She sent for a doctor. The doctor
laughed, and said there was nothing the
matter with the baby. It was in the na-
ture of babies to cry. But Grandfather
Septimus stuck to his argument, and later
in the day my distressed aunt discovered
that the baby's milk had been too hot and
its little tongue was slightly raw.

" So, you see, there might be some-
thing to Grandfather Septimus's argu-
ment about all babies being ailing when
they cry. I like to speculate on trivial
things. I got it from Grandfather Sep-
timus—

"But where was I? Oh — picnics!"

Philip had observed the treasure
thieves running over a bigger stretch of
open sand near the cave. He wondered,
as he rambled on about babies and pic-
nics, what Howells's lot were doing at
that moment in the cave, and what they
would have been doing if they had found
him in possession and defiant.

" But that baby might not have known
what it was crying for. And I am sure
ninety-nine persons in a hundred don't
know just why they go picnicking.
There's the fun of it — to enjoy oneself
and not know why, just as the worst
kind of unhappiness is to be miserable
and not know why."

" Well, why do people walk ten miles
to eat a sugar cookie under a particular
tree?" asked Verina, sleepier than ever,
for the air was quiet and the far sea
looked somnolent, and the sky was of a
lulling blue.

" Well," said Philip, watching the
belt of sand, " it's mostly a matter of
congeniality. Uncongenial persons at a
picnic make the outing the worst kind of
a fiasco. But if they are congenial, they
become as children. They forget things.
It is what they talk about — usually noth-
ing very intellectual, as on this particular
picnic. They suddenly wake up to the
fact that they are living as nature in-
tended they should live — as children of
the sun — for does anybody ever picnic

on a wet day? And they find a special
delight in migrating, as our hairy, an-
cestral tribesmen did.

" They find themselves,, without real-
izing it, on nodding terms with the trees
and flowers and in touch with' all nature.
They get back to earth, which is one of
the most blessed states I know of. Real-
ly, when men speak of castles in Spain,
they speak of dreams that are very much
of primitive human nature."

Verina did not answer. She was recli-
ning on the ground with her eyes closed,
and she was wishing that this hour could
be stretched into eternity. She loved the
man at her side, for his gentle humor, his
thoughtful speech, his quiet acceptance
of so much that is overlooked or scorned
by men of the world. She loved him.
She wished to forget that he was doomed,
and that she herself —

" I should think the breadfruit must
be about roasted," said Philip, lazily
scrambling to his feet. " Come, Miss
Cook, and let me have your expert opin-
ion on culinary matters. You didn't en-
ter my employ with the idea of letting
things burn, did you? "

Verina sat up and watched him as he
fiddled with the breadfruit in the fire.
He- seemed very clumsy. The stick with
which he tried to spear the big, round
black ball broke off short, just because
he levered it wrongly.

"Take two sticks and pull it out!"
she cried scoffingly. " There ! I never
saw such a clumsy man. Give them to
me. I'll have it out in a moment."

She took the sticks from him and be-
gan operations herself. Philip smiled
and stood up beside her as if he would
stretch his legs. But he had succeeded
in ^-distracting her attention. He gave a
swift look at the bit of beach — the sec-
ond break to the eastward. Presently
six figures went past, each staggering
under a box.

Six figures and six boxes !

" That's the last of the treasure. Now
I hope they will keep away!" thought
Philip.

" There ! " said Verina, who had suc-
ceeded in extracting the first of the
roasted breadfruit from the fire. " Now,
if you will lend me 'your penknife, I'll
scrape the crust off. My, but it's hot ! "

Philip gave her the penknife, and di-

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

611

vicled his attention between her and the
eastern end of the island.

"What are you looking at?" she
asked suddenly, raising her head just as
he shaded his eyes.

" It's a perfectly lovely spot, this,"
said he lazily. " Isn't it cool enough
yet?"

Presently she had cut the breadfruit
into slices, which she smeared with the
soft pulp of mangoes. Philip sat down
to assist at the eating.

" And by the time we have eaten this,
another will be ready," she said, her
mouth half full of the delicate stuff.

" Ye-es," said Philip. He had taken
his seat opposite her, so that he could
look over her shoulder to the eastern
point of the island.

Half an hour, or it may have been an
hour, passed in desultory talk, while
they ate breadfruit and mango. The
breeze freshened about them and
hummed over the hill, but it did not
s disturb them beside the sheltering rock.

All at once Philip sat up straighter
•and stared away to the east. Next mo-
ment he was on his feet, and surprise
was stamped on his face. He could no
longer conceal his interest in something
at the other end of the island ; nor did
he try' to.

"What is it, Philip?" Verina asked,
getting up and following his line of
vision.

" A boat," said he, amazed. " Upon
my soul ! I do believe they are leaving
the island. Look ! "

Off the eastern point of the island
they could see a black spot, which pres-
ently swung around and revealed a boat,
very low in the water, being rowed in
the direction of the barren isle -to the
east.

" That is the boat we came in," said
Verina quickly. " They are going back.
Thank goodness ! "

" Thank wickedness," Philip correct-
ed. " What fools they are. They'll be
lucky if they ever reach the other shore,
for she's low-laden and the breeze is
freshening. I wonder what their hurry
is? She looks as if every ounce of the
treasure was piled into her. And there
are five men. There must be two
ashore — Probably she couldn't stand
another pound."

" Philip ! " Verina suddenly screamed.
"Look! Look! A steamer/"

Philip spun around, and looked blank-
ly at the smoking funnel of a small
steamer, which was not two miles to the
northwest.

" Good Lord! " was all he could say
for a moment. Then he realized many
things. " That accounts for their hurry.
They're trying to hide the treasure be-
fore that steamer comes up — trying to
get it off this island, at least, so that,
if my story was told and believed, the
treasure wouldn't be found. That's it!
But what ship is that? It's coming
right here ! "

Then Verina did a seemingly strange
thing. It -was just impulse growing out
of her woman's wit. She suddenly be-
gan to gather all the fuel she could find
lying around loose — leaves, sticks, and
dry grass. These she piled on the fire,
and then began to tear up green turf and
pitch it into the blaze.

"Philip!" she cried, while she worked.
" Our fire — on a hilltop ! They must
have seen our smoke. Let's make more!"

" That's just the right explanation,"
said Philip, tearing up turf. " Anyhow,
we'll make no doubt of it. More smoke !
They were probably searching for sur-
vivors of the Revuelan, and saw our
smoke.

" Good for you, little woman ! "

A few minutes later, while the smoke
poured from the dampened" fire and
drove away to leeward, Philip and Ve-
rina were running down the hill. The
officer on the bridge of the steamer could
not fail to see them.

He did see them, but he also had his
eye on a mysterious rowboat to the east
of the island. Through his glasses he
could see that the boat was heavily la-
den, and that its rowers were trying to
make the greatest possible speed.

" That's funny — trying to get away,"
mused the officer.

He lifted his glasses again, and all
at once he uttered an ejaculation. He
dashed to the signaling apparatus and
flung over the indicator to full ahead.
Nearing the inshore waters the steamer
had been going half-speed.

" They've got what they might have
expected," said the officer- to himself as
the steamer's speed increased. " Bear

612

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

away east'ard, quartermaster ! " he
snarled at the man at the wheel. A mo-
ment later he cried to the deck: "Get
ready with that starboard lifeboat, Mr.
Aulick."

Philip and Verina had reached the
beach by this time. The steamer was
still coming on straight for the island.
Philip felt a wave of relief sweep over
him. Verina was saved. But, next mo-
ment he experienced an incomprehen-
sible pang of regret. The coming of
the steamer meant —

" Philip ! " Verina fairly screamed.
" It's a yacht — a steam-yacht. Ifs the
Chameleon! "

Philip stared. He could hardly be-
lieve his eyes, but he could his ears ; and
the yacht's identity had struck Verina
Harding, too. There could be no doubt
about it. The steamer was the yacht
Chameleon. The officer on the bridge
was probably Captain Pearce. How
this came about was beyond his under-
standing or credulity. Yet there it was
— his own chartered treasure-hunting
yacht, the Chameleon !

Then the yacht did an unexpected
thing. It suddenly veered in its course
and shot away at increased speed to-
ward the east end of the island. Philip
and Verina watched it for a minute with
sinking hearts.

"Oh!" wailed Verina. "They
haven't seen us. They're going away.
Wave, Philip — shout ! "

And Philip shouted. He tore off his
coat and shouted, while he frantically
waved the garment. Aboard the Chame-
leon they could not fail to see. Sud-
denly the officer on the bridge lowered
his glasses and waved his hand, as if to
say:

" All right! We see you, but we can't
stop just now."

"What does it mean?" asked Philip
of nobody in particular.

Then there came a crashing in the
brush. The man Higgs and the sailor
Axel Svenson came toward them at a
run. Higgs's face was as white as a dead
man's, and his knees were giving under
him. He tried to say something, but he
could only articulate a number of in-
coherent gabbles. The SAvedish sailor
was cooler, although he, too, was visibly
perturbed. To Philip he said quietly:

" Ay tank bad luck ban in dat tr'asure,
all right. They ban all sank and
drown ! "

CHAPTER XIV.

The Rescued and the Lost.

"YyHAT happened?" Philip de-
™ * - manded.

The SAvede poured forth a long ex-
planation, only half of which Philip un-
derstood, the man's dialect was so ex-
traordinary. This much he could make
out, that the treasure's bad luck had pur-
sued its owners to the -end, and that
Howells and his gang Avere food for the
fishes.

" How is it that you two were not
with them?" Philip asked. "You,
Higgs, get up on your feet and be a
man for once. You appreciate the fact,
I hope, that I can place you in jail for
your share in this business?"

Higgs got up. He had been sitting
on the sand, rocking back and forth and
moaning with horror. He was a pitiful
exhibition of rank coAvardice.

" He's told you! Oh, I never Avant to
see a thing like that again ! "

" Look here, Mr. Higgs," said Philip
angrily. " Your only chance of keeping
out of jail is to tell me a straight story
before that ship comes back to pick us
up. That ship is my ship. Do you un-
derstand AAdiat that means to you?"

Higgs sobbed once or twice, then told
his story.

" We took aAvay the gold," he said.
" Then, when we Avere talking about it,
HoAATells and the Englishman agreed that
there Avas more stuff Avhere the ingots
came from, and that Ave should get the
Avhole lot, so as to cover up the exist-
ence of the thing. So Ave started back."

" He ban goin' to kill you," said the
SAvede quietly.

" I thought as much," said Philip
calmly. " He meant to get the treasure
by hook or by crook — eh, Higgs? And
you didn't say anything, did you? Ve-
rina," he said, turning to the lady Avith
a smile, " aren't you glad Ave went on a
picnic?"

" I SAA7ear — " began Higgs.

" SAvear not at all," quoth Philip,
" but go on with your story."

TREASURE OF THE WORLD.

613

" We got the boxes from the cave.
We easily found the way you went," said
the cowardly Higgs, perceiving that
truth was to his advantage as matters
stood. " Maybe it was a good thing
you weren't there, Mr. Sand, because
Captain Howells and the Englishman
had agreed to cut your throat, anyway,
because you might tell — "

" Never mind Howells and the cock-
ney," said Philip. " They're dead, Mr.
Higgs."

" Howells saw the ship," said Higgs,
" and he swore it was the long chance
or nothing. He said we must take the
treasure over to the other island and
dump it in shallow water if we hadn't
time to bury it. He hoped to do this
before -the ship got up and saw us. He
thought the ship would be paying atten-
tion to you people."

" Well, if the ship was anything like
us, we were not paying attention to each
other. We were watching you people,"
said Philip.

" Then you know what happened.
Howells was crazy-mad. Pie piled that
stuff into the boat as if it was a man-
o'-war, and then ordered us all to get in.
The four men and Howells got in, and
the water was near up to the gunwale.
Howells told us we could come oj stay;
but when he saw how laden the boat
was, he didn't seem particular about, our
coming; and I sure didn't want to go.
What's the good of treasure when you're
dead?"

" Exactly ! " said Philip with a laugh.
" Just what Eve been saying all the
time. Go on I "

" They got along all right while they
were in the shelter of the island. But
once outside, they began to strike the
very same currents that bothered us
when we were coming here, and the sea
was rough. In about five minutes —
Oh, Lord ! I never want to see a thing
like that again. You tell him, Svenson."

" Dey ban all sank an' drown," said
the Swede monotonously.

" Well, that's the sum and substance
of it," said Philip. " They were all
sunk and drowned. Another chapter of
the bad luck attending that treasure.
Here comes the yacht."

The Chameleon nosed around the point
of the island at half speed.

" Maybe they picked one or two of
them up," said Philip to the Swede.

" Naw, sir," said Svenson stolidly ;
" dey ban all sank an' drown. Ay saw! "

Presently the yacht hove to, and a
boat, which had been trailing alongside,
put off and came toward the shore.

" Look here," said Philip to Higgs
and the Swede, " it may be that I will
decide to keep quiet about all that has
happened — not because I want that
cursed treasure, but because if I talk
treasure some others may get excited
over it. It is a business in which neither
of you — and I am speaking of you in
particular, Mr.. Higgs— figure very cred-
itably. If you value your necks you can
leave it all to me, or at least you can
leave out the treasure."

" I don't want to hear another word
about it ! " exclaimed Pliggs, with ludi-
crous sincerity.

Presently the yacht's boat grated on
the beach. An officer stood up and
raised his hat to the lady. He stepped
ashore and looked at the four survivors
interestedly.

" Were you people on the Revuelan? "
he asked abruptly.

" I fancy we are the sole survivors, if
collectively we can be ' sole,' " said
Philip. "What is your name, sir?"

" Aulick — first mate of the Chame-
leon— a private yacht," said Mr. Aulick,
curiously wondering who the deuce this
cool interrogator might be.

" Very well, Mr. Aulick," said
Philip, who had never seen or been seen
by his first officer before. " You will
take Miss Harding and these two men
aboard at once. This man is Higgs,
sole agent for South America and the
West Indies of the Kurve-Kut Korset
and the No-Kut Klip. The other man
is a Swede — a sailor from the Revuelan.
My name is Sand — Philip Sand."

"Philip Sand— Mr. Sand!" ex-
claimed the first officer. " Ha ! We are
in luck. Captain Pearce will be pleased
to hear this. You are our owner? "
touching his peaked cap.

" Charter member," laughed Philip,
returning the salute.

"What has become of the others? 1
mean, we saw — "

" Yes," said Philip, with an assump-
tion of sadness he did not altogether

614

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

feel. " You have seen all there were.
The captain was swept overboard early
on the night of the gale. We foundered.

" Five sailors, the first mate, Howells,
and three passengers, were saved. The
mate and four of the sailors were trying
to make the island to the east, and I have
just learned of their fate. Poor devils! "

" Too bad ! " ' said Aulick, looking
curiously from face to face. There was
something odd about it all. " Anyhow,
you must be anxious to get aboard."

Room was made in the boat for the
four survivors.

" I wonder will I ever see that island
again?" said Philip to no one in par-
ticular.

" I should think you have seen enough
of it," said Mr. Aulick.

" I have seen a good deal of it," said
Philip, looking at Verina. " Some of it I
will forget. Some of it I will not forget.
Some of it I have no wish to forget."

The first officer caught the look and
wondered just what Mr. Sand meant.
Miss Harding looked back at the green
belt of palms, at the soft, round hill and
at the little column of smoke.

" Philip ! " she said, then quickly cor-
rected herself. " Mr. Sand — do- you
know that we forgot our breadfruit.
They must be .roasted to a cinder."

Philip laughed. It was not a sincere

laugh — rather forced. Mr. Aulick

glanced at the two faces and smiled un-

'der his mustache. He understood. There

was a romance here.

" You must be wondering," said Au-
lick, breaking the silence, " how we came
into these waters so opportunely. The
captain, of course, will tell you in de-
tail. We were at Colon, waiting for
you. When the days went by and the
Revuelan did not turn up, it began to
look ugly, especially when the Revuelan
was not reported beyond Fortune Island
and the news came of a hurricane in_J:he
passage.

" When the steamer was overdue four
days without a word of her having been

(To be continued.)

sighted, it seemed clear that she had met
with a mishap. The New York office
which arranged your charter, Mr. Sand,
cabled us to sail in search of the ship or
information. I suppose it was you they
were mainly anxious about."

" Very kind of them," said Philip;
" surprisingly thoughtful."

" We called at Kingston," said Mr.
Aulick, " and learned that there could
be no doubt that the Revuelan was
wrecked or foundered. Some of her
stuff came ashore at Turk's Island — the
main island of this group. Several bod-
ies— I beg pardon. I forgot the lady."

"All right," said Philip. "The cap-
tain will tell the story. Here we are."

A hail came from the bridge of the
yacht. There wTas Pearce, brilliant in
his captain's laced uniform. He recog-
nized Philip before the boat came along-
side and sang out a glad welcome.

" Sorry we weren't in time to save
those other fellows, but they must have
been crazy to try that sea in an overladen
boat," he cried.

The captain himself was at the gang-
way to welcome the castaways. He
shook hands with Philip, and swore that
this luck was an augury of more to fol-
low— this with a knowing wink which
spelled " Cocos Islands." Then he
turned to Miss Harding. Before Philip
could say a word by way of formal in-
troduction, Miss Harding extended her
hand and said:

" How do you do, Captain Pearce! "

" How — how — " stammered the cap-
tain, his face blank with amazement.
Then he seemed to remember something.
"How de do, Miss Harding? Never
give up the old ship, I see! "

It was then that Philip remembered
Verina's recognition of the yacht Cham-
eleon, and her statement that she had
once sailed on her as the guest of her
owner, Merton Scragg. Was it possible
that Merton Scragg was the Merton
Scragg to whom Philip had mortgaged
his life for twenty thousand dollars?

The rails may be bright — but it isn't the polish that carries the
trains. — The Section Foreman.

A Santa Fe Giant

Largest Passenger Locomotive in the World. Equipped

with Most Complete Economical Devices Ever

Combined on One Engine.

HE first Mallet articulated

compound engine to be built

for passenger service has

just been completed by the

Baldwin Locomotive Works

and delivered to the Santa

Fe. ' This engine is the largest and most

powerful passenger engine in the world.

It is the 1300.

It weighs, without tender, 376,450
I .unda, and has a tender capacity of
twelve thousand gallons of water and
four thousand gallons of oil. Complete,
the engine and tender weigh 600,000
pounds.

Its driving-wheels," of which there are
ten, articulated in two sets, are seventy-
three inches diameter. The rear set is
composed of three pairs of drivers driven
by the high-pressure cylinders, and the
forward set is composed of two pairs
driven by the low-pressure cylinders.

The total tractive effort of the loco-
motive is 53,000 pounds, its weight on
drivers being 268,000 pounds, and its
total driving-wheel base thirty feet four
inches. A total heating surface of 4,756
square feet is provided, the fire-box hav-
ing 202 square feet and the tubes 4,554
square feet.

A unique feature of this engine, or,
rather, a group of unique features, is its
system of fuel and steam economy. It is
the first engine to be built with the com-
bined features of feed-water heater, which
brings the water to boiling-point before
feeding it into the boiler ; superheater,
for superheating the steam ; and re-
heater, a device through which the steam
passes when exhausted from the high-
pressure cylinders, before passing into
the low-pressu<re cylinders.

The engine is for use in the mountain
districts of southwestern California and
Nevada.

6i5

Close Galls of
the Rail.

BY OLIN CRAWFORD.

NOT every one struck by a railroad-train is killed. Those who live to
tell the tale usually get a great deal more fun out of the experience
than the casual reader — or the casual spectator, should there be one —
imagines. From time to time we have published thrilling stories of railway
wrecks, but none of them is quite so remarkable as the tales of close calls
which Mr. Bacon has collected, for he deals with individuals and not with
rolling-stock.

Dortch's Fly— Where Boyle Landed — Saved the Dog — A Ride on the

Pilot — The Human Chain — A Mussed- Up Home —

Thompson's Hair Gut — and Others.

HEN the boiler of a
locomotive blows up,
it is a slim chance,
indeed, that a man
in the cab will live
through the catas-
trophe. To any one who has seen an en-
gine torn to pieces by the terrific force
of its own steam, or has even set eyes
upon the tangled wreckage left by the
explosion, it must be almost incompre-
hensible that a man ever did come
through such an accident with his life.
Yet it was the narrowest of chances that

saved Bill Dortch from getting his final
clearance.

Bill Dortch was the fireman on freight
No. 36 on the Atchison, Topeka and
Santa Fe, which, while rolling eastward
on the morning of January 19, 1907,
came to the bridge over Kill Creek, near
De Soto, Kansas.

The engine was half-way across the
broad stream when, with a roar that was
heard for miles around, the boiler burst.
A great cloud of steam rose high in air,
and what was left of the engine, a tan-
gled mass, dropped through a hole in the

616

CLOSE CALLS OF THE RAIL.

617

damaged bridge and went splashing into
the creek.

After it went the cars, fourteen of
them, crashing on top of one another
through the break in the span.

Three men were in the cab of the en-
gine. One was F. W. Bartell, the engi-
neer- Another was H. E. Shaw, a brake-
man. Long afterward, their bodies were
found buried under a tangled heap of
wreckage.

The third man in the cab was Bill
Dortch. It seemed to him, after the ex-
plosion, that he was flying. At last he
went plunging into the waters of the
creek, a long stone's throw from where
engine and cars had struck.

The water was deep and terribly cold.
Probably he never would have lived to
tell the story had not a mass of wreckage
' drifted by him "at that moment. He
clutched at it and held on, and it drifted
with him to the shore. JWhen he reached
land he was nearly breathless.

There he lay, half frozen, until a res-
cue-party found him. He was badly cut
and bruised, but it was a nine-days' won-
der along that division of the Santa Fe
that he had not been picked up in small
fragments.

Frank Boyle's Escape_.

It was at Kellam's Bridge, fifty-five
miles from Port Jervis, New York, that
the same curious chance fell to the luck
of Frank Boyle, head brakeman on an
Erie freight-train, on the morning of
December 29, 1903.

The locomotive had failed to make
steam ; and a moment later, while the
fireman was shoveling in coal, it ex-
ploded without warning. Boiler and fire-
box leaped high in air from the trucks,
followed by a dense cloud of smoke,
steam and flame, falling back upon the
twisted trucks.

The engineer, fireman, and a track-
walker who had been standing near the
engine were blown over a high embank-
ment into the Delaware River. The fire-
man was killed .instantly, and the others
were badly hurt.

Boyle, who had been riding in the cab,
and who was standing just behind the
fireman when the explosion came, was
hurled through the air with terrific force,

but, instead of going down the embank-
ment, he landed on the track, one hun-
dred feet ahead of the wreck.

For a moment he lay stunned. Then
he picked himself up and came hobbling
back, with a sprained knee, to help rescue
the wounded.

" Boys," he said to the survivors,
" I've made up my mind that nothing
can kill me."

Caught the Last Car.

The escape from death of Hans Han-
sen, a wealthy resident of Roosevelt.
New Jersey, was almost as strange. On
the afternoon of July 26, 1909, he was
crossing the tracks of the Central Rail-
road of New Jersey, near' Carteret, in
his automobile, when a freight-train,
pushed by a big hog, backing down at
a high rate of speed, crashed into his
machine.

The automobile was cut in two. Han-
sen had just enough time to leap from
his seat and clutch an iron rung of the
ladder leading to the roof of the freight-
car at the end of the train.

His left leg was crushed as it struck
against the wreck of his machine, but he
managed to hang on to the ladder until
the train was stopped.

The automobile has figured in some
curious railroad accidents of recent
years. Miss Lucille Bonart, of 487
Fourth Street, Brooklyn, was visiting
Miss Ha Collins in Sayville, Long Is-
land, in November, 1908.

Held Onto the Dog.

Miss Bonart owned an auto runabout,
and one day she and Miss Collins went
for a ride. They took Miss Bonart's
small dog along.

" I think the world of that ki-yi," said
Miss Bonart to Miss Collins, who was
holding the dog ; " so be sure you don't
drop him." f

Her friend held onto the animal with
grim determination. Driving around a
carve through the woods, they shot out
upon the tracks of the Long Island Rail-
road. An express - train was coming
along at forty miles an hour. It smashed
squarely into the runabout, and wrecked
it. The two girls went flying through

618

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

the air. But Miss Collins still held onto
the dog.

When the girls recovered — with only
torn clothes and a few cuts and bruises
— they were a good many feet from the
tracks, and the dog was still with them.
He, too, had escaped without mortal
hurt. ,

" Lucille," said Miss Collins, " I held
onto that beast of yours as long as I
could, but I thought I was never going
to stop flying, and I had to drop him
before I reached the ground."

Landed on the Pilot.

John Hancrow was struck by the
Pennsylvania Limited, one of the fastest
trains on the road, at Park Manor, a
suburb of Chicago, on January 27, 1904,
and lives to tell the tale.

He was walking across the tracks
when the engine tossed him into the air.
When he came down, he struck against
the pilot. Lie had sufficient presence of
mind to throw his arms around the iron
bars of the pilot and hang there.

But the train rushed on. It was ma-
king fifty miles an hour, and the men in
the cab had not seen him. He knew he
must hang there until the next stop.
That might be miles away. It was bit-
terly cold, and he was badly hurt. One
of his legs and two ribs were broken,
and in the teeth of the wind he had to
grip the icy bars with all his failing
strength. ^

As the train flew by the next station,
a man on the platform caught a glimpse
of Hancrow sprawled out on his dan-
gerous perch, and told the agent. A min-
ute later messages were flying along the
line :

" Block the limited. There's a man
on the pilot."

At the river-line station the train Avas
stopped. Hancrow was found still
hanging to the pilot. He had been car-
ried four miles, but he could not have
held out much longer, for already the
cold was beginning to steal away his
consciousness.

Eight Cars Ran Over Bundish.

It may have been the fact that he had
been sick and had lost fifty pounds in

weight that was responsible for the es-
cape of Michael Bundish, a miner em-
ployed at the Green Mountain colliery
of the Lehigh and Wilkesbarre Coal
Company, near Wilkesbarre.

At any rate, Bundish believed that it
was to his illness that he owed his life.
On the evening of March 3, 1904, he
boarded a coal-train at the colliery to
ride home. He was on the eighth car
from the last when, owing to a broken
coupling, it parted from the car ahead.

Bundish sprang across the gap to the
car in front of him, missed it, and fell
sprawling upon the track. Before he
could get to his feet, the eight runaway
cars were upon him. He spread himself
out flat and clung as close to the ties as
he could. The cars rumbled over him,
leaving him without a scratch.

" The trucks hung low enough to
brush against my clothes," he said; " and
if I had been two inches thicker through
the waist, as I used to be, I'd have been
done for."

Out of the Fog.

How often it happens that in a wreck
where'' there are many victims, there is
one persjori whose escape reads like a
miracle. On April 19, 1909, there was
a rear-end collision on the Central Rail-
road of New Jersey at the Communipaw
Avenue Station. One person was killed
and thirty were injured.
,.. A passenger-train of six cars, bound
from Jersey City to Newark, was stand-
ing in the station. Five of the cars were
comfortably filled, but the mist lay thick
on the Jersey marshes; and the com-
muter instinct, which says : " 'Ware the
rear car in a fog," left that one empty.

Out of the fog, on the same track, to
the rear, came the big 504, drawing a
pay-car. It was going thirty miles an
hour when the tail-lights of the Newark
train leaped, out of the mist not thirty
yards away.

The fireman caught the red flare of
the lanterns and threw himself from the
cab. Middlesworth, the engineer, stuck
to the throttle, reversed, and threw on
the air. It was too late. The heavy en-
gine ground through the rear car of the
Newark train, telescoping it almost from
platform to platform.

CLOSE CALLS OF THE RAIL.

619

Although nobody was inside the car, The engineer of the waiting train mis-
Miles Barth, of Jersey City, had just calculated the distance, and started too
climbed onto the rear platform. As the soon. His engine struck the last coach
engine plowed through the car, Barth- of the New York train, lifted it from
was pinned under the pilot in such a way

that he escaped with only a few scratches. ^, v — ^

Twenty minutes later, he crawled out.

Hung Over an Embankment.

In another train wreck in New Jersey,
the escape of not one, but forty, passen-
gers seemed almost incredible. It was

"i HELD ONTO THAT BEAST OF YOURS AS LONG AS I COULD."

on November 15, 1906, that Erie train the track, and swung it over a high em-
No. 57, from New York, was pulling bankment.

into Belleville. Another passenger-train The side of the car was splintered in

was waiting on a side-track to allow it the crash. As it swung, end down, in

to pass. mid air oyer the fifty-foot embankment,

620

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

the forty passengers were hurled on top
of one another until they were packed
into a solid mass of humanity.

The heavy coach hung there, held only
by its coupling. Then the passengers
began to struggle up to the upper end
of the almost perpendicular car, using
the seats as rungs of a ladder.

Some of the women had fainted. A
human chain was formed by the men,
and they were rescued. Not one person
had been seriously hurt. Even the two
men in the cab of the colliding engine
had come through Avith scarcely a scratch.

It Mussed Up the House.

Trains have curious adventures some-
times when they go on a tear. Late one
night in September, 1904, an attempt
was made to shunt three Lackawanna
cars onto a trestle at Newark. But, in-
stead of taking the trestle-switch, the
cars passed over it, and continued down
a steep grade to where the tracks ter-
minated.

They crashed through the bumper
and went rolling on into the yard of
Commissioner James Snape, of the New-
ark Board of Education. One car was
loaded with thirty tons of oats, another
with baled hay, and the third with fifty
tons of coal.

They knocked over a giant shade tree
in front of the commissioner's home, then
tore away the brick front of the house
up to the level of the second story, ra-
zing part of the foundation Avail.

The first car went on into the parlor,
smashed the piano and all the furniture
into splinters, scraped all the pictures
from the walls, tore through the par-
tition into the dining-room, and was
hurtling into the kitchen, when the floor
collapsed and the car dropped into the
cellar.

The hay-car had stopped outside, tilt-
ed sideways against the front wall. The
coal-car remained in the street.

On the second floor of the house, Com-
missioner Snape, his wife, their two
daughters and six-year-old son, were
sleeping. All except the boy jumped out
of bed, thinking the rupture an earth-
quake.

The boy was thrown from his bed, but
the shock did not Avake him. He was

carried into a neighbor's house, still
sleeping peacefully, and was much sur-
prised Avhen he Avoke up, several hours
later,, to find a railroad car. in his home
and two others outside.

McGovern On the Job.

It was at NeAvark, too, on December
19, 1903. that several runaAvay freight-
cars- Avould have caused a disastrous
wreck had it not been for the courage
and quick decision of an engineer. On
a steep grade on the Lackawanna, the
coupling broke betAveen the third and
fourth cars, and the tail end of the train
began to run backAvard doAvn the grade.
So rapidly did they gain headway that
the brakemen on board Avere pOAverless
to stop them.

In the station, a passengerTtrain was
waiting on the same track as the run-
aways. Thomas McGovern, the engi-
neer, saAv them coming a quarter of a
mile away. Without a moment's hesi-
tation, he jumped from the cab, rushed
to the coupling, and parted his engine
from the train. He shouted to his fire-
man to jump to the lever; then, as he
uncoupled, he gaAre the order: "Go
ahead ! "

The engine started. McGovern
jumped back into his cab.

DoAvn came the runaAvay cars, gaining
speed with, every second, and the engine
flew on to meet them. McGovern pulled
the throttle Avide open.

" Jump ! " he cried to his fireman.
. Both leaped out into the cinders and
landed unhurt. Five seconds later the
engine Avent crashing into the freight-
cars, splintering the first into pieces and
knocking the others from the track. The
engine itself was wrecked.

McGovern, folloAved by his fireman,
came back to the station to report. He
had saved his train and the lives of
scores of his passengers.

Shaw's Joy-Ride.

Blind luck carried Samuel ShaAV safe-
ly through a Avreck on the Susquehanna
and Western at Middletown, New York,
in February, 1904. Charles Spitzer, an
engineer, Avas lying underneath his loco-
motive, making some repairs, Avhen Shaw,

CLOSE CALLS OF THE RAIL.

621

a plumber, who had
always shown a live-
ly interest in rail-
roads, happened
along and decided
to get aboard.

He climbed into
the cab and pulled
the lever. Spitzer,
when he found the
engine moving,
scrambled out from
under the wheels just
in time to save him-
self, but he was too
late to jump aboard.

The engine, with
the plumber at the
■throttle, was gather-
ing speed rapidly.
At length it smashed
into several freight-
cars. It stove a big
hole in the first, and
knocked them all off
the • track — but the
engine held to the
rails.

The collision
brought the engine
to a standstill, and,
several minutes later, Spitzer and several
other railroad men came upon the scene,
expecting to find Shaw dead or badly
wounded. Instead, he was sitting calmly
in the cab, surrounded by the debris of
the wreck.

"What's the matter with you?" de-
manded the engineer.

" Well," said the plumber, " I just felt
the need of a little excitement."

The proverbial luck of the drunken
man in dangerous places was with Will-
iam X. Thompson while he lay asleep
beside the tracks of the Belvidere Rail-
road at Trenton. He was lying on the

^Wfe* ^Jj)

WILLIAM X. THOMPSON
TONSORIAI

cinder path with his head against one
of the rails.

A freight-train came along at a good
rate of speed, but Thompson was sleep-
ing too soundly to hear it. He awoke
with a cry of terror. The trucks of the
cars were grazing the top of his head.

The wheels cut his hair close to his
scalp, and left him almost unhurt.

While a group of railroad men were
standing about him marveling over his
escape, a policeman happened along and
arrested him. A judge fined him five
dollars for drunkenness and creating a
disturbance.

WHAT'S THE ANSWER?

By ike
Ligkf of

the h,antern

uesnons
Answered
for
Railroad Men

ASK US !

WE like to be as useful to our readers as we can; but, because of the great popularity
of this department, we are forced to impose certain restrictions. In future, we
shall be compelled to limit its scope to the answering of questions of an inform-
ative, technical, or historical nature only.
We receive dozens of queries in regard to the right person to apply to for certain
classes of employment. If the writers will pause for a moment to consider, the title of
the proper official will readily occur to them, and in any case the information can be
obtained by application to the headquarters of the company involved, much more quickly
than we can publish it.

PLEASE explain what is the proper way
to put camber in a Howe truss when
you are renewing an old span ? Would
you wedge the old span up to the required cam-
ber and build up the new one on that, or
would you build the new span on false work
and then put the camber in by spacing the
top and bottom chords? If this is the right
way, please explain how it is done, and how
you can put in the camber by spacing the
top and bottom chords. What is the break-
ing strain on a main tie or chord-bar per
square inch ?

C. G, Coquille, Oregon.

The proper way to put camber in a new
Howe truss is by making the top chord
longer than the bottom one, thus causing the
chords to curve slightly. This curve is the
camber. A good rule for finding the
amount of camber to put in a bridge is to
divide the span in feet by fifty, which will
give the camber in inches. Using this rule,

the formula for the increase in length of
upper chord over the lower is :

8 x depth x camber
span

It would probably not be advisable to
wedge up the old span when it is about to
be renewed, unless it has deflected to such
an extent as to become dangerous. The
method of building the new span would de-
pend on local conditions, such as topogra-
phy, number of trains per day, cost of tim-
ber for false work, ease of driving piles for
bents, etc.

The breaking strain on a main tie or
chord-bar is the elongation of the member
when loaded to its ultimate strength. • The
above will answer the question if you are
using " strain " in the correct way, as mean-
ing deformation. The stress per square
inch at failure is the ultimate strength of

622

BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN.

623

the material per square inch multiplied by
the area of the section in square inches.

SOME railroad men speak of the air-
brake on a locomotive as " straight air."
What is this brake, and will it operate
as now piped?

(2) Which wheel on a locomotive will
slide going around a curve, the one on the
inside, or the one on the outside rail ?

F. M., Helena, Montana.

(1) This term implies that compressed
air is used as a direct force from the main
reservoir supply of the locomotive, through
direct piping to the brake-cylinders on the
vehicles to apply the brakes. It simply re-
quires a valve on the locomotive to admit air
to" the brake-pipe and brake-cylinder, in or-
der to apply the brakes ; to hold it there
when admitted, and to exhaust it when de-
siring to release the brakes.

This, apparatus was-brought out by George
Westinghouse, Jr., in 1869. The air-pump
at that time had the so-called " trigger," or
" jigger," valve motion, which will no doubt
be recalled by many of the older readers of
this department. The brake-valve was the
simplest form of three-way cock.

The hose couplings were " butt end," male
and female, which necessitated there being
a male and female coupling at each end,
so that a connection between cars might al-
ways be made. If the engineer wished to
apply the brakes, he placed the three-way
cock in service position.

This permitted the main reservoir air to
pass through the three-way cock into the
train line, and thence into the brake-cylin-
ders, which were directly connected with
the train line. When the desired pressure
had been admitted to the train line and
brake-cylinders, the three-way cock was
placed on lap, in which position all points
were blanked.

The pump would continue compressing
air into the main reservoir to be put in the
train pipe when the valve was again placed
in service position. To release the brakes,
the engineer placed the valve in release posi-
tion, which allowed the air coming from
the train line and brake-cylinders to pass to
the atmosphere through the three-way cock.

This equipment had many good qualities
and a very large degree of flexibility, but its
shortcomings made it unsuited for use on
trains of any considerable length. Chief of
them was the time required to apply and
release the brake, and the unequal braking
effort through the train. The factor of
safety was low, as no warning was given
in the event of hose becoming uncoupled.

and a parted train meant no brakes. Thus
it is seen that it lacked the first essential of
an efficient brake, which is, that it must be
its own " telltale," that is, if an accident
occurs to the system, it must result in a
brake application instead of a loss at the
brake. Many freight as well as passenger
engines of the present day have, in addition,
the straight air-brake for holding the engine
independent of the train.

(2) The distance traversed over the in-
side rail of the curve obviously being shorter
than by the outside rail, the wheels on the
inside must slip or drag sufficiently to com-
pensate for the difference in length, presu-
ming, of course, that you refer to the
driving wheel, or rigid wheel-base.

TJ S. B., Bocas-del-Toro, Panama. — The
-*--*•• full list of trainmasters on Canadian
railroads is far too long for repro-
duction here. The best we can do with
space available is to quote the names of a
few of these officials, as follows : Grand
Trunk, C. G. Bowker, Stratford, Ontario ;
J. P. Kirkpatrick, Ottawa, Ontario. Cana-
dian Pacific, J. H. Boyle, Assistant Superin-
tendent, Montreal, Quebec, and R. W. Mc-
Cormick, Assistant Superintendent, Ottawa,
Ontario.

HW., Verda, Louisiana. — (1) The aver-
• age pay of passenger engineers is
about three and three-quarter cents per mile,
and of freight engineers about four cents per
mile, a day's work to consist of one hun-
dred miles, or less. That is, a full day's pay
for any mileage less than one hundred
miles, if it cannot be made in ten hours.
On some runs a day's pay is allowed if an
engineer is called and is not needed, on
others one-half day's pay is allowed.

(2) Hard to strike an average for
monthly pay. Should say for passenger en-
gineers about $125, and freight men about
the same. Some passenger engineers in reg-
ular service make close to $200 in excep-
tional cases, and before the sixteen-hour
law this amount was not unusual in freight
service.'

(3) The work on an oil-burning loco-
motive is very light for a fireman compared
with that on a coal-burner. His duties con-
sist of manipulating the valves controlling
the supply of oil and the control of the
atomizer. They are usually required, how-
ever, to be experienced in burning coal.

(4) Wipers receive from $1.00 to $1.25
per day. At some roundhouses they wipe
on the piece-work basis, so much per en-

624

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE

gine, and might earn much more than figure
quoted. There is no defined rule anywhere
that we know of insuring that a wiper will
be given a chance at firing.

Men are hired directly into the service
as firemen. We have always held to the
opinion, however, that it would be of much
benefit to a future fireman if he could have
some preliminary training about the round-
house as a wiper or a general helper. This
plan is followed in some sections, but there
is far from being any uniformity about it.

(5) When an engineer changes his road,
he enters on the new road at the foot of the
list of engineers. This is principally the
reason why so- few engineers do change. It
means the loss of seniority, and with it the
pick of the good runs, which latter always
go to men oldest in the service. Occasion-
ally engineers are dismissed for violation of
rule, but this is very seldom. Their long
years of training never fail to bring a keen
realization of duty and responsibility, and
it is a rarity, indeed, when they are found
lacking.

(6) The Pennsylvania system,, with its
subsidiary and controlled lines, is regarded
as the largest railroad, about 13,000 miles.

EH. H, Mexico City, Mexico. — For
o works on the air-brake address Rail-
way and Locomotive Engineering, New
York. Air-brake inspectors are employees
of railroad companies, and as such have no
official connection with the United States
government or the Westinghouse Air-Brake
Company. Their duties consist in locating
air-brake troubles, and in seme instances
assisting in the repairs. All railroads, prac-
tically, require a daily and rigid examination
of air appliances on locomotives and ten-
ders, and specially trained men are devel-
oped for this work. The pay of round-
house air-brake inspectors is variable, but
may be regarded about the same as ma-
chinists, say $3.50 per day.

CAN an engine and tender alone run be-
tween eighty-five and ninety miles an
hour, and stay on the rails? Has this
ever been done, and is there any record?

What is the fastest time known to have
been made by any train?

H. L. M., Moline, Illinois.

Yes, it is possible, but it would be an ill-
advised performance to attempt, as the mo-
tion of an engine at that speed would be
disagreeable and disconcerting, to say the
least. The liability to derailment on high-

degree curves would be very great. Speed
records are never attempted without a rea-
sonable weight to impart the necessary
steadiness to the train when, rounding such
curves. There is no official record of ex-
ceptional time by a light engine, and local
records are in the main unsatisfactory. The
editor of this department recalls an occasion
on the Chattanooga division of the Southern
Railway, when it became necessary, owing
to a breakdown, to send a light engine
about sixty-three miles to the west of
Knoxville. This run was made in fifty-
eight minutes. Beyond this one instance, we
cannot speak from experience.

The greatest speed attained by a locomo-
tive of which there is official record, was
made by engine 999 of the New York Cen-
tral and Hudson River Railroad, which,
on May 9, 1893, covered five consecutive
miles at the rate of 102.8 miles per hour.
It is claimed that one mile of this phenome-
nal run, near Grimesville, New York, was
covered in 32 seconds, or at the rate of
1 12.5 miles per hour. On May 19, 1893, en-
gine 903, a double of the 999, covered the
same ground with the same train, the Em-
pire State Express, consisting of four heavy
parlor-cars, at the rate of 100 miles an hour.

Jtf

IF the tracks of a third-rail system were
to become covered with snow, or flood-
ed, is there the same danger of electro-
cution by contact with the third rail?

F. McC>, Adama, Oregon.

No more danger exists under above con-
ditions than if the rail were in its normal
state. Snow will not conduct electricity to
an appreciative extent. If it were a con-
ductor, it would, short-circuit the third rail
and the running rail, blowing circuit breaker
in the power-house and cut off the current.

DC. A., Cedar Rapids, Iowa. — Castings
• and other parts for model locomotives
are sold either in the rough or with the
necessary machine work done. Those han-
dled by the Sipp Electric and Machine Com-
pany, Paterson, New Jersey, run in sizes for
the following gage of track — three and one-
half inches, five and a quarter inches, and
seven inches.

CAN you give me the statistics regarding"
how many persons are killed or
maimed each year by the wheels of
railway cars? Also if the wheels were

BY THE LIGHT OF THE LANTERN.

625

properly fended would not a large percen-
tage of these particular accidents be pre-
vented ?

H. B. B., Dallas, Texas.

For the year ending June 30, 1907, which
is the latest for which we have tabulated sta-
tistics from the Interstate Commerce Com-
mission, the total number of persons, other
than employees and passengers, killed, was
6,695; injured, 10,331.

The figures include the casualties to per-
sons trespassing, and which latter comes-
properly within the scope of your question.
Of these latter, 5,612 were killed, and 5,512
were injured.

The total number of casualties to persons
other than employees, due to being struck
by trains, locomotives, or cars, was 5,327
killed, and 4,876 injured. The casualties of
this class at highway crossings were : Pas-
sengers killed, 1, injured, 20; other persons
killed, 510, injured, 682 ; at other points
along the track, passengers killed, 4, injured,
12 ; other persons killed, 3,845, injured, 2,263.

Fenders applied as you suggest would
not be a protective measure. The speed of
steam railroad trains is such that, while the
fender might guard against the victim get-
ting under the wheels, the blow inflicted by
it would be necessarily fatal. The only
logical remedy is to guard the railroad to
all possible extent against trespassers by
crossing-gates operated by vigilant watch-
men; hedge-fences along the right of way,
and sharp, broken ballast over ties, on which
it is impossible, or at least very unpleasant,
to walk.

DO. H., Silvis, Illinois. — We cannot find
• anything in book of rules instructing
that headlight be covered under the track
conditions which you mention, but it is a
good practise to follow just the same. Of
course, as this second-class'train is standing
on the end of double track, single track
rules, which require the headlight to be
covered at meeting points, need not apply.

WILL you kindly advise me the cost per
mile for laying a railroad track, giv-
ing cost of rail, ballast, ties, etc. ;
also number of tons each used, number of
ties, and cost of each per ton.

J. C, Jr., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The material required to lay one mile of
track, is eight cars of ties, five cars of rails,
and one car of rail fastenings, or, to put it
another way, there are required 3,168 ties, if
these are laid eighteen to the thirty-foot rail,
which is the number required for good
construction, although a cheap road may be

4 R R

built with fourteen or fifteen ties to the
rail ; 352 rails, which, if they are of the
usual length of thirty feet, and eighty
pounds to the yard, will weigh" 281,600
pounds; 704 angle-bars, and 2,112 bolts, to
hold rails together, and 5,632 pounds of
spikes, to fasten them to the ties. The cost
of track-laying varies greatly, but the aver-
age may be somewhere near $200 to $250
per mile, and again it may be as much as
$0oo. Ties cost from thirty-five to eighty
cents each, according to the kind of wood
and quality. At $30 a ton, rails weighing-
eighty pounds to the yard would cost $3,771
per mile of track; rail weighing one hun-
dred pounds to the yard, at same rate per
ton, would cost $4,714 per mile of track.
This estimate is, of course, for simple track-
laying, and does not include grading or fill-

ing.

FP., LaGrande, Oregon. — The only thing
• we can suggest is for you to watch the
daily papers for advertisements indicating
that men are wanted for railroad service on
the lines mentioned. We do not know of
any agency to secure labor for railroads in
the tropics, and don't believe that one exists
in this country, but if it does, your question,
answered in this way, will no doubt bring
it to light.

■<*

FH. D., Riverside, California. — The Cali-
• fornia Limited of the Atchison, To-
peka and Santa Fe was put in service in
1895. We have not been able to secure
definite information up to this writing on
the other train you ask for, but will advise
you later.

GW., Milwaukee, Wisconsin. — You can
• obtain full information from the post-
master in your city regarding the qualifica-
tions for railway mail clerks, date of next
examination, and all other matters pertain-
ing thereto. You understand that these posi-
tions are under civil service rules, and there
is no difference in the requirements between
railroads.

DM., Peabody, Kansas. — We cannot ad-
• vise you regarding telegraphy as a
profession, because the information which
has reached us in the past along these lines
has been conflicting to a degree. It seems
to be an overcrowded profession, at least
just at present, and if your intention is to
make a life-work of it, take your time and
inquire thoroughly into the demand for
operators.

626

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Neither can we advise in regard to the
merits of the various telegraph schools, as
we have had no personal contact with them,
and, in fact, know nothing whatever beyond
what is contained in their various advertise-
ments. Our best advice to you would be
to talk the matter over with some old opera-
tor who can be depended upon to give you
proper counsel.

AF. G., Brilliant, Ohio.— Address the
• United Wireless Company, 42 Broad-
way, New York City, New York, for infor-
mation desired.

\\ 7* HERE is the fastest train in the world,
Y> what is its time, and the miles it
makes ?

(2) Where is the fastest long distance
train, and how many miles will it average
an hour?

(3) How long can a train run at the
rate of ninety miles per hour?

(4) What is the best time Italian trains
make in Europe?

(5) Have any foreign railroads trains
which make as fast time as in the United
States?

G. A. W., Penns Grove, New Jersey.

(1) The fastest short distance trains in
this country are from Camden, New Jersey,
to Atlantic City, New Jersey, distance 55-5
miles, in 50 minutes, via Reading Railway,
and Pennsylvania Railroad.

(2) The Empire State Express of the
New York Central leads as the fastest regu-
lar train for distances over 100 miles. Its
run is from New York to Buffalo, 440 miles,
in 8 hours and 15 minutes, or at the rate of
53.3 miles per hour. Eighteen hours between
New York and Chicago is the regular sched-
ule time of one daily train each way over
the New York Central lines, distance 965
miles, and over the Pennsylvania, distance
905 miles. The best performances of Ameri-
can railroads for long distances on regular
schedule are from Oakland to Chicago, via
Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, and Chicago
and Northwestern, the distance being 2,274
miles, in 67 hours and 30 minutes, averaging
33.7 miles per hour, and from Los Angeles
to Chicago, over Atchison, Topeka and Santa
Fe, 2,267 miles, in 66 hours and 15 minutes.

(3) There are no records of any value
in evidence to afford material to answer
this question. " Sufficient to say that this
speed is quite unusual, and it is doubtful,
except under exceptional conditions, that it
could be realized for a single mile by any
locomotive. Of course, there are a few
reliable records where it has even been ex-
ceeded. See reply to H. L. M. this month.

(4) Italian trains do not go heavily to_

speed records. The editor of this depart-
ment on several occasions timed the speed
of their expresses, while a passenger be-
tween Rome and Naples, and could not make
more than thirty-eight miles an hour out
of it.

(5) In practically all instances where the
runs are less than 250 miles the roads of
England can claim superiority in speed.
This is due to lighter cars, absence of grade
crossings, and curves of less than 1,000 feet
radius, and absolutely perfect track. The
Great Northern was the pioneer in high
speed on English railroads. Twenty-nine
years ago, on its line between* London and
Grantham, 11 5.5 miles was made in 111 min-
utes. It also established, on August 31, 1888,
and held for many years, the London-Edin-
burgh record, 392 miles in 7 hours and 26
minutes, average 52.7. Eight hours is the
present schedule. The famous boat train of
the Great Western, the Cornish-Riviera Ex-
press, well-known by all tourists who disem-
bark at Plymouth, runs regularly between
that city and London, 246 miles, at a sus-
tained speed of 55.7 miles per hour. This
run has been shortened recently by a cut-off
near Bristol, so that it is not more than 225
miles, but the speed is still proportionately
high. Other famous regular runs are the
London and Bristol express, 118 miles in
120 minutes, and London and Exeter, 194
miies in 200 minutes.

WE. H.. Los Angeles, California. — We
• can do no more this month than re-
fer you to reply to A. E. L., in April, 1909.
number on the subject of the telephone in
train despatching, and the succeeding num-
bers of the lantern department, to date,
contain. much information on the future of
this experiment or 'innovation. It is not be-
lieved that the former telegraph operators
will lose on its adoption by a railroad. At
least they have not in the past, as the inquiry
we have made indicates that all have been
provided for as telephone operators at the
same pay.

<£

GP. McG., St. Paul, Minnesota.— Your
• question, " Is there any danger of a
twelve-hour working law on railroads," is
too indefinite to answer intelligently. You
are no doubt familiar with the sixteen-hour
law for trainmen and the nine-hour law gov-
erning telegraph operators? If not, and
you will specify, we will reply in an early
number, or perhaps it may be that you would
care to go into more detail in your original
question.

DO YOU

MEAN ME

ESPECIALLY ?

THE BOY

ASKED.

THEY GALLED HIM "ARTIE."

BY CHARLES WESLEY SANDERS.

You Can't Always Tell Just Who Is
a Blithering Boob and Who Isn't.

[TIE!"

Pat Mulville put his
big red hands on his hips
and thrust forward his
heavy face. There was a
sneer on his lips, and his
eyes were bright with dislike.

" Who ever let him escape from his
mama? " he went on. " Does his papa
know he's out? "

Jackson, the assistant foreman, grinned.
He was a little, dried-up old man, and he
relished Mulville's wit.

" His papa sent him here for to learn

for to be a railroad man," Jackson said.

" Well — " Mulville opened his lips

for further comment, but a gruff voice

behind him stopped him* *" Did you get

them spikes?" It was the foreman, a
square-faced, stocky German, the only
man in camp of whom Mulville was
afraid.

"Yes, sir," the Irishman said.

" Well, open up the keg," said the fore-
man. "What do you think this is? A
Sunday-school picnic? Get a move on
you."

Mulville got a move on him, watching
Artie out of the corner of his eye.

Artie was probably twenty-two. He
had a boyish, clean face, with big blue
eyes and fair hair which fell about his
forehead from beneath the ridiculous col-
lege cap which he had stuck on his head.
He was digging with the gang, throw-
ing the heavy clay to one side with as

627

628

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

much speed as the others ; and he did
not stop to rest oftener than they.

His arms were not heavy, as they
showed below his rolled-up sleeves ; but
if Mulville had noticed, he would have
seen that they were bronzed, and that
their muscles played as the lad plied his
shovel.

Artie, as Mulville soon learned from
guarded questions put to Jackson, was
the son of the general superintendent of
the road. He had decided to become a
railroad man, and his father had sent
him to this construction - camp, whose
gang was running a branch of the D. R.
and G. down toward the coal-fields.

It was a stern introduction for the boy.
His companions were rough men, who
feared nothing and cared for little. The
work was hard for one unaccustomed to
manual labor. The food was plain and
heavy, and the sleeping - quarters were
not nests of comfort.

But Artie — he hated the effeminate
name as much as any one, but it had al-
ways clung to him — Artie had been fore-
warned by his father, and he determined
to stick to his task till he had mas-
tered it.

He had been well enough received by
the men on his first day, though he felt
that he was the subject of a good deal
of comment, and that for some reason
he roused their merriment. On the sec-
ond day Mulville, who had been away
after supplies, returned. He seemed to^
take an immediate dislike to Artie.

" Got a chew? " he asked, when he
found himself near the boy.

" Don't use it," Artie returned. " I
can give you a cigar."

" I want a chew. Why don't you use
it? 'Fraid it'll upset your tummy?"

Artie bent to his shoveling without a
word. Here, he perceived, was the be-
ginning of trouble. He determined to
wait till trouble was upon him before he
let them know he was aware of its exist-
ence.

He wouldn't go to meet it.

At noon, after dinner, he sat outside
the bunkhouse and smoked a cigarette.
Mulville looked up, his mouth stuffed
with bread and meat.

" Artie," he said, " don't oo smoke all
dat cigarette. Oo make, oo sick."

A ripple of laughter went round the

sitting men. . Artie cast the cigarette
away. He rose. For a moment he
stared at Mulville, and then he cast an
angry curse at him.

"What!"

The big Irishman stared open-mouthed
and made as if to rise. Then he caught
sight of the foreman approaching them.

" You can't get away with that, kid,"
he said in a low, shaken voice. " We
fight first chance we get. Do you hear? "

" I hear," Artie answered, and his face
was white, but he returned the other
man's glare.

Mulville, when he got his good
clothes on, was an attractive fellow, in a
way. He had the beauty of extraor-
dinarily strong manhood, and he knew it.
All of his twenty-six years he had won
the hearts of the fair sex. Many of the
girls had half won him, but none ever
wholly.

When he came to this construction-
camp, his first object, after he had found
a barber-shop — he was very keen about
his mustache and his shaven jaw^ — was
to amble about the village till he might
strike up a flirtation.

He saw a girl in a candy-store, went
in, bought candy, and made her ac-
quaintance. He had bought probably
twenty pounds of candy before he got
her permission to call. In a week she
had him at her feet, because she did not
profess an undying affection when he
first spoke endearing words to her. She
merely drew her hand away and changed
the subject. That was so great a shock
to Mulville that, all next day, he made
himself miserable by half convincing
himself that she cared for some one else.

She finally confessed that she did care
for him, but he never rid himself wholly
of the suspicion which left him ready to
hate any one on whom the girl might
bestow a glance of interest.

As chance would have it, the girl came
to the camp the day following Mulville's
tik with Artie. She was wont to visit
Mulville here at the noon-hour, her store
being but a few blocks away. The men
liked her for her pleasant ways and for
her dark, pretty face. Some of them
wondered what she saw in the burly
Irishman to like.

As she sat on a stool which Mulville

THEY CALLED HIM "ARTIE."

629

had brought out for her, Artie came by. hope that he might " get to " Artie, but
He had put away his little cap, and was the foreman had seemed to have a pre-
wearing a soft hat he had bought at the monition of trouble, and he was the last
village general store. He had a red to leave camp.

handkerchief knotted about his throat, Mulville, dressed with greater care

and his heavy flannel shirt was turned than usual, and with his square jaw pur-
back at the collar and the wrists. He pie from the razor, went that night to
moved with an easy grace. The girl the store about closing time. His anger
looked at him with increasing interest, had ebbed, and he only wanted to make

" Who's that? " she
asked.

" Why?" • Mulville
wanted to know.

The girl looked at
him in a way that al-
ways got obedience.

"Who is he?" she
softly insisted.

" He's the superin-
tendent's son," Mul-
ville said. "He's
learnin' to be a rail-
road man. His name
is Artie— Artie."

He rolled the name
out twice with a sneer.

" He seems different
from the ordinary
railroad man," the girl
said.

She could have made
no more unfortunate
remark. Mulville knew
what she meant by
"different." He turned
upon her savagely.

" Mebbe you're get-
tin' stuck on him," he
said.

The girl turned her
dark eyes upon him.
They had a hurt ex-
pression. Then she
rose and walked away
from him. He fol-
lowed her.

" Don't go, Polly,"
he pleaded. " I didn't mean that. You
know I'm crazy about you."

She looked at him again.

" You'll have to learn trf trust me,"
she said, " or I'll never speak to you
again."

Mulville spent a miserable day. He
swayed between anger at the boy and come to do. Doubtless that was a pre-
regret that he had offended Polly. He tense to permit him to see the girl. As
hung about after the day's work in the Mulville saw Artie smile at her and saw

you'll have to learn to trust me," she said.

peace with Polly. He paused on the
sidewalk outside the window. Then he
gasped.

Artie was standing at the counter,
talking to Polly. He held a package in
his hand, so that Mulville was sure, he
had done whatever purchasing he had'

630

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" I'll take you home," he said.
" All right," she said coolly.

her smile back, his rage burned through
him like a flame. After a while he saw

the girl begin to put out the lights. Ar- didn't expect you'd be here."
tie was waiting for her. " No ; I don't suppose you did," he

" She's going to let him take her said. " I'll see you to-morrow," he con-
tinued, turning to Artie. u The fore-
man won't be there. I'll see you to-mor-
row noon."

" All right," Artie said. " I'll be
there."

In spite of himself, his voice shook.

MULVILLE HELD THE ROPE

STEADY FOR AN INSTANT

AND THEN PLUCKED

POLLY FROM

ARTIE'S ARMS.

home," the watching man breathed. His
heart was torn with agony.

The last light was extinguished. The
girl and Artie emerged from the store,
she pausing to turn the key in the lock.
As they stepped to the sidewalk, Mul-
ville faced them.

He took off his hat to the girl and turned
away.

" Don't forget to mail your candy,"
she called after him.

It was almost the noon-hour in the
camp. The work had been hard all

THEY CALLED HIM "ARTIE."

631

morning. The April day had been with-
out sun, and a harsh wind had swept up
from the river, whose mouth was still
choked with rotting ice. The men
worked with stiffened, aching fingers.
"''There had been a strange look in Mul-
ville's eyes all morning — a look of gloat-
ing anticipation. He had taken Polly
home the night before almost in silence.
He had meant to ask her nothing. He
would merely make Artie pay for trying
to flirt with his girl.

But when he had reached her gate his
rage had overcome him and he accused
her. She merely walked away from him,
murmuring to him not to be a fool.

When the noon-hour came, Artie
walked over to the huge fire which had
been kept burning all the morning. He
was chilled in spite of his exertions. The
other men came up and gathered about
the blaze. The last of these was Mul-
ville.

He seemed in merry humor, much to
Artie's surprise. The boy began to hope
he had changed his mind about the epi-
sode of the night before. Mulville
shoved his way between two of his fel-
low workers. There was a little good-
natured scuffle.

" I'll lick both of you," Mulville cried.
There was a pause and a silence, then
his voice rang out: " I can lick any man
in the bunch, any style."

Artie knew that the man Avas speak-,
ing at him. A titter ran around the cir-
cle, and Artie understood that these men
were not averse to witnessing a bout.
He raised his head and looked across the
fire. Mulville was staring at him with
brilliant eyes.

"Do you mean me especially?" the
boy asked, with white lips.

Mulville threw back his head and guf-
fawed.

" Listen to the kid," he scoffed. " He's
lookin' for trouble — with me, too."

" Oh, I'm not looking for trouble,"
Artie said lamely.

For answer, Mulville straightened up
and began to walk around the fire to-
ward the boy. Artie watched him with
fascinated eyes. He had a notion, for an
instant, to run; but he forced himself to
hold his ground.

Mulville, when he reached him, sud-
denly put an arm across his throat, thrust

out a booted foot, and threw Artie to the
ground. The men laughed. Artie
scrambled to his face, his face white with
rage and humiliation. He squared off.
Mulville crouched to a fighting position.
Artie had learned to box in school, and
he was strong for one of his build, but
he weighed fifty pounds less than his
burly adversary.

They sparred and feinted for half a
minute, and then Artie shot his right fist
into Mulville's mouth and got away be-
fore the return reached him.

A little " Ah ! " of applause ran
through the men. The kid wasn't so
bad, after all ! Maybe he was a wonder,
and would put the bully out. Every one
of them sincerely hoped' so. Mulville,
with a look of astonishment, fought more
guardedly. He 'was not used to this hit-
and-get-away style. If he could get in
one punch — ■

The next thing he knew, Artie had
side-stepped and whipped his right and
his left to his mouth again. Then, while
Mulville staggered, Artie jolted him in
the pit of the stomach, caught him on the,
jaw, and danced away.

An ordinary man might have been
dazed ; but Mulville was much stronger
than the ordinary man. He rushed at
the unsuspecting boy and chopped' his
right down across his face. Artie
dropped. Mulville stepped back, stand-
ing menacingly. Artie got to his elbow.

He knew Mulville meant to knock him
down as soon as he rose. He pretended
to sink back, and then he suddenly
rolled away and sprang to his feet. He
saw Mulville rush upon him. He
fought with all his might, trying to keep
cool. The big man's wild blows were
like rain.

Now and then the boy landed on his
face, but this seemed without effect.
.Artie knew that in a moment one of the
swinging blows must get to him, and he
knew that he would go out as soon as it
did. When the blow did come, solidly
on the jaw, he dropped to his knees, like
an ox struck between the eyes.

He tried to rise, but could not. He
heard a noise and looked up. The fore-
man, unexpectedly back, was brushing
past him. The stocky man rushed at
Mulville and planted his. right fist on his
face and his left over his heart. Mul-

632

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

k, whirled, and fell on
his far-. Artie got to his feet. The
forem n glared about him. In his fierce
S.nger lu went back to a fashion of speech
which had anciently been his:

" Negs dime anyputty vants to fide,
led me know. I lige to fide."

Mulville got to his feet and swayed to-
ward the bunkhouse. He did not want
to " fide " any more just then.

Just beyond the camp there was a
main-line bridge. The valley dropped
down thirty feet. Now the stream was
yellow, swollen, and rapid. The ice at
the mouth had been forced out into the
lake, or else the waters rushed over it.
There had been nights of heavy, dash-
ing rains and days of sunshine.

WELL
YOU

Polly was a little late for work. The
roads and the cross-walks were so muddy
that she had struck off on the railroad
track, intending to cut up a side street
to the main thoroughfare before she got
to the camp. She had had a quarrel with
Mulville about his attack on Artie, and
she did not want to see him.

She felt that she could not trust her-
self ; for, despite all Mulville's harshness,
she cared more for him now than she had
ever cared. —

When she came to the end of the
bridge opposite the camp, she saw that
the gang was at work on the main line.
They appeared to be putting in a rail.
As she stood looking, she saw that a
man with a flag was sitting on the bank.
" Hallo, little girl ! " he called.

Polly was aware that
the whole camp had doubt-
less gossiped about her and
Mulville, and her cheeks
flamed. She turned away,
and started along the val-
ley's brink. There was a
foot-bridge farther down.
She could get across that
and escape into town.

Artie and' Mulville were
both at work on the. other
end of the bridge. Neither
had seen Polly. They did
not speak to each other,
and both still bore marks
of their encounter.

Artie straightened up to
mop his forehead. The
early morning sun had dis-
appeared, and black clouds
were crowding up the sky.
While he did not wish to
shirk, he hoped inclement
weather would drive them
indoors to-day. His nerves
were aquiver over what
was to happen to him that
night when the six o'clock
train arrived.

He bent to his work
again, and Mulville
straightened up. Artie
heard him exclaim. All
the men looked up.

" What's he pointing
at?" Mulville asked.

Across the bridge the

I LL TAKE
TO HIM."

THEY CALLED HIM "ARTIE."

633

man with the flag was making frantic
gestures and pointing up the river. Ar-
tie looked. He saw a wall of black
clouds extending almost from zenith to
horizon. Rain seemed to be sweeping
down from them.

"What's that?" Artie cried.

As he spoke there was a roar as of a
rising wind driving something before it.
The flagman came bounding across the
bridge.

" The raft has got loose and has torn
the foot-bridge away! " he cried. " That
kid o' your'n went up that way a bit back,
Mulville."

Mulville stood as one paralyzed.

" What'd she go up there for?" he
asked helplessly.

Artie shot a glance at him, and started
to run toward the embankment. Mul-
ville had a moment of hesitation. He
could fight, he could crush an adversary
by his great strength, but a feat where
lightness and litheness were demanded
was beyond him. Yet he could not let
Artie go alone, when Polly might be in
danger.

That would spell the end of all things
for him ; for he pictured the lad as a
heroic rescuer whom the girl would fall
down and worship. He caught up with
Artie as the latter stood peering over the
brink.

" What're you goin' to do? "

" It's only a chance," the boy said
coolly; "but that raft is jamming down
the river, and it may have Polly on
board. If she got over the bridge, she's
all right. If she didn't — well, I don't see
any way to get down but to slide down
one of those poles."

Those " poles " were the iron sup-
ports of the bridge. At the bottom of
them the water boiled about the pier.
Slippery rocks ran along the bank up-
river.

"You goin' down?" Mulville asked,
and he ran his tongue over his dry lips.

" Sure," said Artie.

" You can't do it."

Artie laughed. It seemed easy to a
man who had been a gymnasium star.
'He cast off his coat and his hat. For a
moment he watched the current. The
waters, as they swirled under the bridge,
charged to the opposite shore. That
would be his way of escape.

"I'll have to hustle," he said. " Hear
that?"

Mulville listened. - He could hear a
rush of water striking water as the tor-
rent descended from the sky. Over that
sound he could hear a grinding of huge
timbers as they gathered momentum in
the muddy stream. A drop of water fell
near them, and then more drops. Then
it began to rain steadily where they stood.
■The fury of the storm seemed to have
broken farther up the river.

Artie ran out to the bridge supports,
seized one, and slid gently down. The
last Mulville saw of him, he was dodg-
ing from slippery rock to slippery rock
up the river. Mulville ran back to the
camp and mustered his fellows. They
had only a common thought, when he
explained.

Half a dozen of them ran across the
bridge and clambered down the far bank,
to be ready if the crowding logs should
be—d*riven inshore. Some stood on the
bridge as lookouts. Others stationed
themselves on the near bank on a chance
that the current might whirl that way.

The worst of the storm seemed over,
so far as the heavens were concerned,
but the work in the river had been done.
The water had risen perceptibly, and it
boiled and churned as it rushed beneath
the bridge.

Mulville, standing there, watched the
mist that obscured the upper valley.
Presently an opaque object thrust its
nose from beneath the curtain of mist.

" There's the logs ! " cried a man on
the bridge.

The raft came on, driving and sink-
ing, rising and piling. As it entirely
cleared the mist, Mulville saw Artie
standing in the center of it, holding
Polly in his arms. Terror for the girl's
safety filled him, and he forgot to be
jealous of Artie.

He seized a rope that one of the men
had brought for this possible emergency.
One end he knotted under his arm-pits.
The men passed it once about a beam,
and then Mulville went over the side of
the bridge. They paid the rope out
slowly till his feet nearly touched the
water.

Artie, calculating chances, saw what
they we're doing. He knew it was a long
chance to pass the girl to the swaying,

634

THE RAILROAD MANS MAGAZINE.

dangling man, yet it was less a chance
than to carry her in his arms as he swept
under the bridge and drove toward the
bank.

The logs beneath him had been roll-'
ing, and they were slippery. He had
difficulty in keeping his erect position
from the moment he had run across the
raft and picked up the girl.

As he neared Mulville, one of the logs
rolled, and he almost went down. Then
the log jammed between two ahead of it
and held. Artie lifted the girl in his
arms as he was ten feet from Mulville.

Mulville shot up one hand, held the
rope steady for an instant, and then
plucked Polly from Artie's arms as the
logs swept under him.

Artie heard a shout above him as the
shadow of the bridge took him. He
thought the men were cheering. The
logs began to jam and pile up. Those
in front were being crowded across the
channel. A log near the boy up-ended
and was ground between two others as
it went down like a fish.

As he came from beneath the bridge
he saw the bank was very near. He
sprang from log to log till he was al-
most at the shore. Then a log beneath
him rolled, and he went spinning for-
ward on his face. He knew that his head
was bleeding and that he had injured his
arm, but he picked himself up, lurched
forward, spurned the last log with his
foot, and fell on the wet, cold sand.

Before he fainted from the pain that
shot through his head and arm, he lifted
his eyes to the bridge. There all was
tumult. Men were running here and
there, calling loudly to each other.

For a while he had a sense of motion,
and then he knew that he was in bed.

" Won't you tell me what you're
waiting for? "

Mulville's tone was very humble. All
the bully was gone from him. He kept
looking at Polly in a hungry sort of
way, as if he were not really sure she
had been saved.

They had made their peace as soon as
they had seen Artie taken care of. It
was evening of that same day, and they
stood on the station - platform, waiting
for the train to come in from the East.
Polly, fully recovered from her adven-

ture, only laughed when Mulville put his-
question.

" You'll see," she said after a while.

Some of the men from the camp idled
about the platform, casting curious
glances at Polly. The station-agent came
up and asked her how she felt. He said
the newspapers had got hold of her es-
capade.

" They call that kid a hero," the agent
said.

" So he is," Mulville declared.

Polly knew that her future husband
had seen a light.

The train whistled and swept around
the curve. When it came to a stand-
still, a young woman alighted. Polly
ran up to her.

" Miss Grant?"

" Yes," said the girl.

She was a rather tall young woman
with a calm, cool manner. She had big,
quiet blue eyes. Under the young wom-
an's scrutiny, Polly lost her confidence.
She stammered.

" Yes, I know," Miss Grant said quiet-
ly. " I read about it in the paper." She
smiled a little. " I wasn't surprised. I
knew all along he was that sort of boy."

" Well, I'll take you to him," Polly
said, and the two girls, followed by Mul-
ville, went to the house to which Artie
had been taken. At the front gate the
young woman thanked them and ran up
the walk, leaving them gazing after her.

" Well, she's a cool piece of work,
isn't she?" said Mulville. "Who is she?"

" Artie said he was going to marry
her," Polly said. " He thinks she's a
queen. You remember that night he was
in the store? Well, he bought a box of
our best candy to send to her, and he
told me to send her a box every day. It
costs a dollar a box."

They walked a little way in silence,
and then Polly began to laugh.

" That's his girl," Polly said, shaking
at the recollection of Miss Grant's beautv
and her elegance. " And you thought he
was making up to me ! "

"Well," said Mulville humbly, " you're
worth a million of her, Polly."

Polly's laughter died away. She was
so glad that her big lover had been
taught a lesson — that his distrust had
been killed — that she did not deny the
truth of what he said.

*t?r^Q?

Being a Boomer Brakeman.

BY HORACE HERR

EVEN though the oldest railroader may deny it, superstition does exist
in all branches, as many of our writers have shown. It even exists
on the Arizona In and Out System, that marvelous road which is the
basis of these interesting stories by Mr. Herr. Accidents, too, were not
without place on the In and Out, and some of the boys with whom the boomer
worked met death in the most startling manner, but not without the courage
that is never found wanting in every good railroad man.

The In and Out System is certainly a marvelous line. Any young man
getting a job there certainly goes through the paces, and should certainly
know something when he gets through with it.

4.— HARD LUCK ON THE IN AND OUT.

How Some of the Boys Take Long Chances and Are Galled on the

Carpet or Get their " Brownies " by Bluffing

the Old Man.

'Y friend, Hen Murray, fire-
man, was the real-goods.
He was there with the
strong back, the bald
head, and the bulldog
disposition. I am re-
minded of the fact that he was a great fa-
vorite with all the hog-heads on the Ari-
zona In and Out.

He was a big bully, with shoulders
like the broad side of. a box car, .just as
good-natured as a pup until some one
stroked his fur the wrong way, and then
there was generally something doing. I

Bagan in the October Rail read Ato

knew him for years on the pike out there,
and never heard a complaint against his
work; and he finally caught up with the
tinware on account of his ability to hit a
man solid on the jaw.

Hen could put the Gallup coal against
the flue-sheet on any of them, and he gen-
erally kept the feather on the stack, no
matter how the hog was steaming. For
that reason the Old Man gave him more
than one good grilling on the pan before
he finally put the derrick on him.

The first battle he cornered was with
an engineer named Scully. I was there

's Magatine. Single copies, 10 cents.

635

636

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

THEY MADE SEVERAL LAPS OVER
CAKE STAND.

— or, rather, I was there when it started
— but was among the " also-ran " class.
Scully was big and Irish, and fought like
a bull-terrier for a bone.

It was my first night in town, and
Hen was showing me around when he ran
across Scully. Never mind how it hap-
pened. He beat Scully in about twenty
minutes, and they say it was worth watch-
ing. They both had served some time in
Uncle Sam's navy, and knew a few things
about this " hit-and-get-hit " game.

Worth Watching.

But the battle which lost Hen his job
was over in the, eating-house. We went
in there one night after a hard run, both
tired out and mighty hungry. Hen or-
dered two-bits' worth of grub, and I took
on thirty-five cents' worth of fuel. In
dishing out the checks the hash-slinger
got them mixed, and gave Hen the thirty-
five-cent check. Hen kicked, and that
waiter called him something which might
be construed to mean that he was a total
stranger to the pure and simple truth.

He hadn't any more'n got it out of his
mouth than my fireman friend was over

the counter and into him. That was
worth watching, and I stayed to see the
finish. They made several laps over the
cake stand, and every time around down
would go a pie or a cake until that floor
was a fright.

It looked like a dining-car after a col-
lision. Finally Hen caught up with the
waiter and hit him so hard that he
knocked him through the swinging-doors
into the kitchen. Then old " Oom Paul,"
the cook, broke into the game and hung
a heavy silver sugar-bowl over Hen's bald
cupola and got away with it.

Murray couldn't catch him, but he
chased every one out of the house, and
then put a teacup through every picture
on the wall. The next day the Old Man
sent the call-boy for him.

" I don't object to your hanging one
on a fellow now and then ; but when you
go to breaking up the furniture, it's too
much — here's your time."

That's about all the Old Man had to
say. Two hours after he had fired him,
he was ready to hire him over again; but
Hen wouldn't stand for it, and returned
to his native hills and the familiar clang
of the street-cars in Kansas City, and I

BEING A BOOMER BRAKEMAN.

637

was left sad and lonesome without my
old bald-headed pal.

Things began to look as if a strike was
coming on ; and I was thinking of drag-
ging it myself, when bad luck caught up
with the division, and I wasn't slow in
taking my running orders for another job.
I say bad luck caught up with us, and it
did in several ways.

Got His Running Orders.

One day I made a little trip on a
speeder over to Hardy. Just as I got
there I broke the handle, and there was
nothing to do but flag a train and get
back. The first thing along was Lengthy
Thompson, and he picked me up on a
light engine.

We loaded the speeder on the pilot, and
I climbed up in the cab ; and we talked
and kidded until we landed on the coal-
track at the terminal. I went home that
night, and the next morning when I wan-
dered down-town I met a little group at
the reading-room, and this is what greet-
ed me :

"Hear about Thompson?"

" No ; did he get canned? "

" Worse than that. Got the big works
over at Seligman last night."

" You don't mean — "

" Yes, killed. Two engines run him
down in the yard, and they picked him
up in the scoop ; and you know he has a
wife and three children."

Meeting the Grim Destroyer.

That was a blow ! Thompson, the best
old hog-head on the division, gone the
route over the big trail ! Then, three
days later, Joe Seegar was cleaning the
ash-pan at Ash Forks. His engine was
the head engine on a double-header.

Just as he was climbing out between
the drivers, the second engine moved
them forward a bit and caught his arm.
Two days later came the Franconia
wreck, which put the gloom-cloud over
the entire road.

A double-header passenger coming up
the mountain and a single-header passen-
ger coming down, oil-burners and run-
ning like the wind, came together head-
on. Seven were killed ; two of them I
had known for three years as near friends.

It was just a week after that that the
limited hit Currin with a light engine at
a station on the second. That wreck
taught me the dangers of riding the
blind ; for when we went out to pick up
that wreck we found a hobo, mashed to
the thinness of a board, between the blind *
of the baggage-car and the rear of the
tank.

• A few days after that Stronick was
killed at the Little Colorado Bridge.
That was about the most pathetic hap-
pening which ever came to my notice
while railroading. Stronick was a fire-
man for little John Brisco. He had not
seen his family for five years ; and that
night he had traded off with another .fire-
man so that he could catch the run into
Gallup, in time to meet his only sister
there and surprise her.

When Stronick Died.

She was coming to pay him a visit.
The funny part of it was that I was down
at the depot that night when the passen-
ger-train pulled in. I saw the tail-lights
of the engine down below the cut - off
switch and walked down that way in the
dark.

On the way the thought flashed through
me that this might be the last trip for
these fellows ; you can never tell. I
went down and hung around the engine
for fully fifteen minutes, and watched
Stronick fill the lubricator and Brisco oil
around.

Then; as I left them, I called out :
" So long, boys ! Be sure you don't let
that old hag roll on you this trip."

They both laughed, and Brisco re-
marked that he guessed it wasn't their
time yet. Just the same, twenty-five min-
utes later Stronick was dead.

Jack told me that they were a little
late when they pulled out that night, and
Stronick started to keep her at white heat.
Jack noticed him step to the gangway
just as they were nearing the bridge ; and
then, when they were over the bridge, he
noticed he was gone.

Brisco stopped at once, backed up, and
every one on the crew knew without look-
ing what had happened. Brisco went
down under the bridge with a torch, and
there he found Stronick's body. He had
evidently leaned out of the gangway and

638

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

hit his head against a girder. It was the
old, old story.

Shortly after that Henderson had to
quit the road, and Hinkley Reynolds left
too soon after — died from nervous trou-
ble, which the doctors said was induced
by fast running. Henderson was suffer-
ing from locomotor ataxia, and had a
precarious existence ; and " Doc " Sea-
gondollar ran into a washout on. the
canon branch which all but got him.

Under His Engine.

There was little romance in that acci-
dent, too. It was one night after a heavy
rain, and the canon-track was none too
good at that. Doc hit a bad bridge and
went down, and of course he was under
the engine.

His legs were pinned so that he
couldn't get away, and thenvater was run-
ning several feet deep in the ravine. He
kept his head above water until help ar-
rived ; and, as the passengers began to
climb out to see what trouble had over-
taken them, a young lady doctor made
her way ahead.

She was a game one, all right. She
waded through the water and mud, and
held Doc above water for six hours un-
til the wrecker reached the scene. Yes,
that's just what happened. He really
married her, so I hear. About a month
after the wedding he got the big works
over on the first.

That month of bad luck brought me
to the place where I thought less money
and a longer life would suit me just as
well, and I began to look around for a
good chance to quit. Then I caught up
with forty hours on the second division
one night behind Finney's wreck at Pinto,
and when I got in I asked for my time.

The Road Saves Money.

Finney went out that night with about
ninety cars, and that was the cause of it
all. You see, the roads keep getting big-
ger engines with a greater tonnage ca-
pacity. They crowd the engines to the
limit ; but keep the same sized crews on
the trains, so that to-day in many cases
one crew handles as many cars as three
crews did ten years ago with the smaller
engines.

The result is long trains ; and, if every-
thing goes nicely, the road saves money.
But when an engineer runs foul of trou-
ble and has to slap on the emergency on
one of those big trains, it's all off.

That night Finney had a new engineer,
and, coming into Pinto, he saw a tail-
light in front of him. He gave that long
train the Thg '' hole. Five drawbars was
what he got; and then he failed to stop
in time, and went into the tail end of that
light engine, which was taking water at
the tank on the main line.

It was an all-night job to clear that
wreck, and we were behind it. That was
enough for little William. I knew that
it was only a question of time until the
machinists and boilermakers would be stri-
king and there would be hard times on
the In and Out, so I got away first, firmly
determined that I would never draw an-
other switch-key or brakeman's badge.

But I did ; and I was mighty glad to
get the chance, too, even though I had a
full-blooded Mexican as a braking pard-
ner and a greaser for a hog-head.

Wrecks Run in Threes.

That reminds me that a railroad man
is a bit superstitious. When a stinger
feels the air go on with a jerk and sees
all the loose furniture in the caboose do-
ing a vaudeville stunt, before the train
has reached the first station out from the
terminal, he knows he's in for a bad trip,
and he seldom is wrong.

He climbs out of the caboose on the
shady side of the train and over near the
head, and he sees the spot where the sun
shines through. Then he knows that the
train is broken in two. He walks over
that way, and it's a ten-to-one shot that
he has to lug a chain or carry a knuckle
before he's ready to climb back on the
caboose; and when he has once chained
them together he sits up there in the dog-
house, waiting for the trouble which he
knows is going to come sooner or later.

When the railroad man walks down to
the roundhouse in the morning or goes
over to look at the train-crew board, and
finds out there has been a bad wreck dur-
ing the night, he nods his head in a know-
ing way and begins to look out for the
two more which he feels certain are close.
Wrecks — bad ones — always run in threes.

BEING A BOOMER BRAKEMAN.

639

They do now, so there's no use in ar-
guing that they don't.

There was the Franconia wreck, fol-
lowed by the limited wreck on the burned
bridge near Flagstaff; and that was fol-

men who have been going to do things
after " the next trip " are now residing
in quiet, out-of-the-way graveyards, as
the result of an accident on the last trip.

So, when I decided that I wanted to
break out of the game, I didn't do it after
the " next " trip. I just decided and
went in, and asked for my time.

With every one advancing so much free
advice on how to run the universe, and
railroads in particular, I guess a common
stinger has a right to hand out a generous
package of cheap advice along with the
rest of them. It's a peculiar fact that
you can always find a greater number of
men outside any profession who can run
the said profession than you can discover

SHE HELD DOC ABOVE W/TER
FOR SIX HOURS,

lowed a few days later by the Chandler
head-ender, which cost three lives. Then
things went smooth for six months ; and
then came three more, which cost one life
each, ■ not to mention the loss in rolling-
stock.

And a real railroad man never makes
his last trip. That's the dope. Any time
an old railroader catches himself saying,
" I'm going to lay off after the next trip,"
he don't wait for the next trip ; he goes
right in and lays off then, for a lot of

among those who follow it and make it
a life-study.

I know of at least a dozen prominent
men who don't know a link and pin from
a hook and eye who are using up a great
deal of valuable space in telling the rail-
road magnate how to run his business.
I'd like to see some of that brand running
a full-grown railroad once ; they'd find
out in short time that they really haven't
the proper qualifications for collecting
fares on a mule-car.

640

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Giving you the real inside dope from
the outside and making a composite ar-
gument from the column of talk which
I have heard at one time or another
around the watering - tanks and switch
shanties, I would say that the greatest
danger — from a matter of safety to the
general public and of the employee as
well — is the unwritten rules of all rail-
roads, the " common law," if you can so
dignify it.

Some Inside Dope.

Every road in the United States has a
written code of standard rules. Every
employee in train and engine service must
know these rules as well as he knows his
A, B, C, but it's been my observation that
the fellow who never violates one of those
rules is the guy who is always looking for
a job.

Every road puts out special orders and
rules to cover extraordinary conditions on
their pike, and these must not be violated
— but they are ! When you hear some di-
vision superintendent praising a conduc-
tor for getting over the road in short or-
der; you can always put it down in the
blue book that the conductor is lucky and
is getting away with some long shots.

I am reminded of " Hard - Luck "
Strenk, of the In and Out, in this partic-
ular. He never broke a_rule in his life
because he didn't know enough, and every
pay-day the Old Man used to say that half
of his check was made while he was on a
siding. He never would get over the di-
vision on time, because he tried to clear
every superior train by five minutes ;
and if he couldn't do it, he would stay in
the clear just wherever he happened to be.

I have started out on a drag of cars,
six hours behind that fellow, and beat
him into the terminal by two hours, all
because I had a conductor who took
chances. When you take the chance and
get away with it, you're a good railroad
man ; when you take the chance and fall
down on it, if you don't play the princi-
pal part in a tragedy, you get a large
piece of hardware tied to you and go out
to hunt a new job.

Make the time, get over the road, that's
what you have to do if you're going to

keep your full name on the pay-roll ; and
you're expected to know that the standard
rules are there just to keep the company
in the clear. Here's-a few things a good
railroad man does every day of his life
which are against the rules on almost all
roads :

He will flag against trains; he won't
clear by five minutes if he knows he can
make a station by the leaving-time of a
superior train ; he won't brake the air-hose
before he cuts off a car; he won't shove
a car into the siding when he can kick
it in just as well ; if he's on a local, he'll
run ahead of any old train, any old time,
any old way, to get over the ground, and
he gets away with it ninety-nine times out
of a hundred.

It's the hundredth time when he don't
make good that gets box-car letters in the
newspapers.

When you take a chance, and the Old
Man wants to know about itj when you
fall down running ahead of the varnished
cars and lay them out for ten minutes, of
course you are supposed to have an argu-
ment more unique than logical. If you
can't talk fast, you are supposed to take
the " Brownies " without talking back
and promise to be a good boy.

Fooling the Old Man.

I'm reminded that Dennis Duleay illus-
trated the point very finely one morning
when the Old Man found him going out
on a drag without his conductor's badge
on his hat. The Old Man made a bluff
at being angry at such a flagrant violation
of the rule-book. He walked up to Den-
nis, who was signing the register, and this
is what followed :

" Dennis, where's your badge? "

" It's on me hat."

" It's not on your hat."

Dennis put his hand up to the front of
his hat where the badge should have
been, grinned at the' Old Man a minute,
and came back :

" Sure, it's on me hat. I have- two
hats."

And it's the same sort of an argument
which gets a man out of' trouble when he
violates the rules in the interest of the
company.

In the next issue, Mr. Herr's stinger ends his brief but exciting railroad career and
breaks out of the game for keeps.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL

BY JOHN MACK STONE.

A Trick Fails, but a Secret Gall for
Help Brings an Encouraging Answer. .

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

ROLAND BURKE is a young boy sightseeing in San Francisco during a visit to his
uncle, Richard Engle, a famous explorer. While standing on the dock he is
alarmed by a crowd of struggling men rushing down the street, evidently pursued by the
police, and in his astonishment is hustled into the boat for which they are making. One
of the men, who is struggling with the others, is kidnaped onto a vessel, and Roland,
though unobserved, is also unable to escape. The ship puts out, defying the forts. On
the boat he is discovered by Ruth Holland, who also seems to be there against her will,
and who seems quite familiar with Richard Engle, though there seems to be some mis-
understanding between them. In her cabin Ruth is annoyed by a man named ..Welch, who
seems to have some power among the cutthroats. Engle interferes.

Captain Hawson interferes against the persecution of Engle by Welch, and Welch
shows his power by deposing the captain and making him a prisoner. The captain joins
forces with Engle, the boy, and Miss Holland. They attempt to recover the ship.

CHAPTER IX (Continued.)

The Last Cartridge.

SAY you haven't one left,"
Welch replied. " Why lie
about it?"

" Well, what do you want
with us?" the captain asked.
" There is a certain cere-
mony to be ^performed. The boy there
touched the aitu, it seems."

"What do you mean to do?" my
uncle cried.

" I mean to do what is usual in such

" Would you murder a boy? " the cap-
tain demanded.

" It is not murder, but an execution,
according to certain laws," Welch re-
plied. " You forget that the believers
aboard know what happened."

" And you expect to win them for
yours more firmly by murdering an in-
nocent boy?" Uncle Dick said.

" It is according to their law," Welch
replied.

Began in the November Railroad Man's Magazine
5 R R 641

He motioned for the man with him
to enter the cabin, and the fellow stepped
forward. But Captain Hawson grasped
him and hurled him back.

" You do not enter here," he said.

"Stand aside! We want that boy!"
Welch commanded.

" I will not stand aside and let you
commit murder."

Welch turned and called out. Others
came running down at his call. He
talked to them quickly in their strange
tongue.

They rushed the door of the cabin, and
it was all over in a moment. I felt my-
self grasped roughly, saw Captain Haw-
son and Uncle Dick made prisoners, and
their hands bound behind them. Then we
were led to the deck.

Miss Holland was there, and her eyes
filled with tears when she saw us. Evi-
dently she knew the fate in store for me.
I felt my courage going, for it seemed
that there was nothing but death to ex-
pect. Was I to die without knowing-
why, without knowing what all the
strange things I had witnessed meant?

Single Copies, 10 cents.

642

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

They led me to the mast, and fastened
me there securely. The captain and
Uncle Dick were held some distance
away, facing me. One of the men drew
from beneath his coat a long knife,
double-edged and as sharp as a razor.
He tested the edges on a hair.

Welch stood a few feet before me.

" Go on with your work," he instruct-
ed the man.

" I dare not until the word is given,"
he replied. " Only you, master, can give
the word."

Welch's face went white. He was
willing to countenance murder, it seemed,
but disliked to give the word himself.

However, it was a crucial moment for
him, for the eyes of the fanatics were
upon him, and if he flinched or hesitated
he would be lost. He faced me again,
but would not meet my eyes.

" Get ready," he instructed.

The man before me lifted the knife.
I gave Uncle Dick one look, saw him
start forward, and saw him forced back.
I glanced at Ruth Holland, but she had
turned her face away.

" I am ready, master," the man said.

I saw Welch's mouth open. He was
ready to speak the word that meant death
to me, but before he could do it Ruth
rushed across the deck and threw her-
self upon me before the knife.

" You do not dare harm me," she said;
" and you can strike this boy only through
my body."

The executioner uttered a cry and fell
back. Welch cursed and sprang toward
us, his face livid. He grasped Ruth by
the arms and forced her away from me.

"You coward!" she cried. "You
have not even the courage to do your
own dirty work. You force ignorant
fools to do it for you."

"Have I not?" he screamed. "I'll
show you, then ! "

He seized the knife from the other
man, and sprang toward me.

" I'll play at executioner myself," he
cried, and raised the knife.

Then there came a flash and a report,
and Welch dropped the knift. and stag-
gered backward, clutching at his breast.
Looking beyond him, I saw that the cap-
tain had wrenched himself free, and held
a smoking revolver in his hand. He
had told Welch .the truth, then.

He had saved one cartridge-
made use of it !

-and had

CHAPTER X.

Some Things Are Explained.

TG*OR full a minute the picture re-
■*- mained unchanged — I lashed to
the mast, Miss Holland standing near
me, Welch lying upon the deck, the
blood streaming from a wound in his
breast.

Uncle Dick and Captain Hawson
stood like statues. Behind them, the
members of the crew were motionless,
their eyes wide with horror.

Then there was a scream such I had
never heard before. The rage of the
fanatics was terrible to see. Captain
Hawson and Uncle Dick dashed toward
me, bringing Miss Holland with them ;
and at the foot of the mast we huddled,
Avaiting for the death that we felt would
surely come.

There was a quick rush toward us;
and then the one who had acted as
spokesman stopped the men with a word
of command, and stood between them
and us.

He began to speak rapidly in their
strange tongue. At first they answered
him with loud cries of anger, but grad-
ually their anger cooled, and they
seemed to agree with him.

They put up their weapons and came
on toward us, but not in rage and anger
as before. Two of them stooped and
lifted Welch and carried him below.
The others came on, and stopped a short
distance before us.

" We do not understand this busi-
ness," the spokesman said. " It seems
that there is trouble of which we know
nothing. We do not know whom to
trust. This matter is beyond us. We
have decided to make all of you prison-
ers below, to carry you to the island,
and there let some one higher in author-
ity decide the issue between you. No
violence will be shown you so long as
you remain in your cabins."

Then he stepped forward, pushed
Uncle Dick to one side, and unbound
me. They led us below, two men guard-
ing each of us, and took each to a sepa-
rate cabin.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

643

On the tenth day I spoke to the one
who acted as commander.

" I am lonesome," I complained.
" Cannot I speak to some of the others? "

"It is too dangerous," he replied,
smiling.

" Cannot your men watch us? "

" The risk is too great. There must
be no more trouble until we reach the
island. I can take no more chances."

" Is Mr. Welch dead?"

" He is still alive, and, with proper
care, will not die."

" I wish you'd let me speak to at least
one of the others," I implored. " Let
me speak to Miss Holland."

Perhaps there was something in my
face that made him pity me. At any
rate, he called one of the men and issued
orders, then turned to me.

" You may speak to the woman for an
hour," he said, " but you must be care-
ful what you say."

" Thank you."

In a few minutes Miss Holland came
on deck, and we sat down on a coil of
rope near the rail and began to talk softly
but • earnestly.

She knew no more than I of what had
transpired since we were made prison-
ers. Her face lit up when I told her
that Welch would live.

"You want him to live?" I asked.
" Perhaps he is a great deal to you. Tell
me, won't you? "

" I detest him," she replied.

" Then—"

"If he should die, it would mean
added danger, that is all," she said.

" I wish you'd tell me something
about this business."

She did not reply for a time, but
looked out at the sparkling sea. Then
she turned toward me.

" I'll tell you what I can," she said.
" Your uncle, as you know, is a traveler
and explorer. He has visited all parts
of the world, including some lands where
few white men have ever been. I first
met him in the land to which we are go-
ing now."

" Where is that? " I asked.

" It is an island in the South Sea.

There is a peculiar race of fanatics that

lives there. They worship a great aitu,

■or idol. They have a very peculiar form

of worship, and peculiar laws. In their

principal village is a great temple, and
this temple is the home of the king aitu,
of which all others are copies.

"It is forbidden that any one not a
believer watch one of the religious cere-
monies. It is death to touch the aitu,
for they think their god defiled if
touched by any one except the priests.

" I heard of this strange people once
while I was in Honolulu, and deter-
mined to visit the land. My uncle
placed his private yacht at my disposal,
and I made the voyage. Mr. Welch,
whom I had known for some time, was
anxious to accompany me, and I allowed
him to do so.

" When we reached the island, the
people attacked us and made us prison-
ers. They had never seen a white wom-
an before, and their high priest, who
rules the island, spared my life. Welch
was spared, too, but was to be sacrificed
at a certain time, on one of their relig-
ious anniversaries.

" Your uncle came to the island about
this time in a small schooner which he
had chartered for the purpose. He, too,
was made prisoner. We saw a great
deal of each other, and we — we learned
to like each other very well.

" That did not please Mr. Welch. In
some manner he convinced the high
priest that he believed in the power of
their aitu, and wanted to be made one of
them. On his breast there is a great
scar. That was what he received dur-
ing the ceremony that made him a be-
liever.

" When he recovered from the effects
of the ceremony, he was made a priest,
because of his wisdom it was said, and
immediately began to make himself pop-
ular with the people. They gained con-
fidence in him, and allowed him to come
and go as he pleased.

" Then he told the high priest that the
aitu had commanded that I become his
wife. At first he tried to force me to
agree, and when he found that the peo-
ple loved me, he tried another method.
He told them that I was to be asked
each night at midnight until I consent-
ed, that when I consented and the cere-
mony was performed, the aitu would be-
come possessed of even greater power.

" And so the persecution began, and
continued. My constant refusal angered

644

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE

Welch, and he began to think that it
was my love for your uncle that caused
me to refuse. He planned your uncle's
death.

" There was a great ceremony in the
temple one day, which your uncle at-
tended under escort, and during the cere-
mony Welch contrived to have Mr. En-
gle touch the aitu. The moment he did
so, he was doomed.

" The day for the execution was set,
and the ceremonies began. One night
I slipped away from the temple and went
down to the shore. There, in a large
cave, the crew of the yacht were held as
prisoners, all under sentence of death.
I succeeded in drugging the guard and
liberating them, together with the crew
of the schooner in which Mr. Engle had
journeyed to the island.

" Then I hurried back to the temple.
Welch and the other priests were hold-
ing a midnight ceremony. I had thought
that Welch had turned fanatic; but
something in his manner that night told
me that he was carrying out some plan,
and working on the fanaticism of the
people to accomplish it.

" I tried to reach your uncle, but
could not. In the morning the yacht
and schooner set sail, the men knowing
that they would be recaptured if they
remained near the island.

" Your uncle and I had a long conver-
sation that day, and during it we con-
fessed our love for each other. I told
him how the sailors had been liberated,
and said that the yacht would return
that night to make an attempt -to 'liber-
ate us.

" Both the yacht and schooner __re-
turned that night, and the men landed,
heavily armed. They fought their way
to the temple, and, after a hot engage-
ment, succeeded in setting all of us free.
Then, in -spite of your uncle's entreaties,
the men, under the command of Welch,
looted the village and the temple. In
the excitement we all became separated.
I got safely aboard the yacht, and it
sailed away.

" Your uncle escaped in the schooner.
In the morning, when the battle was
over and we were gone, the fanatics
found that Welch remained with them,
wounded, and that the great king aitu

was missincr.

■ " It had been stolen? " I asked.

" Yes, it had been stolen," she replied.
" The fanatics were crazed. Welch told
them that unless the aitu was recovered,
and the people who had stolen it were
put to death in the temple, famine and
distress would engulf the land, and there
would be no eternity for those who died.
He told them, too, that it was necessary
that I be recovered and made to wed
him.

" They secured this ship, for Captain
Hawson would do anything for money,
and began the search. Welch went along
to help. I was made prisoner while liv-
ing at a resort in southern California,
four days before they seized Mr. Engle.
And now they are taking us back, your
uncle to his death, me to something
worse.

" There will be no help for us when
we reach the island. Captain Hawson
will be executed because he shot Welch,
a priest. Welch will see that your uncle
meets death, for he hates him; and he
has made the fanatics believe that it was
your uncle who stole the aitu. You are
doomed too, poor boy, because you
touched the aitu."

" But Uncle Dick did not steal their
god," I said.

" No, he did not ! He thinks I stole
it," she replied.

" But you did not! " I exclaimed.

" No, I did not."

"Who did, then?"

" Welch stole it."

" But he was playirig as one of the
priests, and he remained behind when
you sailed away."

" He had the aitu carried aboard the
schooner by some of the sailors," she ex-
plained, " and expected to escape in that
himself. If you look closely at the aitu
when next you see it, you will find that
it is very valuable, made half of solid
gold, with precious gems set in it.

" After getting the aitu on board the
schooner, Welch returned to get more
loot, and was wounded and left behind
in the excitement. We on the yacht
thought he was on the schooner ; those
on the schooner thought he was with us.

" As soon as he could, he followed us.
to regain possession of the aitu and to
have his revenge."

" How did he find the aitu? " I asked.

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

645

" It was in the customs house at San
Francisco. When your uncle found it
aboard the schooner, he left it with -the
authorities, told them what it was, and
that some one would undoubtedly come
for it. Welch. secured it by paying them
a lot of money.

" He thinks to return it, and that the
people will make him high priest for do-
ing so. Then, when he gets a chance,
he will loot the temple again and carry
away much wealth."

" And why is it that my uncle is an-
gry at you?" I asked. "You have not
explained that. You say that you con-
fessed your love for each other, yet you
will scarcely speak to each other now."

" Do not ask that of me now," she
said, the tears coming into her pretty
eyes. " I'll tell you, perhaps, before we
reach the island."

I looked up and saw the spokesman
coming toward us across the deck. Miss
Holland began talking of the weather
and the sea. He stopped before us.

" It is time for you to go below," he
said. " The others must have their
hour."

We arose and started across the deck.
Our guards came toward us.

" May we speak to each other again
to-morrow?" Miss Holland asked. "It
is such a comfort to talk to any one, even
a boy."

" Perhaps ; we shall see," the man re-
plied.

That was once I didn't mind being
called a boy. I saw the method in her
words.

CHAPTER XL

Captain Hawson's C. Q. D.

'"pHAT night I thought of what Ruth
■■■ Holland had told me. The fu-
ture indeed looked dark. There seemed
nothing but death to expect, and a terri-
ble death at that, for I knew such
fanatics would not stop at a merciful
execution. They would perhaps torture
us.

I wanted to see Uncle Dick. Again
and again I tried the door, hoping that
the guard had forgotten to lock it, but
always T found it securely fastened.

It was after midnight when I started

across the cabin toward my bunk, deter-
mined to try to get some sleep. As I
lay down I heard a peculiar noise that
seemed to come from the wall adjoining
my cabin on the right.

I sat up in the bunk and listened.
The noise was a series of short, light
crashes that occurred irregularly. I did
not know what it meant.

I crept from the bunk, went across to
the wall, and put my ear against it. The
noise continued, then stopped for a time,
then began again. And then there was
a different noise, similar but not as loud,
and with more of a ring to it. When
that began I heard a short cry of pleas-
ure come from the person in the next
cabin.

I waited until the noise ceased again,
then knocked on the wall. There was
absolute silence for a time, then I
knocked again. At once my knock was
answered.

I replied to the signal, and then all
was quiet again. Once more I tried the
door. It was still securely fastened. By
peering through the keyhole I could see
one of the men pacing back and forth
in the passage, guarding the cabins.

I ran back to the wall again, and made
the signal. It was repeated, and I
heard some words, but could not distin-
guish them nor recognize the voice. Then
terror seized me, for I was afraid the
person in the next cabin was not a
friend.

Then I noticed a tiny hole, and work-
ing in it was the point of a knife.

I sat back some distance and watched
it, fascinated. The hole grew larger
rapidly, the knife cutting great strokes
in the hard wood. This was not a foe,
then, for a foe would have no need to
whittle a hole through the wall.

I crept nearer, for the knife was in
the hole no longer, and looked through.
There was Captain Hawson standing be-
side the table in the middle of the cabin,
looking ruefully at the dull edge of the
knife. I stooped lower, and whispered.

" Captain Hawson ! " .

He dropped the knife and came over
to the wall.

"Who is it?" he demanded.

" Roland."

" Was that you knocking on the
wall?"

646

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" Yes, sir."

" I was not sure," he said. " Have you
a knife?"

" A small one, sir."

" Use it," he directed. " Carry the
shavings carefully to one corner, and m
the morning throw them through the
port-hole into the sea."

It seemed to take hours to make the
hole large enough for me to crawl
through. My hands were blistered and
my knife-blade worn out, but still I
worked away. Captain Hawson chopped
at one side of the panel, and presently
removed it, and there was space for me
to crawl through and stand beside him.

" We must fix this hole first," he said.

He put the panel back in place,
scraped the shavings together and placed
them under his bunk, and then backed a
chair against the hole, with a blanket
over it, and sat on the chair and put his
feet upon the table.

" If any one should come," he said
laughing, " I am merely making myself
comfortable."

"What are we going to do now?" I
asked.

" You are wondering why we worked
so hard to get you in here?" he asked.
" Because I want you to listen at the
door while I do some more work. I was
trying to do it alone, but it was hard, for
I was always afraid of being discovered.
Now, with you on guard, I can work as
I will."

"But what are you going to do?" I
asked. "And suppose. the guard enters
my cabin and misses me? "

" Never consider trouble until it
comes," he said. " Go to the door, and
warn me instantly if you hear any one
stop before it,"

As he spoke he hung his jacket over
the key-hole, so that no one outside could
look in. Then he stepped to the wall of
the cabin, took a tiny key from his
pocket, and inserted it into what looked
to be a worm-hole in the wood.

My eyes bulged when a large panel
swung outward, disclosing an alcove six
feet square, and as many feet high. In
the alcove was a lot of machinery which
I did not understand.

"What is it?" I Avhispered.

Captain Hawson smiled.

" A man who follows my trade, which,

I may mention, is anything 4;hat starts
with a ship and ends with money, must
always be prepared for emergencies. I
am a man who runs into all sorts of
dangers. A year ago I had this secret
alcove built into the cabin, thinking that
some day I would need it. It proved a
good investment.

" You notice that this ship has a wire-
less telegraph plant installed? It is
_ operated, of course, from the wireless
room forward on deck. The men aboard
know that, but they do not know that
here is a subordinate plant and key-
board, from which I can work the ap-
paratus.

" The ignorant men aboard, if they
hear a crash now and then, and see a
spark, believe it is some incoming mes-
sage being recorded, instead of my mes-
sage being sent. Welch is the only man
aboard, save your uncle, who would
know— the truth, and make an investiga-
tion. And Welch is wounded and in a
cabin on the other side of the passage."

"Then you are calling for help?" I
asked.

" I called and got an answer some
time ago, just as you knocked on the
wall," he said. " With you here to
watch for interruption, I can call again,
and perhaps accomplish something.
Stand beside the door, Roland.

"If any one comes, give me the signal
and go beneath the bunk. That will give
me time to close the panel and get into
the chair. I hardly think we'll be both-
ered, though, before daylight."

I stood beside the door as he directed,
and he went into the little alcove and
put the harness on his head, and sat
down before the keyboard. Then the
dots and dashes began again. He would
call, then wait — call, and wait.

Presently there came a tiny flash and
crash in reply, and he looked around at
me, and smiled. Then his fingers flew
to the key again, and he tapped out his
message.

"Some one answered you?" I asked.

" The United States cruiser Milwau-
kee answered me," he said, smiling.

" She is on our trail, anyway, for we
left the harbor of San Francisco under
peculiar circumstances. When we are
caught, I will have to answer a multi-
tude of questions, but I can tell a story

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

647

that will help clear me, and perhaps
your uncle and Miss Holland will help."

" You may be sure they will, sir, if we
get out of this alive," I replied.

" The cruiser cannot overhaul us be-
fore we reach the island," he said. " I
was unable to give our location, of
course, but I gave them the location of
the island, and the cruiser may arrive in
time to save us. I wish I could get word
to the others."

" They allowed me to speak to Miss
Holland this afternoon, sir," I said,
" and perhaps they will again. I can
tell her."

For a moment the captain did not re-
ply. ■ I cotjld see that he was thinking
out some plan.

" If you talk to her again," he said,
" tell her that I have sent out a call for
help, and tell her that she is to do every-
thing in her power to gain time when we
reach the island. There is a way she can
gain time — if she will.

" They want her to marry Welch, who
is one of their priests. Welch is wound-
ed and cannot be married for some time,
of course. From what one of the men
told me to-day it will be two weeks be-
fore he will be able to stand alone. My
bullet almost found a vital spot.

" Tell her to agree to become his wife
as soon as he is well. That will please
them, and they will begin their ceremo-
nies. She must agree only on condition
that there is no execution until after the
wedding ceremony is performed. And
tell her that she must demand all the
rights which will be hers under their
law."

"What rights, sir?" I asked.

" A maiden, who is. to become the
bride of a priest of the aitu can prevent
the execution of a condemned person."

" Then she can save us? " I cried.

" She can save — one of us? " he an-
swered.

CHAPTER XII.

Tricks and Counter-Tricks.

T^HERE came a knock on the door,
-*• and the sound of a key being
turned in the lock. I hurried beneath
the bunk, and Captain Hawson dropped
a blanket to hide me, then hurried across

to the chair and sat down with a paper
in his hand.

The door was thrown open, and one
of the men entered. He looked at the
captain, looked round the cabin, then
went out again. We heard him call out
something, heard the call repeated by
some one else, and in a minute the leader
of the fanatics came into the cabin.

" The guard says he heard voices," he
said.

" I can't help what he heard," the
captain replied. " Perhaps I was readr
ing aloud."

" He says he heard two voices."

" Perhaps there is something wrong
with his ears," the captain answered. " I
wish you wouldn't bother me when I'm
trying to read."

The man looked round the cabin
swiftly. There was a puzzled expression
on his face.

"It is very peculiar," he said, and
went out again.

Perhaps he thought there was indeed
something the matter with the guard's
ears, for he made no further investiga-
tion. I lay in fear that he wnuld enter
my cabin and miss me, but he did not.
He hurried back to the deck. The
steamer was pitching terribly, and it was
evident that the presence of the com-
mander on deck was necessary.

We waited for a time, then I crept
back to my own cabin, and once upon
the inside covered my side of the hole
in the wall as best I could. Then I
threw myself upon the bunk, and fell
asleep.

The guard awakened me in the morn-
ing, bringing my breakfast. After eat-
ing, I spent the hours anxiously, waiting
for' the afternoon to come, and with it
the possible conversation with Ruth
Holland.

My hour came finally, and I was
taken on deck. Miss Holland was not
there, and I refrained from asking about
her, for fear the commander would think
me too anxious to speak to her. Before
I had been on deck half of the hour, she
was brought up, and came toward me
with outstretched hands, and smiling.

"How do you feel to-day?" she
asked.

" Very well, thank you," I replied,
and then we talked of ordinary things

648

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

for a time, until the guard grew less
cautious and stepped some distance
away. Then I told her what the captain
had instructed me to say.

I explained how he had called the
United States cruiser, and what mes-
sages he had sent and received.

" He says you are to agree to marry
Welch," I told her, " on condition that
there is no execution before the cere-
mony, because you do not want the fes-
tivities marred by any bloody work. You
are to gain all the time you can, and as
a last resort are to demand your right
to free some condemned man."

For a time she sat in silence. .

" Captain Hawson says Mr. Welch is
badly wounded?" she asked.

" The guard told him he would not
be able to stand alone and get about for
at least a fortnight," I replied.

" Then I think that the plan is a good
one," she said. " Tell Captain Hawson
that I'll do my best."

" Is there anything I can do to
help? " I asked.

" Nothing, I believe. They will come
to me at midnight, as usual, and this
time my answer will be yes. There will
be a betrothal ceremony immediately, of
course. I think all of you will be forced
to Avitness it.

" There is- one thing: — If only you
could let your uncle know that I am
playing a game, and am not sincere in
promising to marry Welch ! "

" Perhaps there'll be a chance for me
to speak to him," I said. " I'll tell the
captain, too, and between us we ought
to get word to him."

We talked of other things then, and
presently the guards took me back to my
cabin, and Miss Holland remained on
deck to finish her hour of liberty.

The evening passed slowly. I heard
no signal from the captain's cabin, and
did not make any, for he had told me to
make no sound until he gave me the word.
I wanted to tell him how I had succeed-
ed with Ruth Holland, but did not want
to disobey his instructions.

It must have been nine o'clock at
night when he rapped on the wall and I
ran across the cabin and pulled the
draperies away from the hole. He
dropped the blanket on his side, and put
his head clown.

"What did Miss Holland say?" he
asked.

" She will do as you request, to-
night," I answered.

"Good girl!" I heard him say, and
then his head disappeared and he told
me to cover the hole again.

From then until midnight I listened
beside my door, listened to the guard
pacing back and forth in the passage.
At midnight I heard several men come
down from deck, and there was a knock
on Miss Holland's door. I heard her
voice as she bade them enter, and heard
the door close.

What passed there, I do not know,
but in a few minutes the men came into
the passage again, laughing and chat-
ting, and some of them singing their
peculiar chant.

They went away, and half an hour
later they returned, and went into Miss
Holland's cabin again. Then there were
more voices, more laughing and chanting
and the sounds of many people going
through the passage.

Another half - hour passed, and then
the door of my cabin was unlocked, and
the spokesman . entered.

" Get up, boy, and come with us," he
said.

I left the bunk and stood in the mid-
dle of the cabin, fearing.

" There is nothing to fear just now."
he said, not unkindly.' " Since you are
already doomed, you are privileged to
witness all ceremonies. We are about
to hold one."

One of his men took me by the arm and
led me into the passage. There I found
Captain Hawson and Uncle Dick. The
captain was trying hard to hide his
pleasure, but found it difficult. Uncle
Dick's face was a study; he did not
know what to make of this midnight
ceremony.

I stepped as near him as possible.

" Uncle Dick," I whispered.

"Yes, Roland."

" This — " I began, and then stopped,
for my guard had pulled me to one side,
and the spokesman was glaring steadfast-
ly at us.

" You must not talk to one another,"
he said.

He said something to the guards, and
we were taker, down the passage, sev-

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

649

eral yards apart, and led into the cabin
where the aitu sat upon his throne at the
head of the flight of steps.

There were candles burning before the
idol. The draperies were thrown back,
and on the steps leading up to the god
was a wide carpet of some yellow mate-
rial. Two of the fanatics were dressed in
peculiar yellow robes. One of them was
burning something that gave off a pun-
gent odor.

But the principal attraction for me
then was pretty Ruth Holland, dressed
in a yellow robe of silk, her black hair
flowing across her shoulders, her brow
bound with a golden cord. Her face was
pale, and I thought that, as she looked
toward Uncle Dick, there was a message
in her eyes which, it seemed, he could
.not, or would not, read.

The spokesman walked up the steps
and addressed the aitu in the foreign
tongue, and placed a small gold pan be-
fore the god. Then he descended the
steps again, and turned to us and spoke
in English.

" I have ordered that you be present
at this ceremony, which must be cele-
brated in public," he said. " It will per-
haps be a diversion for you after your
long incarceration. In consideration of
this, you will refrain from speaking to
one another.

" I have addressed the aitu, and the
ceremony will proceed. It will be read
to you in English, so that you will un-
derstand."

Then he ■ addressed the aitu again in
that foreign tongue, and after each
speech he translated into .English. That
was for my benefit solely, for Uncle
Dick and Captain Hawson could under-
stand their peculiar language.

" Great aitu," he cried, " we come be-
fore you and kneel at your feet' this
night to bid you welcome one who is to
grace your temple. She 4s before you,
great aitu, dressed as is becoming one
who is to be the bride of a priest.

" Look down upon her, and if there
comes from you no manifestation of dis-
pleasure, the ceremony will go on."

. The fanatics knelt on the floor of the
cabin, and looked up at the idol's face.
Presently the spokesman uttered a com-
mand and they arose again.

" Ruth Holland." he said, " is it your

wish that we accept you, before the aitu,
as betrothed to a priest of the temple?"

She hesitated a moment, looked at
Uncle Dick again, then turned toward
the god,

" It is," she replied.

I saw Uncle Dick spring forward and
hold out his arms to her.

" Ruth ! " he cried.

But the guards forced him back
against the wall, and Miss Holland
turned her face away quickly, for fear
he would see the tears in her eyes.

"Ruth!" he cried again, and the cry
was one to cut to a person's heart.

I tried to get near him, tried to tell
him with my eyes that it was all a trick,
but he was not looking at me, but at the
pale-faced girl who stood at the foot of
the steps, her head bowed down.

The spokesman addressed the idol
again, and the men began chanting. One
of them brought a brazier, and heated
something in it. And then the spokes-
man took from it a tiny device shaped
like an arrow with a circle round it. It
was white-hot. ,

" Woman, you must pardon any pain
that I cause you," he said, and before
the words were out of his mouth he had
bared her left arm and touched the
white-hot metal to the flesh.

She gave a little cry, and the odor of
scorching flesh came to our nostrils.
Uncle Dick cursed and struggled to get
free. But she turned and looked him
straight in the eyes, and spoke.

" It hurts no longer," she said
bravely.

I knew what she wanted to say — that
she was doing it for him. But to give
voice to that would be to put the
fanatics, on their guard and make them
disbelieve the sincerity of her part in the
ceremony.

The spokesman addressed the aitu again,
then turned rather sharply and faced the
door.

" It is but half finished," he . said.
"Where is the man?"

We expected, of course, that they
would use a proxy. One of the men
stepped back and threw open the door
and went out into the passage. We
stood against the wall, waiting.

A moment passed, then Ruth Holland
gave a scream, and fell full length at

650

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

the feet of the aitu. I whirled around
to discern the trouble.

Welch was standing in the door !

"Let the ceremony proceed!" he
said.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Disappearance of Ruth.

HEARD Captain Hawson utter an
•*• oath, saw him start toward the door.
But the guards held him back and
forced him to stand against the wall.

Welch stepped into, the cabin, leaning
for support on one of the men. There
was an evil smile upon his face.

"So!" he -said. "It seems some one
has been caught in their own trap. I
was not so badly wounded as certain
people were made to believe. You
thought to gain time, evidently, by hav-
ing Miss Holland agree to a ceremony.
Well, the ceremony shall proceed now ! "

He looked across the cabin at her, and
spoke to the commander.

" Revive her," he said. " The hot
iron has made her swoon."

While we stood there helpless, watch-
ing Welch's evil smile, they revived her,
and helped her to her feet, and made
her stand at the foot of the steps again.
Then Welch went forward and stood be-
side her.

Again the fanatics began to chant.
Questions were asked, and Welch an-
swered them. The hot iron was applied
to his left arm, too, and in spite of his
weakened condition, he bore the ordeal
without flinching.

Then the spokesman faced us again,
after speaking in his own tongue.

" This man and this woman will join
hands," he said. " By the -joining of
their hands is their betrothal sealed.
Hereafter they belong to each other and
to the temple of the aitu. No power save
death can separate them. She shall be
veiled and no man but her husband shall
look upon her face. When she joins
hands with this man she becomes a
daughter of the aitu, even as he became
the aitu's son."

He stepped back and stood before

them. It was the climax, the crucial

moment. We all realized that our trick

turned tragedy. Once she joined

hands with Welch before the aitu, she
was lost. No power but death, as the
spokesman had said, could save her.

It was too great a risk. . Unless help
arrived almost as soon as we reached the
island, she would be the bride of Welch,
for he was not so badly wounded but
that the wedding ceremony could be
held as soon as the island was reached.

I saw Welch put out his hand, saw
the evil smile on his face again as he
turned and looked at Uncle Dick.

"You will take this man's hand?"
the spokesman asked Ruth Holland.

She looked at Welch's face.

" No ! " she cried.

" You dare defy the great aitu ! " the
spokesman screamed. " You dare defile
him by beginning a ceremony in his
presence and refusing to conclude it?
Do you know the penalty?"

" The penalty is death," she said, al-
most in a whisper.

" Immediate death," he corrected.
" You have your choice — which is it to
be?"

She turned and looked at Uncle Dick
again, then faced the spokesman calmly
and bravely.

" My choice is death," she said.

The spokesman's voice was cold and
hard as he replied :

" Very well ! At the rise of sun ! "

She turned as though to go toward the
door, but Welch stepped beside^ her
quickly.

" Life is sweet," he said. " You do
not want to die ! You should not have
tried the trick unless you were ready for
the consequences. I cannot help you
now — you know the law. Either you
must conclude the ceremony at once, or
die. Why not conclude the ceremony?
Perhaps I may help you to find a way
out when we reach the island."

She whirled upon him, her face flush-
ing.

" You cannot decoy me with lies," she
said. " I have chosen death ! I played
the game, and lost ! "

" So be it — your life is your own,"
Welch said.

" Are you going on with the cere-
mony? " the spokesman demanded.

" I am not ! " she replied.

" Then death awaits you at the rise
of the sun ! "

THE DAUGHTER OF THE IDOL.

651

" I will be ready," she said, still calm.

Uncle Dick's face was white, and I
wondered why he did not say something.
As Ruth passed him, going into the pas-
sage, he bent toward her.

" I believe you now," he said.

She turned and smiled at him through
her tears.

" That is worth dying for," she re-
plied.

Then she went out, the guard with
her, and walked to her own cabin. We
were forced into the passage, too, and
taken to our prisons. ' I saw Welch stag-
ger toward his cabin, two of the men
supporting him.

Inside, I threw- myself on the bunk
and burst into tears. It seemed that eve-
rything was against us, that there was
no way to escape from the toils of the
idolatry that engulfed us.

There was so much that I did not un-
derstand. What had there been between
Ruth Holland and Uncle Dick, and why
had she seemed so happy when he said
he believed, although death was await-
ing her?

I lay on the bunk sobbing for almost
an hour. Once I heard the spokesman
in the passage talking to the guard.
Then I heard the captain moving the
chair away from the hole in the wall.
I left the bunk to hurry across the cabin
and remove the draperies from my side.

" Come in," the captain said. " We
have no time to lose."

"What are we going to do?" I
asked, when I was inside his cabin and
he was covering the hole again.

"We are going to save her,". he said
in a breath.

" But how?"

" Wait ! "

He opened the secret panel, and told
me' to get into the alcove. Then he
showed me how to close the panel and
how to open it from the inside when it
was unlocked.

" Remain in there and be absolutely
quiet," he said. "Do not come out, un-
der any circumstances until I tell you to
do so. You must obey orders now,
Roland. Can you do that?"

"Yes, sir," I answered.

He closed the panel then, and walked
across the cabin to the door. I heard
him knock upon it.

In a moment 4t was opened and the
guard spoke to him. I could see,
through the tiny slit in the panel, that
the captain was peering into the passage
as he talked.

Suddenly he grasped the guard by the
throat, and choked him into insensibili-
ty. Then he carried him back into the
cabin, closed the door, and bound and
gagged the man and left him in a cor-
ner of the room.

" Not a sound ! " he whispered to me,
as he passed the panel.

He opened the door again cautiously,
and stepped out into the passage. For
a time there was no sound ; then there
came a crash as of a door being broken
in, and after the crash another, and a
storm of cries from the passage and the
deck.

Captain Hawson rushed back into the
room, Ruth Holland following him. He
slammed the door and rushed across to
the panel and cried to me to open it.
And then, quicker than I can tell it here,
he had put Ruth into the alcove, had
closed the panel again, and we were alone
in the cabin with the bound guard.

"The man has a revolver; take it."
the captain said..

I carried out his order.

" Now, get into your own cabin," he
instructed.

I dashed across to the chair and start-
ed to remove it. Outside in the corridor
there were screams and cries.

Just as I gained my own cabin and
-adjusted the draperies before the hole in
the wall, the men burst in upon Captain
Hawson.

I threw the revolver under the bed-
clothing, for I was afraid they might
enter my cabin and find it. Then I crept
across to the wall to listen.

Captain Hawson had been seized and
his hands bound ; I could tell that from
the words I could hear.

" What does this mean? " I heard him
ask.

"What have you clone?" the spokes-
man demanded.

" I conquered one of your guards."

" What have vou done with the wom-
an?"

" What do I know about the woman? "
the captain demanded.

" The guard at the end of the passage

652

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

said you released her and brought her
here."

" Search and find her, then," the cap-
tain said.

I heard the men muttering among
themselves.

" Search and find her," the captain re-
peated. " She is doomed to die at sun-
rise. Unless she is executed then, the
great aitu will look with scorn and curses
upon you.

" What will you tell the high priest
when the island is reached? Search and
find her ; and, unless you find her, your
own doom is sealed."

" What have you done with her? " the
spokesman demanded again.

" I am saying nothing about that," the
captain replied.

Then I heard another voice — the voice
of Welch.

" What is the trouble?" he asked.

The spokesman told him rapidly. The
others kept up their jabbering.

" Captain Hawson, you'll spare your-
self trouble by giving up the woman,"
Welch said.

I heard the captain laugh.

" You are ridiculous," he said. " The
guard says I brought her into this room.
Well, you don't see her, do you? "

" She is here, nevertheless," Welch de-
clared.

I heard him walk around the room,
and knew he was searching. In a mo-
ment he had come to the chair, had pulled
it aside and discovered the hole. I heard
his cry of surprise.

There were more quick orders, and
two of the men ran out in the passage ;
and came to my door and opened it, and
fell in upon me, with their revolvers in
their hands.

Welch was just behind them. He took
in the cabin at a glance, then stepped
across-to me.

"Where is Miss Holland?" he de-
manded.

" She isn't in here," I said.

" Where is she? Do you know? "

" I have said she isn't in here."

" Do you know where she is, though? "

" I will not answer," I said.

" Then we'll torture the answer out of
you."

He seized me by the arm. I wrenched

(To be co

myself free, but one of the men held me
while Welch cried loudly for the spokes-
man.

" This boy knows where, the woman is,
and will not tell," he said. " Take him
to the temple - room, torture' him, make
him tell."

" Master," the man replied, " that can-
not be done. The boy is doomed to die,
for he has touched the aitu. The law
says a person doomed to die under such
circumstances must not be tortured, but
must go to the execution perfect in body.
The aitu demands perfect sacrifices."

Welch sent the other two men out, and
walked closer to the spokesman.

" Even so," he said, " sometimes it is
better to disobey the law than to die.
Unless the woman is recovered, you are
doomed for allowing her to escape, and
thus helping defy the great aitu. We can
torture the boy ourselves. None other
need know. It is the only way you can
save yourself."

The man hesitated. His face had
grown white as Welch spoke, and it was
plain to see that the fear of death was
upon him.

" Perhaps it would be the better way,"
he said. " Master is a priest of the tem-
ple, and his word is law."

" But no one must ever know," Welch
said.

Then he grasped me by the arm again.

" Will you tell where the woman is?"
he demanded.

" No," I said.

" Then we'll torture you to make you
tell."

" I will not tell," I answered.

" We'll see about that," he cried an-
grily.

He went to the door and called one of
the men. I could not understand what
it was he said, of course ; but judged it
was something about guarding the cap-
tain.

Then he turned to me again.

" For the last time," he said, " will you
tell where the woman is?"

" No ! " I replied.

He addressed the spokesman : " Light
the candles in the temple-room," he in-
structed. " Then return here and help
me with the boy. We'll see if a little tor-
ture won't make him open his mouth."
n ti nu ed .)

King of the Freight-Trains

BY WILLIAM CLINTON COURT,

FAST as new conditions of commercial life develop, the railroads must
evolve new means of meeting those conditions. No industry feels as
directly the demands of all "the industries. No industry must, impera-
tively, meet the emergencies of all industries as unfailingly. This is the
genius of railroading, but neither shippers nor the general public realize that
it is genius. The latest expression of this gen'ius for emergencies is the silk-
train. Read here why this flying freight, moving remorselessly across a
continent, is the monarch of the revenue-producing department.

The Product of Worms in the Far Orient Becomes the
Nabob of All Freight Traffic on the Continent
of America.

Haughty

ING of the world of freight !
This is the " silk-train."
In all the rest of railroad-
ing there is nothing so
dramatic and strange as
the way, hour after hour,
day following day, these trains pound
across the continent at a continuous
speed, rivaling that of the limiteds, their
cars carefully guarded, made air. and
moisture proof, the tracks kept clear for
them.

They might be potentates, millionaires,
railroad presidents or governors, these
bales of raw silk, for the deferential at-
tention paid them and the special traffic
schedules arranged for their swift prog-
ress.

And truly they should have a consid-
eration far beyond the ordinary. Some
of these trains have aboard of them a
million dollars' worth of raw silk. A

train - load aggregating half a million
dollars in value is not at all uncommon.

Transporting this raw silk from the
Pacific coast to the Atlantic at record
speed, as fast as any passengers can be
carried, has come to be a new railroad
specialty, involving the prettiest of prob-
lems. Three great transcontinental lines
are competing for the traffic, each gath-
ering in all it possibly can.

Freight Autocrats.

It is not a question of rates, but of
perfection of service, the competition be-
ing to take a given number of bales off a
steamer from the Orient and land them
in the East, where the silk manufactur-
ing industry largely congregates, in the
very shortest space of time.

All in all, in these trains that touch
the top notch of freight manipulation —

653

654

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

and even go far beyond that — something
like eighty million dollars' worth are
whizzed yearly from coast to coast. It is
not like freighting in the least ; it has
come to be a wonderful new feat of the
railroads, proving what they can do when
emergency arises. Beside the raw silk
bales, the passenger in the vestibuled
train sinks to a secondary place.

The reason is easy to discover, if you
are in the silk trade. If you are not,
some understanding of this most pictur-
esque, costly freight is necessary. Im-
agine that manifest impossibility, a fast-
moving train of six, eight, or ten cars,
loaded up to the roofs of each car with
boxes of diamonds. Yet such a train
would not be a hundredth part the prob-
lem of even six cars of raw silk.

There is scarcely anything else in the
world so perishable among costly articles
as raw silk. It is easy to destroy, easy
to damage, easy to steal. The elements
can injure it to a greater degree and more
quickly than almost anything else.

It is highly inflammable, moisture is
destructive to it ; thieves, once they had
the ghost of a chance, could readily make
away with a bale. The one thing for a
railroad to do with a train-load in its
hands, in order to avoid liability for tre-
mendous damages, is to get it to its des-
tination as quickly as possible.

' The Team-Mate.

Hence the speed, despatch, judgment,
and care no other freight gets. Hence
the right of way it shares with the limit-;
eds. Over the Pacific some of the great-
est ships of their time have been plying.
The silk trade from Japan, China, other
points of the Far East, is one of their
strongholds. Ships and trains work to-
gether.

Over the Pacific the bales have come
in a " silk-room." These bales of raw
silk, from the time they leave their
oriental farmers, cannot be placed with
common freight. As much as the pas-
sengers on shipboard, they have a place
of their own..

The " silk-rooms " on these ocean steam-
ers are as painstakingly constructed as
the machinery itself. They are moisture-
proof, perfectly carpentered apartments,
built to provide every security for a

part of the cargo that needs twenty times
the care and all the security given to
specie.

The problem of getting -the silk across
the seas is simple. It begins to be really
a problem once the Pacific liner warps
into its dock at Vancouver, Seattle, Ta-
coma, and San Francisco.

The wireless has already been busy an-
nouncing the steamer's approach. By
the time the first line is thrown at the
dock the silk-train is alongside. Down
on the dock's very edge a spur has been
built. Not only are the cars, as many as
may be required for the cargo, in waiting,
but an engine with a full head of steam
is attached. Once the last bale is trans-
ferred there is not a moment's delay.

Picked Crews.

Picked crews, men of the grade of lim-
ited employees, are to take this train over
the continent. Specially selected gangs
of stevedores, huskies trained to work
with the greatest expeditiousness and
care, move the bales from silk-room to
silk-cars.

Of course, the cars that make up such
a train are not ordinary freight - cars.
They are not, it is true, especially built
for transporting silk — that has not been
considered necessary — but they are of the
highest type of. freight-car, and no car is
chosen for these delicate runs without
having been singled out as particularly
adapted to its purpose.

Consider the qualifications needed.
Ordinary freight takes about a month to
get from the Pacific to the Atlantic. The
time on fast freight for fruit across the
continent, where cars must be constantly
kept iced and where there Is need for
despatch, if ever, is fourteen days. But
a silk-train makes its journey hi much
less than half that time. From ocean to
ocean it keeps up the average speed of
thirty miles an hour, the tune of a trans-
continental express.

There are wonderful tales of railroad
scurrying of seventy, one hundred miles
an hour — and more, even. But these are
over comparatively short stretches of
track, specially patrolled. Thirty miles
an hour, steadily kept up from sea to sea,
is a famous record. These silk-trains
do it.

KING OF THE FREIGHT-TRAINS.

655

All this nicety in selecting cars for this
silk service is- necessary, for none of the
ordinary risks of freight can be taken.
Just as with a passenger - train of the
highest grade, there must emphatically
be no delay.

A flange must not break, there must
be nothing to stop the steady progress of
the precious car-loads. Thus, each car
that goes out on this service is equipped
with the Krupp wheels, that cost more
than twice as much as the wheels used on
ordinary passenger coaches.

Besides these silk - cars, only private
cars and some Pullmans are equipped
with these Krupp wheels. Only wheels
like them could stand the strain of this
interminable, constant pounding, day and
night, from oriental steamer to " condi-
tioning warehouse."

Two sizes and varieties of cars are used
for these silk-trains. One is of the same
dimensions as the ordinary baggage-car,
and holds about eighty bales. The other
is of the box-baggage type, and contains,
when loaded, sixty to seventy bales.

Both are water, damp, and dust proof.
There is seldom a train, embracing less
than six or more than ten cars. With a
shorter or a longer train the requisites
for this racing-time could not be readily
maintained.

On Passenger Schedule.

Approximately,, it is three thousand
miles across the continent. Roughly
speaking, therefore, the silk-train makes
its delicate, risky journey, with all these
riches at stake, in one hundred hours, a
trifle over four days.

One hundred and twelve to one hun-
dred and twenty hours is the speed
reached in actual practise, the speed of
the best-equipped passenger-train. Sand-
wiched between these, the silk-trains run
under precisely the same conditions.

Indeed, from one or two of the Pacific
ports, when a steamer brings over too
small a consignment to make a special
silk-train advisable, as many cars as may
be necessary are loaded with the bales
and become a part of the next limited,
the silk-cars being exactly as important
as those carrying passengers.

All this is plain business, simply a de-
tail of the way the railroads are meeting

the exigencies of the rapidly developing
oriental trade. It is the prettiest sort
of transportation work, a service that
these times of commercial rivalries have
brought about, and that is well paid for.

Wonderful Railroading.

The traffic is enormous. Literally,
floods of - Canton, Tussah, and Japan
silk pour from overseas in an unending
stream. A single steamer may bring as
many as thirteen hundred or two thou-
sand bales. One hundred and fifty-eight
thousand bales came into this country
last year — twenty-three million pounds.
Ninety-five per cent of it, in rough fig-
ures, was carried along the great trans-
continental highways.

There were in all about two thousand
car-loads — three hundred trains, at least
— that made these special runs, with never
a misadventure, so far as the record goes.
Wonderful railroading this, when the
preciousness of the freight is considered;
romantic and dramatic in the extreme,
when the story is imagined of the jour-
neys of these cars of raw silk, first over
the mountain-chains, then through Cana-
dian or American wheat-fields, down the
slopes, over the prairie country, into the
lands of great manufacturing towns, one
steady, unremitting turning of wheels,
until the great freight depots of New
York, or elsewhere in the East, are
reached.

Beauty's Debt.

Here is the heart of this romance.
There is hardly a silk dress of American
manufacture that rustles daintily in a
ballroom, enfolding a beauty's form, or
displays itself on the promenade ; not a
silk petticoat that, still in its bale — then
simply threads of raw silk just as they
are unwound from the cocoon — but has
not shared in these thrilling rides from
the West to the East.

Even the haughtiest Pullman porter
of the limiteds has respect for these silk-
trains. They yield him no tips, for a cer-
tainty ; but he knows, and so do his con-
ductor and his engineer, that this rival is
as good in the railroad's eye as his own
splendidly caparisoned fleet of parlors,
dining-saloons, and libraries on wheels.

656

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Should delay come to his train, under
no circumstances must the silk-train be-
hind be held up. Should necessity arrive,
the limited must even side-track. The
silk-train is an aristocrat ; it has brought
into being new laws of the road. For the
first time in railroading history, freight
meets passenger service on equal terms.

As a matter of practical operation, the
silk - trains and the passenger - trains of
first rank do not conflict at all. Across
the continent trains, naturally, do not fol-
low each other in rapid succession. There
is room and to spare for both on 'the
lines of steel that bind the States. Be-
tween the limiteds, but under the same
conditions, the silk-trains run. They
have their own schedule.

No special care is taken of these silk-
cars en route. The one thing required is
swift, continuous progress. Before the

train moves from the dock each car is
sealed. The seal is not broken until it
arrives at its destination.

Fire, water, damp, and thieves are the
enemies of these bales. But let the train
keep on with never a stop, and the most
expert care for hot boxes and such run-
ning misadventures, and its costly cargo
is safe. Robbers of the road might
easily pick up a bale, of five or six hun-
dred dollars in value, weighing hardly
one hundred and fifty pounds; but how
can they, from a train that scarcely stops,
that is joint monarch of all traffic, freight
and passenger?

So, unendingly slip along these pets
of traffic managers, the last word said
yet on the moving of freight, stopping
only to change engines and crews at di-
vision-points, a " run solid," clipping off
the hours.

THE ROUNDHOUSE FOREMAN.

WE always had considerable sympathy
for the roundhouse foreman. He is
a sort of middle boss caught between two
fires, but we dare say many of them manage
to get a fairly good time out of the busi-
ness.

Of course, it isn't recreation. It is hard,
unpleasant, responsible work, and about the
only fun to be got out of it is possibly when
you quit and see how nice it is not to be
doing it.

Still, we hope it isn't as bad as Mr. James
Kennedy, writing in Railway and Locomo-
tive Engineering, would have us believe.
Apparently Mr. Kennedy has a very low
opinion of the position of roundhouse fore-
man, but there is a charm about the vigor
of his style that makes us regret that we
cannot reproduce the whole of his- remarks.
Here are a few of them.:

"An overworked mule in a Pennsylvania
coal-mine has some brief glimpses of green
fields in its darkened life. The roundhouse
foreman has no such sunny spasms.

" He has to have the suppleness of an
acrobat and the attributes of a quadruped.
When you enter the roundhouse and be-
hold a pair of muddy feet looking out of
the dome top, that is the roundhouse fore-
man standing on his head examining an old-
fashioned throttle-valve of the vintage of
i860.

"If you see a four-footed creature crawl-
ing in the slim}' pit, with one eye on the

forward eccentric and the other dimly scan-
ning through the murky haze, the crafty
mechanics warming themselves at the fire-
box doors in the comfortable cabs, that's
him. He is not there from choice. He is
doing the things that nobody else can do.

" He is rectifying the involved valve-gear
that some meddling engineer" has distorted.
He is the only man in the place whose fine
ear is attuned to the rhythmic and passionate
exhaust of an overworked freight-engine.
And what thanks has he?

" Thanks, indeed ! He is paid by the
month. At night, when other men are paid
time-and-a-half, he gets nothing but abuse."

These are some of the milder parts of
the dark picture, but we are prepared to
forgive the painter when he concludes with
a eulogy with which probably all good rail-
road men will agree, for it is doubtful if
in all the railroad field there is as popular
a figure as the subject:

" There are exceptions. Some there are
like ' Shandy Maguire,' who has just finished
forty years' service as roundhouse fort-
man at the Lackawanna shops at Oswego,
New York, and retires on a well-earned
pension.

" He is one among a thousand. A great,
stalwart man with a soul of fire and a
body of iron. Gifted by nature with colos-
sal strength, he has led the simple life.
Like the Hebrew children of old, he has
come unscathed through the fiery furnace."

"OH, YOU BUTTINSKY!"

BY F. M. RICHARDSON.

Bill Hooks Up to a Silk-Plush, Mahogany-
Lined Fairy, When Maggie Throws the Arm.

.HAT'S the matter,
Bill?" inquired the
engineer, as his fire-
man straightened up
from sweeping the
deck. "You look

as if you had been called for a double-
header west with fifty loads of pig iron

in the train."

"Yeh? Well, I'm feelin' some t' th'

blink, all right, all right. Say, did you

ever have 'er slip just as you was getting

a big train over th' top of Cimeroon Hill

an' have t' double? Well, if you ever

had that happen to

yer — I feel just th'

way you did when

she slipped. You

see, it was this way.

Me an' Long Jim

— him that fires th'

23 on local — went

t' one of them Hal-
lowe'en shindigs

las' night. Dern

his long, hungry

picture, anyhow !

I might 'a' knowed

a cussed flat car

like him would be a

hoodoo, not t' speak

of his connections

with 23!" And

Bill gave a vicious

tug at the bell-rope

in response to the

conductor's signal

to pull out.

Nothing more

was said as the

great engine drew

her train of coaches
6 RR

out of the train-shed and threaded the
mazes of the yards, but once free from the
city, and bounding along to the rhyth-
mical hum of the exhaust, the engineer's
curiosity prompted further questioning.

He had her hooked up in six inches,
his pipe lighted and drawing well, the
injector regulated, and he was feeling
fine as he watched the landscape slip by
in a streak.

Noting Bill's vicious slamming of the
fire-box door, and how he smashed the
lumps of coal as if he wished each were
-some one's head, he finally said :

" So you were at
a Hallowe'en party
last night, were
you?"
" Yep."

A pause while
Bill chucked in a
fire, distributing
each shovel of coal
with a jab which
somehow made his
partner think of a
doubled-up fist.

"Well, what
happened to Jim
and you, anyhow? "
asked the eagle eye.
" They was plen-
ty happened to mc,
an' if ever I get a
square chance at
that long-legged
forgery on th' hu-
man race, I'll
punch seven dis-
tinct kinds of —
well, jes' lemme
meet him !

WHOLE THING WAS A HOODOO FROM
TH' START."

657

658

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" There was to be a party up to his " It was just nothin' but trouble,

girl's house, an' nothin' would do but I trouble, an' more trouble, an' every

must go 'long ; so, like a derned, gib- blamed time we'd splash into a fresh

berin' idjut, I said I would, an' he called bunch of it Jim'd grin like 'a galvanized

for me at eight o'clock. ape. Say! Honest, I believe. that gan-

" His girl lives way out ten miles from gle-shanked freak actually enjoys grief

nowheue in Hyde Park, so we took a Cot- — an' th' bad-luck semaphore was sure

tage Grove Avenue car, an' burned up an all th' way up last night.

hour getting there. Th whole thing was ' " You see, it's this way. I'm some

a hoodoo from th' start. It rained a
little about seven o'clock, jes' enough t'
leave some puddles lyin' 'round con-
venient, an', fust pop out of th' box, I
had to step square into a dirty one. It
looked like just a small puddle, but,

sweet on Maggie Donovan, who lives on
th' West Side, and have been conductor
on her train for some consid'able spell.
Generally I'm on a regular run with her
for engineer, but I wasn't called for last
night, an' supposed she was in th' back

judgin' by the immediate results, it shop for repairs, or maybe had slipped
must 'a' been a young Atlantic Ocean, an eccentric, so she couldn't get out.

" Say, that slush
must 'a' splashed
higher' n the Ma-
sonicTemple! Any-
ways, I looked like
an engine that's
tried t' make a fly-
ing-switch with til-
water out of sight
in th' glass !

" Then, when we
got off th' car, I
stepped in front of
one of them ben-
zine - buggies, an'
it's a miracle I
wasn't landed in
th' morgue 'stead
of just bein' rolled
in the mud.

" Say, I looked
like a chimney-
sweep caught in a
rain-storm. I want-
ed t' go back then,
but that measly im-
itation of a cross-
eyed coal - heaver

wouldn't hear of it, so we goes into a ton- '.' Old Gawky didn't say a word about
sorial artist's joint an' gets th' porter t' her bein' at that particular doings,
remove th' surplus real estate, an' I stuck though it seems she had it framed up

M§^*

WE WAS GETTIN' THICKER THAN TWO ENGINES PULLIN' ONE COACH,
AN' SHE HAD JUST "

for th' big show.

" I never did have no sense, nohow !
If I did, I wouldn't be pokin' coal into
this measly old tub to make steam for
you to blow away through that derned
old whistle, just for your individual
amusement — see? "

But the engineer pretended not to hear,
and, after a snort or two, Bill continued :

with him t' surprise me.

" She surprised me, ~all right, all
right ! Derndest, most successful sur-
prise-party I ever had rung in on me.
Say ! I sailed into trouble as innocent
as a lady telegrapher at a night-station !

" When we got there. Lanky intro-
duced me to about a dozen peaches an'
th' he-things that was with 'em. an' there

"OH, YOU BUTTINSKY!"

659

bein' a couple of odd ones, I proceeds
immediate t' annex myself to a nice, yal-
ler-haired beauty.

" She was a pippin, all right ! One
of them gals that's a regular silk-plush,
upholstered, mahogany-lined parlor-car,
with. gold-plated trimmin's. One of th'
kind that snuggles up to you like a seat-
box cushion when you're tired.

" We was in one corner on a sofa, get-
tin' thicker than two engines pullin' one
coach, an' she had just took a rose from
her shiny yaller hair an' was pinnin' it
t' my coat, leanin' over some closer than
seemed absolute necessary, an' I was fix-

-TOOK A ROSE FROU HER
HAIR."

Mfjuzs

in' up her hair where she took th' rose
out, when 1 happened t' look up, an',
jumpin' side-rods, if there wasn't Maggie
standin' in th' door lookin' at us, an' that
big mutt of a brother of hers with her !
" Say! She didn't say a word, but I
could see red flags wavin' all around just
as plain ! Th' air was full of 'em. She
let out a splutter or two, like she was try-
in' her gage, an' then she just yanked
her cylinder open an' sailed out on th'
main line, runnin' wild under two hun-

dred pounds pressure, with th' throttle
wide open an' the lever clear down in th'
corner !

" She landed on Yallertop, an' in just
two-fifths of a second th' air was full of
rats, switches, hairpins, and squeals.
Yaller -was game, though, an' it wasn't
all her head-gear playin' tag with th'
chandelier — not by a derned sight. I
tried to butt in an' separate 'em, but
something — I afterward found.it was
her brother — coupled on behind an'
double - headed me across th' room be-
fore I had a chance t' jam on th' air an'
stop.

" Him an' me mixed as soon as I could
work th' turntable ; then some more of
th' fellers an' a few of th' girls got an
. idea they had runnin' orders, an' proceed-
ed to mix in th' muss.

"Say! I'll bet it took th' wreckin'-
crew all next day t' clean up th' battle-
field!

" Mag's brother an' me finally rolled
out of th' front door an' down th' porch-
steps, gettin' separated in th' process, an'
when I got up I just opened 'er up on
sand under two hundred an' fifty pounds
pressure of pure scare.

" I knocked down a whole section of
picket fence gettin' out of th' yard, an'
jumped a street-car without even flag-
gin' it.

" I could hear th' sounds of war above
th' noise of th' car as I rode away, an'
Mag's brother howlin' invitations t' me
t' come back an' get properly licked.

" The street-car pilot asked me,
' What's th' matter in that house back
there ? ' I told him they was tryin' t'
capture a wild woman, escaped from th'
jungles of th' West Side, an' let it go at
that. It wasn't none of his business, no-
how ! "

" What ! You didn't run away, did
you? " inquired the engineer.

"Huh! Betcher life I did! I'm no
John L. Sullivan, am I? Do I look it?
Nix ! I'm just an ordinary, every-dar
fireman, an' no pacifier of a lunatic asy
lum.

"Run? Say! When I got back on
th' rails, after separatin' from that broth-
er of Mag's, I just dropped a whole box
of sand, an' it would 'a' hustled a pas-
senger-engine t' 'a' made my time t' that
street-car.

660

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

UNDER TWO HUNDRED AN FIFTY POUNDS PRESSURE OF PURE SCARE.

" I don't know just how Mag an' her
brother squared it with th' rest of th'
bunch for startin' th' row, an' I don't
care a dern, either. But if we was t' have
a head-ender with th' 23 to-night, an'
Long Jim was t' get killed, I wouldn't
shed a tear — you hear me ! "

" But how are you going to square mat-
ters with Maggie, Bill?"

" Square nawthin' ! No runaway en-
gines for mine ! Steady associatin' with
dynamite might spoil my nerve. She

carries too blamed much steam, an' when
she blows off she's consid'able too vio-
lent ! I thought she was a nice little
eight-wTheeler with her pop set at about
one-forty, instead of bein' a consolidated
mountain-climber carryin' two-twenty-
five without a simmer ! Not for mine !
Nay, nay ! No more West Side for
Willie ! "

And Bill cracked a lump of coal twelve
inches thick with one swipe of the coal-
pick.

HOW RAILROADS ARE BUILT IN CHINA.

UP-TO-DATE methods are spasmodic
in China. A reform movement for
the construction of railways is sometimes
backed by methods that betray the wiles, the
cunning, and the incapacity of Orientals.

Mechanical facts have little appeal to them,
and the most interesting mathematical prob-
lem is apt to be that of the fourth dimen-
sion, or something similar. Speaking of
the work being done on the. Shanghai-
Hangchow-Ningpo Railway, the New York
Summary says:

" Nominally, there is a British chief engi-
neer. But he is appointed by representa-
tives of the Yu-chuan-pu, and is not recog-
nized by the company. He has no authority,
and is not permitted to interfere with work

under construction, nor rectify blunders
committed in work already completed.

" Only Chinese are employed. On the
Kiang-su section the Chinese engineer in
charge has only a rudimentary knowledge
of railway construction. One engineer in
control of a section of twenty miles of rail-
wajr has no engineering training, but owes
his appointment to the fact that he was the
favorite student of the president of the
company, who is a well-known authority on
the analects of ConfueiuS.

" Built under such conditions, the railway
presents every possible defect. Bridges are
unsafe. Rails are of native manufacture,
of obsolete section, spiked into soft-wood
sleepers from Manchuria and Japan."

Letters of an Old Railroad
Man and His Son.

BY HERMAN DA COSTA

No. 2 —JIM GRIPS A FEW LIVE WIRES.

A Learned Work on Transportation Disturbed the Dignity of the

General Manager's Office, and the Laugh Was

on Harris.

JIM TO THE OLD MAN.

EAR DAD : That's a beauti-
ful 4x5 lecture you gave
me in your last, but I don't
believe it hits me — at least,
not as much a,s you might
think. I admit I am en-
thusiastic; but, honest, daddy, I work
like a horse, too.

Mr. Connolly, the C: C, is one of
those fellows who doesn't believe in loaf-
ing along from 8.30 a.m. ,to 5 p.m., and
then begin working like a soda-fountain
clerk on a hot summer night, and keep
everybody at it with you till 8 p.m. No,
sir ! He dictates stuff to me steadily
from 8.30 to 9.15, and sometimes even
ten ; then he leaves me alone to sit down
to my machine and get it out. And I
get it out. By five o'clock everything is
cleaned up around the office, and we are
ready to quit.

Over in the general superintendent's
office it's entirely different. The chief
clerk gives his stenographer one letter at
a time, and from 12 to 3 p.m. doesn't give
him anything but a telegram now or
then.

At 3 p.m. he has a big batch of mail
piled up on his desk that has accumu-
lated there during the morning, and he
starts in firing it at him. As a result,

Series began in December, 1909. Hallroad

they both have to stay down till 8 p.m.
On the strength of that they've got the
reputation of being the hardest working
office in the building.

I can't see how they ever get done.
The chief clerk has got to have a letter
just so. He won't stand for any erasures
in a letter, and it's a crime to stick in a
comma in the wrong place, or split a
word at the wrong point. Then he goes
over each letter and changes words, until
he gets a piece of literary work.

I understand he has been doing that
for eight years, and never goes any faster
than he did in the beginning. He doesn't
keep his stenographers very long.

One stenographer he had was a fellow
who had written a little bit for the maga-
zines. He had been in the railroad busi-
ness for a long while, and the C. C. hired
him on the strength of his being able to
write literary stuff. The stenographer,
Brown, started turning out the regular
railroad letter — written in a hurry, maybe
a few mistakes, but giving the idea sf
that the fellow who read it could under
stand what was wanted.

Timmull, the C. C, had told him to
change the letters that he dictated, if he
thought it would make them better, and
this fellow really got out pretty intelli-
gent stuff. But Timmull went up in the
air.

Man's Marc as Inc. Single eopiei, 10 cents.
661

662

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

He would send back the letters care-
fully scratched over, and maybe get him
to write one over two or three times be-
fore he had it to suit. The fellow was
puzzled a bit — you know how railroad
work is; there isn't any time to waste m
it, particularly in the general superin-
tendent's office — but he tried hard to
turn out stuff to suit Timmull.

Of course, there was too much mail
to fool over that way, and he kept get-
ting back with his work, until he was a
week behind. But he couldn't stand it
long, and the break came. He had been
coming down at seven in the morning, in
order to write up some letters himself,
and one afternoon, after Timmull had
rushed out with a letter to give to him,
he took it, wrote it, and carried it back.

In about three minutes Timmull came
out with a sad, solemn face, and a horri-
fied expression. He threw the letter
down on Brown's desk.

" Look at that," he said. His voice
was shaking with grief. " Look at it.
]\jy — my — myt Such a thing is almost
impossible. You say you're a writer. You
ought to knQW that no writer, or anybody
with any idea of • grammar, would do a
thing like that. I can;t understand it.
Why, it's awful — really it is ! "

Brown picked up the letter, and read
it over. "What's the matter with it?"
• he asked, looking up at Timmull.

Timmull sighed heavily, and looked at
Brown with a hopeless, despairing, you-
don't-mean-to-say-you-can't-see it expres-
sion. His trembling finger pointed at
the end of a line.

" There! " he said tragically. " Hor-
rible ! "

Brown looked at the word. He had
split the word " improvement," so that
the " o " was at one end of a line, and
the " v " began the other. He had made
a miscalculation, just as many stenogra-
phers do when in a hurry, and thought
there was enough space left, when there
wasn't.

Everybody in the office was grinning,
of course. They are railroad men, and
had given up Timmull as a hopeless case.

" I'm afraid you will have to quit,"
said Timmull. " You can't do the work
at all the way I thought you could. I
was willing to make allowances, but,
really, this is too bad."

" I'm afraid I will, Timmull," an-
swered Brown, gravely. He picked up
his hat from the desk, got up, held out
his hand to Timmull, and shook hands.
" Some day I hope to come up to your
expectations, but " — he shook his head
sorrowfully, and looked around the office
-" I doubt it."

That was all — didn't talk back, as most
stenographers would have done, but the
boys never got tired of telling that story
to every new man that came in. When
Brown made good with literary work,
Timmull fairly went wild, for it got
around the building, and everybody used
to ask him about it. But he didn't
change. He's that way to-day.

Of course, in a bank, or some big place
vhere letters have to be perfect, it's all
right getting perfect work, but you know
railroad letters are read once, stuck on a
batch of papers, and filed away. When
a man has to write a hundred or a hun-
dred and fifty letters a day, mistakes are
going to come in, no matter how hard he
tries to keep from making them.

I can't see the sense of not letting a
man erase a mistake ; it saves time. And,
as for writing over a letter three or four
times, around a railroad office — why, its
ridiculous.

There isn't enough time for that, un-
less a man wants to stay at the office from
7 a.m. to 10 p.m. every night. I know
I make mistakes — lots of them, but I
don't make them purposely, and when I
see them I correct them.

Mr. Connolly says that in railroad
work the office that's able to close up at
five works harder than the one that closes
at eight, and I think so, too. It's know-
ing that you will have a little time to
yourself that does it.

Then, again, the work is so interesting.
It isn't merely a matter of taking dicta-
tion, and writing it out on a typewriter.
Each man has some responsibility.

It made me feel mighty proud at first,
when Connolly would turn over a letter
to me and tell me to answer it. I've
got over it now, but that feeling of re-
sponsibility makes me try harder to get
my work right, and if I get my work
right they will begin to depend on me.
Around me are hundreds of men, holding
big positions, who started out just the
way I did.

LETTERS OF AN OLD RAILROAD MAN AND HIS SON. 663

THE FOREMAN ASKED HIM WHAT HE WAS GOING TO BE, AND HE
SAID, "GENERAL MANAGER OF THE B. AND D. "

Look at T. F. They say he started in
•as water-boy on the B. and D. One day
the foreman of the gang asked him what
he. was going to be, and he said, " General
manager of the B. and D." The foreman
laughed at him, but T. F. took to study-
ing at nights, went to night-school, got
to be foreman of a gang, went in the;
engine-house, was promoted to engine-
house foreman, then to master mechanic,
and then was made superintendent.

Then he became general superinten-
dent; and at last, after a long, stiff
fight, got what he said he would get —
the general managership. I,n the begin-
ning he was an uneducated, tough citi-
zen, with just enough spunk in him to
stick out a little longer than the average
man.

And the pile of people that know him,
dad ! Section laborers, railroad presi-
dents, engineers, switchmen, brakemen —

everybody on the line who has been there
any time at all. They call him Tom.

When he was made general manager
the whole town of Fairmount turned out,
closed up all the shops and stores, hung
out flags, and . gave a public holiday.
They called it " Tom's Day." He start-
ed from that town, you know.

Connolly, my chief clerk, is the same
way. He started in as messenger-boy in
the telegraph office. Talk about your
lectures, dad — when I see these men
around me, it beats all the preachings
and sermons I ever heard. The story-
books aren't in it.

I know, just as sure as ,1 know I am
writing this, that I can be as big as these
men, some day, if I try as hard as they
did. When I read what you said about
looking on every day as a new day with
the company, I began to understand it all.
It was just working steadily, and being

664

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

decent with people just as you were when
you first met them.

Lots of the fellows in the building
think, talk, and live salary. Lynes, for
instance. One would think that Lynes,
with his twenty-five years in the com-
pany's service, would know that the sal-
ary isn't what they hire a man for.

Almost every day, when Lynes finishes
his work, he sits at his desk with his

how valuable he is. The office-boy will
tell me what he does, and how much bet-
ter he does it than the man before him,
and that he could easily fill the stenogra-
pher's position if they would give him
his chance. The stenographer talks about
his work, and that it was never done right
till he came there, and his salary ought
to be increased ; and the clerks talk the
same way. They are all convinced, that

ALMOST EVERY MAN IS ALWAYS WILLING TO TALK ABOUT HIMSELF.

hands folded. If Connolly comes to him
with any work he will pick up a pad and
pretend to scratch at it, so he won't have
to do any extra work. It's true he may
have been enthusiastic in the beginning,
just as I am ; but, it's just as you say, a
man has got to keep up with his enthu-
siasm.

There's one thing that's really funny
about the office. Almost every man is
always willing to talk about himself and

the road might be able to get along with-
out them, but they don't see how it could.
Listening to them, I sometimes get the
impression that the road was a howling-
wilderness before they came. Each one
has put in a suggestion some time that
was good — maybe about sending out the
mail earlier, or dividing up work more
evenly or something of the sort; the
regular office improvements that crop up
all the time — and he never forgets it.

LETTERS OF AN OLD RAILROAD MAN AND HIS SON. 665

He lives on his reputation, and swears
by it in the face of everything that comes
up in the office. And if I hint that he's
it all, and ought to be rewarded, he be-
lieves I'm agreeing with him that the
other men aren't one, two, three compared
with him. Funny, isn't it, that men can
be so easily fooled?'

There's a man named Knight here,
who is on the L. C. L. desk. He is like
Connolly in a good many ways, only
Connolly is a nervous, quick chap, while
Knight is a patient, methodical man,
and always does things like clockwork.
Knight is one of the best and nicest men
in the office. He began as messenger-
boy in the telegraph-office, and worked
up to the general manager's office.

They had never thought much of his
ability, even then — that is, the clerks —
because he kept his mouth shut, and
wasn't in any cliques, until he was put
on the L. C. L. desk, when he began to
make improvements. He got out an
L. C. L. loading-book — a tremendous
job, for it tells how merchandise-cars are
to be loaded, how they are handled on
trains, what stations load to other sta-
tions, and a hundred other things ; and
finally persuaded Connolly to send him
out on the line to inspect the handling
of L. C. L. freight at stations.

He cut down the claims on damage to
L. C. L. about a seventh, having started
up a regular system of writing to the
agent of any station from which freight
was improperly loaded. Then he went
to Cumberland, looked over the work
there, and found out that by sending
some of the cars that were distributed
from there to another station he could
stop the night- work at the Cumberland
freight-house.

It saved the company two hundred dol-
lars a month. Then he began consoli-
dating L. C. L. cars, which had been
running light, and managed to cut off
twelve L. C. L. cars on the entire system.
After that he began watching the loading
of freight, and just managed to cut off
another car by good stowing.

He was doing splendid work, when a
college graduate who knew all about how
to run a railroad, having once seen a
picture of an engine in a book, butted in.
He had been brought down in the office
to handle statistical work.

Robinson began to find fault with
Knight's work gright off, and began a
belittling system that finally reached
Knight's ears. Knight went to Connolly
one day.

" Mr. Connolly," he said, " I want to
take my vacation now. If I might sug-
gest it, let Mr. Robinson handle the work
while I am gone."

Connolly agreed to let Robinson do it,
for, although he is a smart man, he is a
great believer in colleges.

They had to wire Knight to come back
at the end of a week's time. Robinson
kicked ; said he hadn't been given enough
of a chance to demonstrate his ability;
but they made him get back to his work,
and he learned it was best to keep his
mouth «shut, which he has done since.

I hadn't an idea there were so many
difficulties to run up against in this work.
A railroad office is the worst place in the
world for forming cliques. One bunch
of men get together and knock another
bunch, and everybody works against the
chief clerk when he is trying to get work
out of them.

If he is hard with them, they hate him ;
if he is gentle, they despise him. About
the only way he can get anything out of
them is to coax them along.

I often wonder why Connolly doesn't
lose patience. But, as you say, if he
did he wouldn't be chief clerk. It looks
like a cinch holding down his job, but he
works for every cent he gets. He has to
keep posted on everything that goes
along, too, so that T. F. can leave things
in his charge.

Don't think I am getting tired of the
work, dad. It isn't that. I only didn't
like to find out that people would try to
dodge work, and little jealousies would
start. I never would have thought it
from the outside.

Give my love to mother, and tell her
to write soon again.

Your affectionate son, . Jim.

THE OLD MAN TO JIM.

Dear Jim : Watch out you don't get
the five-o'clock habit. So you won't, I'll
describe the symptoms. About 4.50 you
look over the work you have left, and
begin to wonder whether it can't stay
over till the following day.

666

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

By 4.55 you are sticking away most of
it in a drawer of your desk, and rushing
like a switch-engine with the rest, making
mistakes, having to do it over again, and
plumb wild to finish by five o'clock. The
instant it's 4.59 slam goes your desk, you
grab your hat, and try to sneak out of the
office" without letting the chief clerk see
you.

Bad business, Jim! Suppose you were
in business yourself? Would you close
up at 5 o'clock sharp every day, whether
you had finished or not? You bet you
wouldn't. The harder you worked the
better you would get along, and you
would stick to your work until you got
it finished. There's a big difference be-
tween working to get finished and work-
ing to get off.

Used to be a fellow down at the round-
house at Martinsburg they called " Five-

ABOUT 4 P.M. HE D BEGIN TO GLANCE AT THE CLOCK ABOUT EVERY
FIVE MINUTES.

o'Clock Charlie." Charlie always had
a weather-eye peeled for the clock. About
4 p.m. he'd begin to glance at the clock
about every five minutes. Worried so
about leaving on the dot that he hardly
had time to do the work before him.

He'd work a little while, then sneak
out, look at the clock to see if it was
time yet, and feel injured because it was
only 4.30. Charlie was a good worker,
too, which was more of a pity, only
Charlie didn't want sympathy. The
roundhouse foreman was an easy-going
fellow that hardly ever bothered the men
much; and, anyhow, Charlie knew his
work too well. He was the be^t man,
barring the five-o'clock habit, that they
had in the shops.

Well, sir, one day here come a promo-
tion for the foreman, and who should get
his job but " Five-o'Clock Charlie! " It
was a big surprise
to the men, but it
was more of a sur-
prise to him. He
wouldn't believe it
until he was officially
notified..

When he did know
it, though, Charlie
began to change. He
used to come at 6.30
of a morning, and
work till 8 p.m. ; and
he made those men
hustle, too.

He cut off a big
slice in expenses, and
turned out to be the
real thing. And
why? 'Cause he was
working for himself.
He came to realize
that he had charge
of things, and he
wasn't going to let a
bad record go up for
his work. Respon-
sibility did it.

If you had a clerk
working for you, and
you were trying hard
to make a success of
your business by
working hard, you
wouldn't think very
kindly of him to

LETTERS OF AN OLD RAILROAD MAN AND HIS SON. 667

have him standing around looking at you
with pleading eyes when the clock struck
five, would you?

Here's the point. When a young fel-
low starts working for somebody he's
trying all the time, if- he is any good at
all, to let his employers see how much
interest he takes in their business. Not
by getting o ■ top of a box and bawling
it to 'em, mind you, but just by doing it.

If you want to get along in any busi-
ness, the way to do it is, look on it as
yours, and work according. It is yours,
too. Getting hired to fill a job means
that they're giving you an interest in it.

Lots of people will tell you that doesn't
mean anything, and point to themselves
as shining examples of martyrs that sac-
rificed their young and fresh sweet lives
to some cold-blooded, hard-hearted cor-
poration, and talk about what would have
happened if they had gone into some
other business. Blowing off steam ; that's
all it is, Jimmy.

If they'd gone into some other business
they would have had the same kick com-
ing. What do you find out about 'em
when you look 'em up? They bluffed at
trying to do their own work, and knocked
the other fellow's. They weren't working
for advancement, or for the firm; they
were working for the salary. And then,
because they only got what they worked
for, they kicked.

If a man wants to get anything out of
the business world, he's got to put in
hard work on it. It's the same way in a
railroad office. Everybody can't be chief
clerk. Ten to one the man who can best
fill the place is the one that gets it.

You've got to study your job, so that
you can do things with it. You've got
to improve your work so that the boss
will see you are capable of handling the
bigger things. You've got to get his con-
fidence, and the only way you can do
that is to let him see he can depend on
you. In other words, work.

There isn't any difference between a
good farmer and a good clerk. They
both put their ideas into their work, and
get out according to how much they put
in. But the people who fell down can't
see it that way. They say they never got
out what they put in.

They knock their work, and grumble,
and don't take enough interest in it to

make it more productive. They can't see
that it's their own personal business, just
as much as the man's who started it.

So they bang themselves in the eye,
and try their hardest to kill every oppor-
tunity that comes along. Pretty soon,
Opportunity gets tired of being continu-
ally chased away from their door, and
never comes around again.

A man only has one life to live. This .
kind of man, instead of living it to get
the most out of it lie can, looks it over
and shakes his head, and wonders why
he got into the, world that doesn't appre-
ciate him. The trouble is, he don't ap-
preciate the world. Treat it right, and
it treats you right. Either way you be-
have, it gives you back as good as it gets.

It's got to look at the thousands and
thousands of men in it fighting to get
ahead of each other. Life isn't a picnic ;
it isn't even a half-holiday. Success is
given to the fellows that work for it.
That's the only way it ever comes to
a man.

Some of these fellows that expect some-
thing for nothing will say that they put
in hard work for a year, or for two, or
even five years, and didn't get anything.
Suppose a settler homesteads a piece of
ground. He isn't going to get anything
out of it but a living for more'n five
years. He's got to get it in shape first.
There's machinery to buy; stock, fencing,
and a barn to be put up.

These men in offices get more out of
their business farms than the settler gets
out of his land farm. The majority of
them make more than a living. The
trouble is that they have to go to the-
aters, and take trips, and buy tailor-made
clothes, and be good fellows ; and, before
they know it, they have as much at the end
as when they started — sometimes less.

There are three ways of working. One
is work — work with every bit of your
ability. The other two are bluff. Which
reminds me of Harris.

Harris was a first-class bluffer at work.
He had all the fine points down. One of
them was bringing down scientific books
on railroading, and laying them on his
desk with the title-cover up.

He would have some heavy work, like
" Conditions and Aspects of Interstate
Traffic," or "The Effect of the Rail-
road Upon Our Ultramarine Waterways."

668

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Something like that. Haven't got the
words, maybe, but it'll give you an idea.

One day he brought down a book
marked in big white letters, on a dead
black cover, "Mileage and Statistical Val-
ues of Railroads of the United States,"
with the first four words big enough to
see a mile away.

That's what he got it for, too. It lay
on his desk all day. T. F. came in and
out a couple times, and he always was a
great one for reading stuff like that, so
you can bet he saw it right away.

Once he looked at it *ts if he wanted
to pick it up, but he went on. And if
Harris wasn't proud ! The boys got to-
gether. It was rubbing it in too much.
They borrowed the book from Harris,
who tried hard to keep from looking con-
scious of his great learning. Sure enough,
it was as they suspected. Not a leaf was
cut in the book.

We contributed twenty-five cents apiece
to the cause. I was running, an engine
then, but knew the bunch in the office,
and they let me in on it — held the book
a few days, and then laid it back on
Harris's desk. For about three days it
lay there, untouched, and showing up
those big white letters, while T. F. passed
up and down. Harris was getting a big
reputation, meanwhile.

Finally, T. F. stopped at the desk one
day, just as I had come in off my run,
and was at the railing.

" Going in for railroading deep, aren't
you, Harris?" he asked.

Harris looked up. He knew what T.
F. meant, but it looked so much better to
not understand him, as if it was only a
small thing, after all.

" What do you mean. Mr. Fitzger-
ald?"

T. F. pointed to the book. " I've heard
something about it. * Is it good? "

" Oh, that ! " The boys were begin-
ning to sit up and take notice. " Why,
yes." Harris looked up at him, and had
the decency to blush. Then he plunged
in: "The theory he advocates is fairly
good, but his statistics are uncertain, so
that it lacks the authoritativeness it
should have."

One or two of the boys gasped at that,
and little Billy, the messenger, began to
snicker so that they had to hold his head
on the blotter.

" You don't say? " says T. F., looking
interested. " I understood it was a dick-
ens of a good book." ■

" I think Sargent on ' Mileage and
Taxation ' presents a superior theory."

At that the messenger doubled up, but
somebody held his throat so he wouldn't
bawl out loud..

T. F. reached for the book, and opened
it at the first page. He looked puzzled,
turned a few more pages, grunted, and
then looked at Harris.

"You've read it thoroughly?" he asked.
His eyes were twinkling.

"As I have read Sargent or Stetson.
In fact, I have studied this very care-
fully, so that I might give an unbiased
opinion. I think it could be improved."

T. F. began to laugh. You could hear
him a mile. He roared and roared, until
half of the office force in the building
was rushing to get in that particular
office. And I wish you could have seen
Harris's face. He knew t£iere was some-
thing wrong, but couldn't for the life of
him guess what it was.

The chief clerk came running over.
" What's the matter?" he asked.

T. F. shoved the book in his hands.
He had heard the conversation, and so
he opened the book, after reading out the
title on the cover slowly. He looked be-
wildered for a minute, then he read out
the title on the inside: " Deadwood Dick,
the Terror of the Rockies ; a Collection
of His Adventures."

At that we couldn't hold in any longer.
I had to hold on to the railing, or I would
have fallen. T. F. was grinning still,
and the chief clerk looked. puzzled, while
Harris was first red, then white. The
other boys were weak from laughter.

Of course, Harris suspected us. At
first he was furious, and offered to lick
any one with one hand tied behind his
back and both legs strapped together, but
he came around to see he deserved all he
got. It taught him a big lesson. That's
where he had sense. Other people would
have laid down, but he held on, and
started in to work. It made a man of
him, too.

There's just one way of looking at
your job, Jim. Be glad you have it. If
you can't be glad, quit it, and start at
something you will like; but whenever
you get one you do like, stick to it. Put

LETTERS OF AN OLD RAILROAD MAN AND HIS SON. 669

I WISH YOU COULD HAVE SEEN HARRIS'S FACE.
HE KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG.

every ounce of you in it; don't let it be
half done. It's going to stand for what
you are, and the people you work for
will judge you by it.

You may be the finest kind of a fellow
out in society, and everybody will like
you as a chum, and you'll get invitations
by the dozen to parties, balls, and so on,
but when you get to the bottom of it, it's
your job that you depend on, and give
that all that you would take for yourself.
This is big stuff, son. You want to re-
member it. Think of it all the time.

And don't think I mean, by getting
along, making money. Money doesn't
mean success in this world. Being con-
tented beats any other brand of feeling
ever made. Not being contented with
what you have, necessarily, but being con-
tented with trying to do a little bit better
than you think you can do.

If you lose out, you've put up a good

(To be c

fight. If you put up a good fight, you
won't lose out. That's true to-day, yes-
terday, and to-morrow. Work, work,
work. That's the song that beats in
everything alive on this old world to-day.

Don't grumble. You only grumble at
yourself. You're in a hive of bees, and
the only way they keep alive is by work-
ing steadily. Keep your hands clean,
my son, and stick to what is right.

I guess you will call this a lecture, too,
Jim, but it isn't. It's the first bit of ad-
vice I've written to you, and I guess
you'll do like most other young fellows —
like myself, for instance, when I was
youngs — disregard it. And, when I think
it over, that's the only way to learn. Pay
for your experience. You appreciate it
when the price comes out of yourself.

Your mother sends her love, and wants
you to reply to her last letter.

Your affectionate Father.

ontinued. )

THE DISAPPEARING DIAMONDS.

BY ARTHUR M. CHASE.

Sherlock Holmes, Eugene Vidocq, or Arsene
Lupin Couldn't Have Kept Track of Them.

HE Pullman swayed and
jolted monotonously.

Within the smoking com-
partment was the usual
combination of odors — ■
stale tobacco - smoke, stale
air, a faint odor of leather cushions.
Outside, seen through the open window,
was a blur of darkness, interspersed with
vague outlines of trees and occasional
lonely lights.

It was the time and the place when
one lights a fresh cigar, listens to the
steady rumble and rattle of the wheels
and the squeak of the couplings, and
longs for something that will kill time.

" Oh, yes," said the Pullman conduc-
tor, sprawling luxuriously on the oppo-
site seat; "I've seen funny things in a
Pullman — mighty funny things.

" Thanks," he said, taking the cigar
which I offered. " I'll smoke it when
I'm off duty. Against the rules, now,
you know.

" Yes, I've seen some queer things in
these cars. People don't leave their hu-
man nature at home when they travel ;
and when you put twenty different speci-
mens of human nature in a fourteen-
compartment Pullman, and keep them
there a day or so, why, sometimes the
phenomena — I think that's the scientific
word — are mighty interesting.

" Now, take the case of that old lady
with the diamonds. She kept out the
monotony on one trip. I was on the run
that time, from New Orleans to New

York, over the L. and N., to Montgomery,
and the West Point line to Atlanta, and
then up on the Southern Railway and the
P. R. R.

" The old lady got on at New Or-
leans. Diamonds — say, she was plas-
tered with them. Diamond earrings, and
diamond pins and rings ; she certainly
was a dazzling, sparkling old fairy. Aw-
fully fussy. You know the kind.

" You can hear one coming up the sta-
tion platform, talking at the porter. She
can't find her ticket, and her berth is on
the wrong side, and she wants her berth
made up before everybody else, or be-
hind everybody else. When the win-
dow's up she wants it down, and when
it's down she wants it up. What with
ringing for water, and pillows, and the
railway guide, and having the cinders
brushed off her seat, and asking if the
train's on time, and if not, why not —
well, she keeps the porter on the hop.

" When that kind goes to bed you
heave a sigh of relief — but you don't
need to heave too soon.

" Even after the lights are out and the
car is one beautiful vista of green cur-
tains decorated with assorted shoes at the
bottom, you know that the bell will ring
from that berth, and the curtains will be
agitated if you pass by, and a complain-
ing voice or a frowsy head will greet
you. That's the class the old lady with
the diamonds belonged to and she was
Al in her class.

" Then there was the lady in the next

670

THE DISAPPEARING DIAMONDS.

671

berth, who got on at Mobile. She was a
Southerner — a fine, tall, dark aristocrat.
And there was .the regular assortment of
drummers, and buyers, and tourists, and
a couple on their honeymoon, an invalid
man and a woman with a baby. And so,
the whole assorted lot of us went jigg-
ling on our way to New York, packed
into fourteen compartments in the day-
time and stacked up in twenty-eight beds
at night.

" And every one would have made the
trip as an individual, absorbed in his
own affairs, and not giving a darn for-
the others, if it hadn't been for the old
lady with the diamonds.

" Well, the first morning, when we
were just out of Atlanta, that old lady
sent the porter to say that she wished to
see me instantly. I went, instantly, pre-
pared for something out of the ordinary.

" ' Sit down, please,' she
said.

" ' Did you notice my
diamonds yesterday? '

" ' Yes, ma'am,' I said, ' I
certainly did. You were
ablaze with them.'

" She nodded her head.

" ' Do you see them now?'
she said. I looked, and not
a gleam, not a sparkle, not
a glitter did I see on her.

" ' No, ma'am, I don't,' I
said.

" ' They're gone,' says she.

" ' I see that,' I said.

" ' They've disappeared,'
she said in a whisper.

" ' Do you mean they
were stolen ? ' I asked.

" ' I think so. But hush,
don't talk so loud. I don't
want to arouse suspicion,'
said she very softly.

" ' All right, madam, but
for goodness' sake, when did
you lose them ? '

" ' I always take them
off at night, and put them
in a little leather bag,
which has my monogram in
gold on it — L. J. S. I put
them in the bag as usual
last night. This morning,
when I was in the ladies'
dressing-room, I hung the

bag on a hook. I went to the dining-car
for breakfast and left the- bag hanging
there. I'd no sooner ordered my break-
fast than I remembered my diamonds,
and hurried back to get them. But they
were gone.'

" ' Gone,' I repeated after her. ' My
goodness, that's a bad piece of business.'

" ' I should say so,' said she. ' Do you
know what those diamonds are worth,
young man? Forty thousand dollars, if
they're worth a penny.'

" ' Forty, thousand 1 ' said I.

" ' Yes, forty thousand. And I don't
want a hullaballoo raised that'll stir up
the whole car, and scare the thief. I
want to recover my diamonds, young
man,' she said, setting her jaw.

" ' Right you are,' I replied. ' Now,
we'll proceed to business. Who was in
the dressing-room when you were there?"

SHE CERTAINLY WAS A DAZZLING, SPARKLING OLD FAIRY.

672

THE RAILROAD MAN'S. MAGAZINE.

" ' Not a soul,' says she.

" ' And when you went back to look
for the diamonds ? '

" ' Not a soul,' said she.

" ' That's the first step,' I said. ' Now
the second is this : Are you sure you
haven't mislaid
them somewhere
about you — in your
bag, perhaps ? '

" ' Do I look like
a fool? ' said she.

" ' No, madam,
certainly not,' I an-
swered. ' But this
is a serious business,
and I'm obliged to
take every possible
step to find out
where those jewels
are. No one ever
lost forty thousand
dollars' worth of
anything, or forty
cents' worth, in one
of my cars before,
and I don't pro-
pose to break my
record.'

" ' You talk like
a sensible young
man,' said she.
' How about your
porter? '

" ' Well, Jim's an
honest negro, but
I don't know that
he's proof against
forty thousand dol-
lars. I'll get my
eye on him.'

"'Very good,' she
said. ' And remem-
ber, young man,
we'll just keep quiet
a little while, and
watch, watch, icafch — and then watch/

'"Well, I certainly admire your nerve,'
I said as I left her.

" And when you come to think of it,
she was a plucky old lady. Forty thou-
sand dollars gone, and yet she kept her
wits, and was as cool and determined as
a man.

" I got up, and walked slowly toward
the front of the car. But on the way I
saw something which brought me back.

" ' Well, ma'am,' I said, trying not to
appear excited, ' I've had a glimpse of
a little leather bag that might be yours.'

" ' No ! Where? ' she answered, in one

breath.
'"In

a satchel

in the

' IT SURE AM VANISHED !

of the lady
next seat.'

'"What, that fine-
looking lady who
got on at Mobile ? '
she exclaimed. 'Oh,
never ! Isn't it aw-
ful? I'd never in
the world suspect
her.'

" ' Trouble is, I
can't be sure,' I
said. ' I caught a
glimpse of a little
leather bag with
gold letters, but it
might be her own,
you know. I'd have
to make a break in
a case like this.'

"'H'm!' said the
old lady thought-
fully. ' I guess I
can find out. You
go on about your
business, young man,
and leave things to
me.'

"I went on about
my business. In a
little while I saw
the old lady sitting
beside the Southern
lady, and the two
were" hobnobbing at
Af a great rate. After

a while, the old .
lady walked care-
lessly back to where
I was checking up
my accounts.
" ' She's got 'em,' said she.
" ' Gee whiz ! ' I said. ' Sure? '
" ' I know my own property when I
see it.' She was a smart one, and no
mistake.

" ' All right, I'll accuse her,' I said.
" ' Now, see here,' whispered the old
lady, ' let's be a little easy on the woman.
I'd rather not disgrace her publicly. Sup-
pose you call her out to the vestibule and
talk to her. She'll confess, when she

THE DISAPPEARING DIAMONDS.

673

knows she's found out; and if she'll give
the diamonds back quietly I'll say no
more about it, and avoid a fuss, and the
police, and a whole lot of horrid things.'

" Well, that seemed reasonable to me.
So on some pretext I got the Southern
lady to come out to the vestibule.

" ' Madam,' says I, ' some valuable
diamonds have been lost on this car.'

" ' Is that so? ' she said.

" ' Yes, ma'am, diamonds, in a little
leather bag with gold letters on it. L.
J. S., in gold letters. You haven't seen
such a bag, I suppose ? '

" ' I ? ' she cried. ' Why, how should
I?'

" But she couldn't bluff a bit.

" ' The owner thinks she saw them in
your satchel,' I said.

" ' She turned white, deathly white,
and stared at me without saying a word.
I tell you, I felt sorry for her. A man
hates to see a woman look like that.

" ' Now, see here,' I said soothingly,
'you bring me that little bag; I'll give
it to the owner ; and we'll all three keep
quiet about it. Understand ? '

" She understood. After a minute she
turned without a word, and tottered into
the car. She came back again, in a little
while, tottering, and whiter than ever.

" ' It's gone,' she said in a hoarse
whisper.

"'Gone! The bag of diamonds?' I
cried.

" She nodded.

" ' Oh, come, ma'am ; don't try to put
up a game like that,' I said. ' You've
acknowledged you took 'em; so it's up to
you to tell where they are.'

" ' Do you think I'm lying ? ' she said,
her eyes beginning to glitter.

" ' Now, ma'am, let's be sensible,' said
I. ' You don't want me to call a police-
man when we get to Charlotte, do you? '

" ' But, I tell you, they're gone, gone,
gone! ' she cried. 'And I'm glad of it.
I wish I'd cut off my right hand before
I touched them. But I found them hid-
den in the dressing-room ; and their
dazzling beauty just made me crazy ;
and I — took them. And oh, thank
Heaven, they're gone ! '

" And then she began to cry as if her

heart was breaking. I tell you, I hated

my position. And I certainly was glad to

feel the train slowing up for Charlotte.

7 RR

" I jumped for the forward end of the
car, relieved, I can tell you, to get away
for a minute. And, by jinks! You
know the little dinky closet in a Pullman
where the porter keeps his pillow-cases,
and broom, and coat? Well, as I headed
up the aisle I saw my porter, Jim, pop
something into that closet and bang the
door before he scooted for the platform.
I couldn't be sure, of course; I was ten
feet away, but the thing he popped into
the closet looked mightily like a little
leather bag.

" When we were out on the station
platform, I said casually :

" ' Jim, what did you throw into your
closet just now? '

" ' Nuffin,' said he.

" ' All right. I'll just take a look at
that nothing when the train starts. And
you stay right here by the car-step.'

" He stayed. But he turned just as
near pale as he could.

" As soon as the train started, I fol-
lowed him to the closet.

" ' Get it out,' I said.

" He rummaged round a minute, and
suddenly drew back with his eyes nearly
popping out of his head.

" ' It's gone,' he whispered.

"'What's gone?' I snapped. I was
mad clean through.

" ' LiT leather bag, with gol' letters,'
he muttered. " It sure am vanished! "

" ' So you stole it, did you? '

" ' .'Fore Pleaven, cap, I neveh stole hit.
I done found it.'

"'.Found it? Where?'

" ' Cap, I swear I done found dat bag
under de sofa in dat empty drawin'-room.'

" And that's all I could get out of
him. He took me to the drawing-room
and showed me where he claimed to
have found it. I searched the drawing-
room, I searched Jim's closet, I searched
Jim.

" There Avas no doubt that the dia-
monds were gone again. And I found
myself up against two mysteries — one,
who put the diamonds in the drawing-
room; two, who took them out of Jim's
closet?

" The Southern lady proved an alibi
on the second count. From the time I
left her when the train was pulling into
■Charlotte, until I came back after my
unsuccessful hunt for the diamonds, she

674

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

"he sat staring at them, saying,

' GEE WHIZ ! ' "

hadn't stirred from her seat. I proved
this to my own satisfaction by question-
ing the people who sat near her.

"And if any one else had been fooling
round Jim's closet while he and I were
on the platform, no one in the car had
noticed it. So there we"rwere. Forty
thousand dollars' worth of diamonds had
been left in the ladies' dressing-room;
had been seen in the Southern lady's
satchel ; had disappeared from there and
been found in the empty drawing-room;
Jim had chucked them into his closet;
and from the closet they had disappeared
into thin air.

""Well, the whole business simply
mystified me. It put me in a state of
mind where I was ready to suspect the
whole earful of people of being occu-
pied in hiding and stealing those dia-
monds from each other. Two had

yielded to temptation, and I began to
wonder who wTould turn out to be the
next criminal.

" I consulted the old lady about it. She
was worried, but full of grit.. She said
the Southern woman was very likely
working with a confederate. Well, that
was probable enough if she was a regu-
lar crook; but if she was a regular
crook, she sure didn't look like one. The
old lady advised me to keep quiet, lay
low, and wratch everybody.

" The next complication came when
we reached Greensboro. There the hus-
band of the Southern lady got aboard.
It wasn't long afterward that he hunted
me up and drew me into the smoking-
room for a quiet talk.

" ' Now, look here, sir,' said he.
' You're a reasonable man, I reckon, and
I want to talk over this whole unfor-
tunate business with you. My wife has
told me of the very awkward pre-
dicament she is in, on account of those
diamonds. Well, sir, she was wrong of
co'se, absolutely wrong, dead wrong, to
touch them. But we must make some
allowances for women, when it comes to
jewels. The sparkle and the glitter and
all that sort of thing seems to fascinate
them, and I reckon they aren't always
responsible for what they do.

" ' Anyway, my wife took the dia-
monds ; but, mind you, sir, mind you, she
hadn't one single little bit of an inten-
tion of keeping them. I know my wife,
and I'm giving you that straight, sir, as
one gentleman to another. If she'd
found the owner, she'd have returned
them instantly. She was afraid to trust
them to the po'ter.

" ' What she ought to have done, sir,
was to turn them over to you. But she
didn't think of that, and had made up
her mind to wait and ask my advice,
when I got on at Greensboro. And you
can't blame a dutiful wife for that, can
you, sir? Then in some way, you found
out where the diamonds were, and this
whole unfortunate business resulted.'
< " I murmured something about its
being hard lines.

" ' I wonder,' said he, ' why that old cat
left her diamonds in the dressing-room ? '

" ' Absent-minded, probably,' said I.

" ' Let's go in there,' said he. ' I want
to show you something.*

THE DISAPPEARING DIAMONDS.

675

" Into the ladies' dressing - room we
went.

" ' Now, see here, sir,' said he. ' You
see this heavy curtain across the door,
and how the top folds over and hangs
down a couple of feet? Well, inside
that overhanging part, concealed by the
curtain and the piece folded over, se-
curely pinned there, my wife found that
bag of diamonds.'

" ' Gee whiz ! ' said I.

" ' Precisely,' said he. ' My wife's at-
tention was attracted by a little bit of
brown cord sticking out from the green
curtain. She investigated, and found the
bag. Now, do you reckon that old lady
absent-mindedly left that bag pinned up
yonder behind the curtain ? '

" ' Of course not,' I answered.

" ' Another thing. Who, besides you,
knew those confounded diamonds were
in my wife's satchel ? '

" ' The old lady, ' I said.

" ' Exactly. And another thing. Do
you know that when the train was at
Charlotte, and you and the po'ter were
on the platform, only two passengers
went to the forward end of the car where
the po'ter's closet is? One of those two
was the old lady.'

" ' But, good gracious, you don't accuse
her of stealing her own diamonds, do
you? ' said I.

" ' I don't accuse, till I know,' he an-
swered. ' I'm a lawyer, and I generally
know where I'm going to hit before I
hit. But it looks mighty funny, you'll
admit.'

" ' It sure does,' said I. ' But she'd be
absolutely crazy to do such a thing.'

" ' She might be crazy; she might be a
criminal. Anyhow, I'm going plumb to
the bottom of this business. And I'm
going to begin by having a straight talk

AND THEN — GUR-R-R WENT THE
EMERGENCY BRAKE."

676

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

with that old woman who owns the
diamonds.'

" He plunged out of the dressing-
room and romped up the aisle. He was
a fiery one, for sure — and the ' old lady
was mighty peppery. I wasn't surprised
to see fireworks going off in her compart-
ment soon after the Southerner joined
her. Finally things got to the stage
where I had to go and take a hand.

" ' I tell you,' the old woman was
screeching, ' just as soon as we get to
the next station I'll have a policeman
search your wife.'

" ' And I tell you, ma'am,' yelled the
Southerner, ' I'll get the policeman, and
he'll search you.'

" They were both on their feet, and
white with rage ; and then — gnr-r-r went
the emergency brake, and bang, over
went everybody out of their seats. I, and
the Southerner, and the old lady went
higgledy-piggledy in a heap on the floor.

"Oh, it was nothing. Just a freight
wreck ahead of us, and they're common
enough on the Southern. But it laid us
out on the track for seven hours; and
all that time the Southerners in one com-
partment and the old woman in the next
were just seething, and they were breath-
ing out all kinds of threats against each
other.

" The track was cleared up and we
started on late that night. And every-
body was still in bed when we passed
Lynchburg. But early in the morning
there came a loud ringing from lower
four — the Southerner's berth. Jim an-
swered, and came scuttling back in a
minute, his eyes nearly all whites.

" ' Fo' hebben sake, cap,' he said, ' go
to number fo' quick. GenTman like
to kill somebody.'

" There sure was a ruction in number
four. The Southern gentleman was just
a cussing at the top of his voice.

" ' What's the matter? ' said I.

" ' My trousers. Some scoundrel has
stolen my trousers,' says he.

" ' Oh, thunder ! ' says I. ' Were the
diamonds in them ? '

'"' ' No, but it's lucky for you my gun
was,' said he.

" Well, his trousers were gone, all
right, though none of his other belong-
ings were. He scurried into the dress-
ing - room, and put on all his clothes

except those needful articles, the trou-
sers. And in the dressing-room he sat,
a blanket round his legs, while the other
passengers came in and ■ made their
• toilets.

" Of course he, and I, too, tried to
borrow a pair of trousers; but, as luck
would have it, there wasn't an extra pair
in any of the Pullmans. Mad? Well,
that Southerner certainly was. mad; but
he was a good sport, too, and he took
the jokes of the other passengers pretty
amiably.

" ' Only,' said he, ' if I find the scoun-
drel who stole those trousers, I'll surely
make it hot for him.'

" He was eating his breakfast, which
his wife had sent in from the dining-car,
and he and I were the only ones in the
smoking compartment.

"'You might find the scoundrel; but
I don't guess you'll find the pants,' savs
I. ' I've hunted high and low for them.
But if anything like that's stolen on a
train the thief usually chucks it out of
a window.'

" ' Nothing much in them, so I don't
care,' says he. ' I wonder if that old
cat could have hooked them.'

" And he absent-mindedly stuck his
hand in his coat-pocket, and — pulled
out that very identical little leather bag
with the gold monogram that had made
all the trouble. I recognized it on the
instant, but he didn't, never having
seen it.

"'What in thunder's this?' he cried.
When he saw all the diamonds, he was
just dazed. He sat staring at them, say-
ing, ' Gee whiz ! ' in a whisper, until the
tray slid off his lap and landed on the
floor with a crash.

" ' It's a plot,' he yells, ' it's an in-
fernal plot. And, by thunder, I'll spoil
it. Run, you, fly, get me a pair of trou-
sers ! Pay for 'em ! Rip 'em off the
first man you see ! Hurry up, or, by
Jupiter, I'll pull yours off and put
' em on ! '

"Well, I skipped out, and finally
borrowed an extra pair from the con-
ductor of the dining-car. The con-
.ductor was short and fat ; the Southerner
was tall and thin. But those pants
didn't feeze the Southerner; no, sir, that
man was simply about a thousand de-
grees above the boiling-point.

THE DISAPPEARING DIAMONDS.

677

UP THAT TRACK WENT THE THREE THE FLAGMAN IN THE MIDDLE, THE OLD LADY SKIPPING

ALONG LIKE A GOAT, ON ONE SIDE, THE TALL SOUTHERNER, WITH THE DINING-
CAR CONDUCTOR'S TROUSERS, ON THE OTHER."

"He stalked into the car and sat down
with his wife, absolutely disregardful of
the joy of the other passengers. The
only one who didn't laugh was the old
lady. She sat right behind him, looking
as sharp and sour as ever, and never
cracked a smile. I stood at the door to
see what was going to happen.

" All of a sudden the Southerner
jumped up.

" ' It's hot in this car, awfully hot,
abominably hot,' he cried. ' Pull up the
window.'

" And he pulled it up.

" ' I can't stand this coat,' he shouted.

" ' And with that he rips his coat off,
kinder swings it round his head, stuffs
it out of the window, and lets it go.
And then the most remarkable part of
the whole business took place. Before
he'd fairly started to push his coat out
of the window, that old woman was
climbing over the back of her seat. By

the time he let go, she had her arms
round his neck.

" ' Stop him, he's mad,' she screams.

" ' Stop her, she's crazy,' yells he.

" Well, sir, that car was in a tumult.
And before any one could gather his wits,
that old woman just raced right over
people and grabbed the handle of the
emergency brake. Did she pull it? She
just hung her whole weight on it, like
a drowning man would grab a straw.
And bang! For a second time that trip
the train slowed up in a way that rolled
people over like tenpins. Before the
train came to a full stop, the conductor
arrived in our car like a thunder-bolt,
and the old lady grabbed him.

" ' Back up,' she yells. ' Back the
train up.'

"'What for?' shouts the conductor.
; Who done this?'

" There was a roar of answers from
everybody in the car. The loudest

678

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

voices were those of the old lady, be-
seeching him to back the train, and the
Southerner, ordering him to go on. That
man, jumping up and down in the pants
that didn't come within a foot of his
shoes, was a sight. I thought I'd die.

" ' Is this a madhouse? ' roars the con.

" Well, we gave him an explanation,
after a while. At first he threatened
the old lady with all kinds of things
for stopping the limited. But at last,
he gave in to her entreaties and consented
to hold the train thirty minutes while
she went back to find the coat.

" Back the train, he wouldn't, not
for a million dollars. So the old lady
got off, and walked back with a brake-
man who was sent out to flag anything
following us. And the Southerner in-
sisted on going along too.

" I can see them yet. It was a May
morning down in Old Virginny. The
sun was shining, the birds were singing,
the fields and the trees were green. And
away up that straight track went the
three — the flagman in the middle, the
old lady skipping along like a goat, on
one side, the tall Southerner, with the
dining-car conductor's trousers flapping
round his legs, on the other.

" And clustered at the rear end of
the train like bees, and spread all over
the track, was the whole train-load of
people. Laugh ! Well, rather !

"If ever I saw a crowd enjoy a show,
I should say that crowd was it.

" They came back in quick time, the
old woman stony looking as ever, the
Southerner wearing his coat, the flagman
grinning from ear to ear. Then we all
piled aboard, and the train went on.

" The old lady got off the train at
the very next station — a junction about
thirty minutes before you get to Wash-
ington. Up to that time the Southerner
had refused to answer any questions,
although he was pestered with them, of
course. But after she left the train
he went into the smoking compartment,
and every man who could get in piled
in after him.

" ' Gentlemen, ' he- said, ' I was born
in Kentucky, and my trousers were stolen
this morning. Can any gentleman — thank
you, sir,' — as a man handed him a flask.

" He stood up on a seat, unscrewed
the top of the flask, and looked around.

" ' I drink,' said he, ' to a modern
Machiavelli — a female at that,' says
he, ' a lady who has Mme. de Pom-
padour, Catherine of Russia, the Em-
press of China, and a few other clever
intriguers licked to a frazzle

" ' In the course of this morning's
ramble,' said he, ' I pieced out some
guesses of my own with some bits of
information. The name of my com-
panion on that ramble I will not divulge,
nor her place of residence. But I am
able to inform you that she is a widow,
her husband quite recently dead, and
the will has not yet been admitted to pro-
bate.

" ' By the terms of this will, the widow
is to receive a certain sum — say one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
The remainder of the estate is to be
divided among three children by a for-
mer wife. Now, the widow, being of
a thrifty turn of mind, and not particu-
larly fond of her stepchildren, con-
ceived the clever idea of hiding her
diamonds on this journey, and giving
out that they had been stolen. By this
ingenious scheme, if she had worked it,
she would have lost nothing, and gained
a lot.

" ' She would still have received her
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars,
plus the diamonds which she secretly re-
tained; while her stepchildren would
'have been out the value of the diamonds.

" ' How the diamonds were trans-
ferred from my wife's satchel to the
empty drawing-room, and from the por-
ter's 'closet to my pocket are mysteries
which the old lady has not seen fit
to unfold. Very shrewd of her, though,
to stuff the diamonds into my coat-pock-
et, when we all fell in a heap on the
car-floor.

" ' She was thinking, no doubt, that
if I found them I'd think my wife put
them there; and either I'd return them
with shame and contrition to the old
lady,- or she'cLhave the pair of us pinched
if I didn't. It's unfortunate that last
night, when she lost her nerve and tried
to steal back my* coat, she should have
got the trousers instead.

" ■ For in that pair of trousers was a
flask, sir, which contained a liquor al-
most as excellent as that which this gen-
tleman has kindly pressed upon me.' "

HELP FOR MEN WHO HELP
THEM SELV ES — NUMBER 29.

PRESSING PROBLEMS
OF ROLLING STOCK.

BY G. F. GARTER.

THIS is the second section of an article dealing with problems of con-
struction of rolling-stock. Last month Mr. Carter pointed out certain
/ simple difficulties that have puzzled the railroads for many years,
including the design of sleepers, steel cars, etc. This month he deals with
atmospheric resistance, ventilation, and locomotive economy. Railroad
problems are as unending as the whirling wheels that make . their magic
possible.

Is It Possible to Keep the Air Pure in Passenger-Cars ? Some Attempted
Answers to This Eternal Question, Which Still Awaits
the Genius of Its Solution.

the Chicago - New York they whetted the reporter's appetite for
in one hour train, more ; so he did a little figuring on at-
mospheric resistance. Nothing authori-
tative was then known on the- point, but
according to the generally accepted theo-
retical formula, Adams found that the
thousand-mile-an-hour train would have
to encounter a resistance from the atmos-

Adams did some fig-
uring, and found that,
aside from any little
difficulties that might
arise from an imperfectly balanced dri-
ving-wheel sixteen feet in diameter, ma-

king 1,760 revolutions a minute, it would phere of something like three hundred
be impossible to use a whistle for sig-
nals. In order to make its thousand-

mile run in an hour, the locomotive
would have to travel at the rate of 1,466
feet in a second, while sound pokes along
at only 1,090 feet in a temperature of
thirty-two degrees. Waiting passengers,
therefore, would never be able 'to deter-

and fifty pounds to the square inch.
A New-Idea Train.

Such an extraordinary phenomenon in-
terested the reporter so much that he was
led to give the matter further thought,
with the result that he ultimately invent-

mine whether the whistle they heard was ed and patented a train with sharp prow,

sounded by yesterday's train or whether smooth sides, roof, and bottom, and

it was an advance signal for to-morrow's, rounded stern, like a ship, to reduce the

These statistics were so interesting that tremendous atmospheric pressure, and

Series began In the August, J 907, Railroad Man's Magazine. Single copies, 10 cents.

679

680

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

thus effect the all-important saving in
fuel.

Although he greatly overestimated the
resistance of the atmosphere, Adams's
ideas about the proper construction for
a high-speed train have been conclusively
demonstrated to be correct. In three
runs on the Berlin-Zossen experimental
railroad, made November 4, 21, and 22,
1903, the atmospheric resistance at eight-
een miles an hour was found by care-
fully tested instruments to be 6.14 pounds
per square foot. At thirty-one miles an
hour, the pressure was 10.23 pounds; at
sixty-two miles an hour, 20.47 pounds ;
at eighty-six miles an hour, 28 pounds,
and at one hundred miles an hour, 32.75
pounds per square foot.

Taking ninety-seven square feet as the
area of the car-end, the total pressure at
one hundred miles an hour would be 3,-
176 pounds, which would neutralize
about eleven per cent of the tractive
power of the largest locomotive. In ad-
dition to this is the friction of the air
on the sides of the car or train, and the
suction pulling back on the rear end.

This was less than one-third the theo-
retical pressure, according to Smeaton's
formula, which led Adams to invent his
wind-splitting train. It was also ascer-
tained that a sharp prow on the experi-
mental train reduced the atmospheric re-
sistance by more than one-half, the pre-
cise amount varying with the direction
of the wind.

Resistance in Horse-Power.

Professor H. C. Solberg, of Purdue
University, conducted some experiments
with a model train to which delicate
measuring instruments were attached.
The train was placed in a tube twenty
inches square and sixty feet long, through
which currents of air were forced at
speeds of twenty to one hundred miles
an hour.

He found that fifty-nine horse-power
was required to overcome the resistance
of the atmosphere to a train eight hun-
dred feet long moving at the rate of
forty miles an hour. At sixty miles an
hour the same train would have to over-
come atmospheric resistance equal to one
hundred and ninety-eight horse-power ;
at eighty miles an hour, four hundred

and seventy horse-power, and at one hun-
dred miles an hour, nine hundred and
eighteen horse-power was required.

Professor Solberg also found that the
pressure of the air on the locomotive was
ten times greater than on a car in the
middle of the train, and two and a half
times greater on the rear car than on an
intermediate car. Any one who rides for
a mile or two on the observation plat-
form of a train running at high speed
will readily believe the latter assertion.

A Greater Problem.

The last word on atmospheric resist-
ance was spoken by the Electric Railway
Test Commission of the Louisiana Pur-
chase Exposition of 1904, which con-
tinued its labors after the Fair was closed.
In a series of experiments under service
conditions on the road, the commission
found the atmospheric resistance at eigh-
ty miles an hour to be ten times that at
ten miles an hour. The pressures re-
corded were somewhat below those found
in the Berlin-Zossen tests, but the theory
on which Adams's wind-splitting train
was designed was abundantly vindicated ;
for the commission found that at all
speeds the atmospheric resistance to a car
with a wedge-shaped plow was just one-
fourth the resistance to a flat-ended car.

The necessity for the rounded stern on
the Adams train became apparent when
the measuring instruments showed that
the suction on a standard vestibuled car
held the train back with a force equal
to sixteen horse-power.

While the railroad men of to-day are
not worrying themselves about atmos-
pheric resistance, they are, nevertheless,
up in the air on the vexatious problermof
ventilation, just as they have been since
the first closed passenger-car was built.
Furthermore, they do not seem to be very
much nearer a satisfactory solution of
the problem than they were sixty years
ago, when the newspapers were saying
such unkind things about the disgusting
conditions in the cars of that primitive
day.

A great many thousands of dollars
have been spent by the railroads in the
endeavor to find a satisfactory system of
ventilation and heating, for the two
should go together.

PRESSING PROBLEMS OF ROLLING STOCK.

681

Away back in 1874, the Master Car-
Builders' Association, which had been or-
ganized at Altoona seven years before,
went exhaustively into the theory and
chemistry of ventilation, and determined
many of the essentials of an ideal sys-
tem. Yet, the car-builders are still at
tem. Yet, the car-builders are still at it.

Analyzing Air.

About the only accurate way to ana-
lyze the various conditions of the air in
a passenger-car yet devised is to apply
the carbonic acid test. According to the
best authorities, a well-ventilated space
is one in which the characteristic odor
of a badly ventilated room is not notice-
able upon entering it from the outer air.

There is always from three to four
parts of carbonic acid to ten thousand
parts of outdoor air. If the proportion
is increased to six parts to ten thousand,
the odor becomes perceptible.

A space may be said to be well ven-
tilated, therefore, which does not con-
tain more than six parts of carbonic acid
to ten thousand parts of air. Physiolo-
gists tell us it is highly undesirable to
breathe air containing more than seven
or eight parts of carbonic acid, and to
be decidedly injurious to stay long in a
space containing ten parts in ten thou-
sand; yet crowded theaters and halls
often contain fourteen to eighteen parts,
and street-cars as much as twenty-two to
twenty-three parts.

Tests conducted by the master car-
builders in 1894 showed eleven to twen-
ty-two parts of carbonic acid in ten thou-
sand parts of air in a sleeping-car, six
to fifteen parts in a chair-car, and ten
to twenty-one parts in a suburban coach.

A Weighty Problem.

The average person gives off six-
tenths of a cubic foot of carbonic acid
per hour. .Sixty persons in a car would
therefore exhale thirty-six feet of car-
bonic acid per hour, which would require
180,000 cubic feet of fresh air to dilute
it so that the air in the car would not
contain more than six parts of carbonic
acid in ten thousand parts of air.

This is altogether too much for the
railroad managers. The Pennsylvania

Railroad, which has spent more money,
time, and thought upon the subject than
any other railroad on earth, was able to
force ninety thousand cubic feet, or just
half the theoretically desirable quantity,
through a car with any sort of apparatus
that wouldn't blow the passengers' hair
off, but could only heat two-thirds of it.

Therefore, the management decreed
that those who rode on the Pennsylvania
Railroad were entitled to one thousand
cubic feet of air per hour per passenger.
They don't get even that much when the
train is standing at a station, for the
Pennsylvania system of ventilation only
works when the train is in motion.

However far short of perfection the
Pennsylvania system may be, it is far
ahead of that on any other railroad.
Pullman sleeping-cars of the latest de-
sign are ventilated exactly like a bot-
tle ; that is, you take out the cork and
the air begins to circulate, going in both
directions at the same time through the
same aperture — perhaps. Pullmans do
not have corks, to be sure ; so they use
little openings in the deck, by courtesy
called ventilators, instead. By this ar-
rangement the passenger in the lower
berth gets all the heat, while the unfor-
tunate in the upper gets all the air.

Hard to Please All.

After studying the subject more than
forty years, the master car-builders have
discovered what anybody could have told
them at the outset — which is, that each
passenger wants the heating and venti-
lation adjusted differently from the way
any other passenger wants it. The com-
mittee on ventilation has hit upon a sug-
gestion that will make half the passen-
gers happy, and that is to provide fresh
air openings at the end of each lower
berth, which will be under the control of
the occupant. A branch of the heating
duct is recommended to be placed be-
tween berths opening into the aisle to
heat the car in the daytime, these to be
closed by the porter at night. The trav-
eler in the despised upper gets nothing
from the committee. He is denied a
hot-air duct on the ground that all the
heat would go straight out through the
deck ventilators and be wasted.

But the troubles of the master car-

632

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

builders are by no means limited to the
difficulty of providing passengers with
something to breathe. There is the car
coupler, for instance. One might think
that, after all the legislation and all the
discussion and experimenting that have
been kept up without intermission from
the beginning of things, there would be
nothing new left to find out about coup-
lers ; but the committee on car couplers
kept three men steadily employed for
three months in - 1908 gathering data
about couplers.

Then the committee went over the data
and spent a lot of its own time studying
the subject, and then the convention had
an animated discussion on it. Mean-
while, every road is engaged in a frantic
search on its own account to find a bet-
ter coupler, and to get the best service
at least cost out of the couplers in use.

Rolling-Stock Repairs.

There are ten principal makes of
couplers in use, not to mention some
minor ones. While the master car-build-
ers are fussing over details for an un-
coupling arrangement that lifts up, some
of the roads are making side and bottom
operated couplers standard. Oh, no, the
coupler problem isn't settled yet.

Another matter that is worrying the
railroads is the question of repairs. It
would seem to be the easiest thing in the
world to settle this, since the obvious
thing to do would be to send a car to
the repair track when some of its parts
were broken or worn out.

That plan has been followed in the
past, but experience proved it to be un-
' satisfactory. The cost of repairs has
kept increasing until it was realized that
something had to be done. The solution
determined upon was to send every loco-
motive and every car to the shops at
stated periods for a general overhauling,
in order that the ounce of prevention
might obviate any necessity for the pound
of cure.

That seemed easy, too ; but when it
came to specifying the length of those
periods, the Pennsylvania Company
found it so perplexing that it appointed
a commission to weigh all the many con-
siderations and determine the most eco-
nomic period between shoppings.

Then, of all the seemingly insignifi-
cant problems, apparently the most in-
significant is the problem of the car-
stake. That bit of wood would seem to
be beneath the dignity of even a .railroad
official gone economy mad.

But when the annual consumption runs
up into a good many millions, perhaps
some idea may be grasped of the reason
why the lumbermen who have had to fur-
nish the car-stakes at their own expense
have made such a fuss about it. The
lumbermen won their point at last, for
they forced the railroad people to con-
cede that the stake was part of the car,
and should be furnished by the roads.

Wooden stakes that were used but once
were altogether too expensive a luxury
for any railroad. So, two years ago, a
commission of seven lumbermen and
seven railroad representatives was ap-
pointed to conduct tests of a telescopic
steel stake that attached to the car, yet
could be folded down out of the way
when not needed. Twenty cars each
were equipped with this stake by the Illi-
nois Central, Pennsylvania, and New
York Central, and have recently been
started out on a service test. If they
make a satisfactory showing, they will,
in the course of time, be recommended as
a part of standard equipment, and an an-
cient grievance of the lumber interests
will be no more.

And so it goes on down the list. Every
piece of steel or wood that enters into
the construction of a car has been made
the subject of experiment or observation
in service. Any point that remains un-
settled at the annual exchange of ideas
of the Master Car-Builders' Association
is studied by a special committee until a
satisfactory solution is reached.

Capacity of Firemen.

The motive-power department also has
its cares. For, if the man who pays the
freight is to get the freight in time to
turn it into money before he dies of old
age, the railroads must find a better Avay
to get coal into the fire-box of the loco-
motive than they now have. The loco-
motive-builders have been so industrious
that they have produced bigger machines
than a mere mortal is capable of supply-
ing with fuel.

PRESSING PROBLEMS OF ROLLING STOCK.

683

The limit of capacity for a fireman is
about six thousand -pounds of coal per
hour, though it is alleged that men have
fired seven thousand six hundred pounds
in an hour. If he keeps up this average
gait, or even anything approximating it,
over a division of a hundred and fifty
miles, he is "all in" at the end of the run.

In a test of the Erie Railroad's big
Mallet articulated compound locomotive,
probably the most powerful yet built, it
was proudly proclaimed that the maxi-
mum coal consumption was fifty pounds
per square foot of grate area per hour.
As the grates are ten and a half feet
long by nine and a half feet wide, this
made a total of 5,000 pounds per hour.

With this amount of fuel, the locomo-
tive climbed hills at a speed of six miles
an hour. Unfeeling critics pointed out
that the maximum fuel consumption was
so low solely because firemen were un-
able to shovel any more coal over this
corn-field, miscalled a grate.

Work for a Horse.

They said that experiments on a West-
ern mountain road showed that the way
to get the maximum tractive effort at ten
miles an hour out Of a locomotive was to
feed it coal at the rate of one hundred
and fifty pounds per square foot of grate
area per hour. At this rate, the Erie
Mallet would consume fifteen thousand
pounds of coal in an hour. In other
words, the fireman, to keep her hot,
would need to have been born triplets.
No wonder the firemen say that feeding
a modern locomotive is work for a horse,
not for a human being.

For this reason the American Railway
Master Mechanics' Association has ap-
pointed a standing committee to supple-
ment the efforts of the individual roads

in a search for a mechanical stoker that
will do the fireman's work for him. A
number of roads have experimented with
the several mechanical stokers already on
the market with such satisfactory results
that the committee of the Master Me-
chanics' Association reported, at the 1908
convention, that " mechanical stokers
used on locomotives in this country up
to the present time have at least demon-
strated the fact that freight and passen-
ger engines in road service can be suc-
cessfully fired by mechanical means."

Human Stokers the Best.

This is encouraging as far as it goes,
but it doesn't go far enough to suit any-
body. The Erie, which conducted some
rather extensive experiments, found the
mechanical stoker consumed nearly six-
teen per cent more fuel per ton a mile
than the human stoker.

Other roads found the mechanical sto-
kers would distribute the coal perfectly ;
but as the coal doesn't burn evenly on
the grate, they concluded that the me-
chanical stoker would not be a success
until one having eyes and brains was pro-
duced. The Chesapeake and Ohio, the
first to experiment, has several mechani-
cal stokers, but they are not in use.

Even the firemen are not satisfied with
the prospect of being able to loll on the
seat-box and read novels during their
runs. But as both firemen and engineers
objected to injectors and sight feed lu-
bricators, and about every other improve-
ment ever proposed for locomotives, per-
haps they'll come around after a while.
They'd better, anyway; for the railroads
realize that they simply must have a satis-
factory mechanical stoker, and with that
end in view are investigating and ex-
perimenting with great energy.

A long train may be all empties. You can't judge things by their
size. — The Freight-Traffic Manager.

Tail-lights don'tshow any track, but they're mighty useful,
be discouraged. — The Trainmaster.

Don't

Observations of a Country
Station-Agent.

BY J. E. SMITH.

No. 20. — Our Correspondent Indulges in a Sort of Feast of the Pass*
Over — Of the Good Old Days Before a Free People Legis-
lated Free Transportation Out of Existence.

^HEY don't work us any more
like they used to," said
Chauncy, after I had set-
tled in his cushion ., chair
and put both feet on his
table. " Ten years ago
everybody had the combination to our
pass-box. Now the dear public either
comes up with the necessary simoleons or
stays at home. That is what legislation
has done for the people — took away one
of their dearest privileges.

" Only a few years ago it was an honor
and a mark of distinction to hold a pass.
It showed the bearer had influence and
was in possession of the mystic touch,
knew the devious ways, and bespoke for and the octopus [meaning the railroads]
him secret power and prestige. stands with one foot on our necks and

" There was old Colonel Sputler over fattens on our substance ! '
at Pippinville, a one - horse attorney in " Of course, that's an ill - mannered

this horseless age — who carried his an- thing for an octopus to do, and it is a

deformed sort of an octopus to have a
foot at all. Nice, polite octopi have ten-
tacles only. But, however mixed the met-
aphor, the colonel reached the climax in
thunder tones : ' We demand a two-cent
fare ! '

" Of course, you are ignorant of the
ways of this wicked world ; but it would

Single Copies, 10 centi.

" That's where all calculations are
wrong. You can't impress a conductor
with a pass. After handling a thousand
of them per week, he becomes insensible
to any feeling or sensation toward the
pass or the man that carries it.

" Then came the time when the colonel
and other patriots parted with their an-
nuals, and the colonel joined the hoi
polloi to our ticket-window.

" The next convention they held to
nominate a town councilman, the colonel
arose and made a speech amid applause.

" ' Is this the land of the free and the
home of the brave?' he asked. 'No!'
he shouted. ' We are a prostrate people,

nual. Was dignified, and complimented
by it, too. Always occupied the best seat
in the coach ; and as many of them, too,
as he could — and went often. Loved to
show the people that he rode on a pass.
Always sat up exalted and pompous, and
presented his annual to the conductor
with a lordly nourish.

Series began in the July, 1907, Railroad Man's Magazine

684

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT.

685

grieve you to know how many of our
former guests joined in the cry for a two-
cent fare.

" It would, indeed.

" Most of the patriots carrying banners
in the crusade for one-third off had just
been compelled to hand in their annuals
under the new order, and to them two
cents per mile looked like the next best
thing."

" But they tell us — " said I, accident-
ally upsetting the ink over the ticket re-
port.

" Never mind the report," said Chaun-
cy; "I can make another. It is no trou-
ble, be assured. I can copy it again from
the ticket-book. It is a pleasure to do
our work over two or three times. When
a friend comes in radiating joy we don't
care how much he musses up the interior
arrangement with his hands and feet."

" But they tell
me," I persisted,
coolly cutting a
notch in the table
to show I was in
no way disturbed,
" that the cheaper
you make fares,
the more money a
railroad earns. So
many more people
travel, you know,
when they can go
for two cents per
mile, that the rail-
road makes a lot
more money.

"It has always
been a mystery to
me why general
passenger - agents
can't see it that
way. My old
friend, Abe Bal-
saam, the post-
master at Syca-
more Corners, ex-
plained it to me.
Abe never rode a
dollar's worth in
his life.

" ' How was it,'
says he, ' when
postage - stamps
was sellin' at three
cents apiece? We

LOVED TO SHOW PEO
ON

wouldn't sell more'n ten a week. Now,
how is it? They're down to two cents,
and we sell as much as two dollars' worth
every week.'

" I asked Abe how about the deficit
every year of ten or twenty million? Abe
parried that by saying what the country
needed was revision upward. ' It's the
same with railroad tickets as postage-
stamps,' Abe argued ; ' the cheaper they
are, the more you'll sell. Really, the way
to stimulate travel- is to give them away,
and add green trading-stamps.' "

" In those good old. days," said Chaun-
cy, reaching over and deftly touching me
for the cigar a friend had given me, " in
those good old days the general passen-
ger-agent was the most widely known and
sought for personage connected with a
railroad.
"The human herd congregated about his
office, and lined
up at all hours
every day in the
year. They were
!\ „...,.... - , admitted to his

presence, one
treading upon an-
other's heels in
a continuous and
endless procession.
There was every
type — the politi-
cian, the actor,
the clergyman, the
man with a new
idea and the man
with no idea;
people with all
sorts, of designs,
contraptions, and
stratagems; all
with the purpose
of extracting a
pass— to beat us
out of a fare.

"They are gone.
The hoi polloi no
longer treks to the
g. a. p. office. The
chairs and benches
are vacant. A
country grave-
yard quiet per-
vades the place.

" Occasionally a
stranger, forget-

PLE THAT HE RODE
PASS."

686

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

HOW WAS IT, WHEN POSTAGE-
STAMPS WAS SELLIN' AT THREE
CENTS A PIECE ? WE WOULDN'T
SELL MORE'N TEN A WEEK.'"

ting for the moment the present, and re-
membering only the benison of other days,
finds his way in, and the g. p. a. wipes a
tear from his eyes, shakes his head sadly,
and says with quaking voice :

" *I can't do it. I can't! I can't! The
law ! The cruel and inexorable law ! The
rigid, unrelenting statutes of our land
will not permit it. It is too bad ; it is,
indeed ! They have tied us down, hand
and foot.'

" The stranger departs.

" Then the g. p. a. lets out a hoarse
automobile honk — a sort of exultant, re-
joicing chuckle — known in past ages as a
horse-laugh.

" Is the g. p. a. really sorry he has
been deprived of the popular pastime of
peddling passes?

" Is he? Just ask any of them.

" Those days will return never more,"
said Chauncy, with a sort of " quoth-
the-raven " sigh. " When people travel
now, all we can give them free is one of
our folders printed in red, yellow, and
green. Ten years ago it was different."

Chauncy lit the cigar he had
purloined from me, and waft-
ed a few vegetable ringlets in
my direction.

" Ten years ago ticket-buy-
ing was" a fine_ art," he said.
" A good per cent of travel is
in groups — always been that
way.

" Whenever a party of peo-
ple is to make a journey —
whether lodge, church, or any
other organization — there bobs
up a bell-wether or two among
the number to do all the talk-
ing and planning ; and at once
all the others defer to him and
permit him to complete the
details of the journey.

" Ten years ago the whole
passenger business revolved
around the central idea of
carrying some one free. So
you see at once the talkative
and insistent member became
the bunco-steerer of the rest
of the party.

" He got his passage free,
and took along on the same
terms all his kith and kin that
he could arrange for. In re-
turn, he delivered his following over to
the road extending him the most favors.
" People are very much like sheep —
they follow the lead. Only occasionally
you find a fellow that actually does his
own thinking. Almost every one is a
blank on everything except the weather.
You know this to be true from your own
experience, don't you?"

I nodded a feeble acknowledgment.
There came to my mind one particular
recollection of the old way of handling
passenger business.

There was a certain religious order
near our town, and every year the mem-
bers had an annual meeting.

Every year we had the same fight, and
the same experience in ticketing the
bunch.

Let us fix Mossback, Maryland, as the
place for the annual meeting.*

On the first convenient and opportune
Sunday, up would arise Uncle Sol Shive-
ly, after a prayer or two, and solemnly
address the congregation on a matter of
" great importance."

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT.

687

Sol possesses a heavy sepulchral voice,
a mass of jungle whiskers, and a rotund
front. When words issue from a -combi-
nation like that, they are always impres-
sive and convincing.

After a saintly roll of his eyes, and
piously folding his hands over his pro-
truding anatomy, Sol would proceed
something like this :

" Brethren and sisters, we are hoping
you all will attend the annual meeting at
Mossback for the spiritual strengthening
you will get from it. As Matthew says,
chapter four, seventeenth verse, 'It is
good for us to be there.' But how are
we to get there? "

Sol stopped and looked around and
waited for an answer, but "echo " was
not onto his job.

" I repeat," continued Sol, " how are
we to git there ? Them are the practical
things that we have got to think about.
And what does the good Book say about
them that can't take the time and look
into these things? Mark, four, chapter
nine, ' You that have ears to hear, let 'em
hear.'

"And what does that mean, brethren?
It can't mean anything else, only that
some of us has got to look into these
things and tell the rest of you ; and,
hav'n' ears, you must hear. It is in the
blessed Book just that way. And, then,
about gittin' the best there is — ain't it
plain as day in First Thes-
salonians, chapter five,
verse twenty-first : ' Prove
all things. Hold fast to
that which is good.'

" Take the Q. and D.
road that leaves here at
three o'clock every after-
noon, and only one change
at Dismalville ; and there
you are at Mossback the
next afternoon at five,
three hours before dark.
Time enough to make all
arrangements. And you
get a delightful daylight
ride through the Looloo
Valley.

" I have heard all the
railroads tell what they
have to offer us. I have
' proved all things,' and
I am ' holding fast to that

what is good.' I am taking the Q. and
D. ' You that have ears must hear.'
Let us pray."

After services the congregation would
gather in clusters, in a brotherly, hand-
shaking commingling, and Uncle Sol
would tell about the elegant service and
merits of the Q. and D., and round them
up -and extract promises and work and
sweat to find out to a certainty just how
many he could count on for the Q. and
D. He would iron-clad and rivet the
prospect by taking the names.

Then he would be horrified to find that
another member was pulling for the B.
and X. road. Personalities would be in-
dulged in. Dark hints would be made,
and the congregation would divide up
into two camps over the merits of the
Q. and D. and the B. and X.

Sol and the other one were bell-wethers.
Back of each were the traveling passen-
ger-agents of the two roads.

On the following day the two worthies

SOL POSSESSES A HEAVY SEPULCHRAL VOICE, A MASS OF JUNGLE
WHISKERS, AND A ROTUND FRONT.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

would drive to town, and each would
meet by appointment at some sequestered
spot a dapper young fellow, to whom the
outlook would be reported. The young
fellows were the traveling passenger-
agents of the two lines.

The party would finally go only after
the expenditure of a vast amount of di-
plomacy, intrigue, and cunning.

Of course, the bell-wethers would have
the usual tickets along with the rest.
They got them by shutting their eyes and
holding their hands behind them.

Maybe you have heard that remark
about the " power of the press." That
is a typographical error. - The correct
reading was the " power of the pass."

Hundreds of people in those bygone
days were misled over impossible routes,
bad connections, and into all possible in-
conveniences of travel because the leader
was secretly deadheading the trip.

The traveling passenger-agent had to
be a resourceful sort of a pirate. He
had to deal with the cupidity and gulli-
bility of the people, and it was up to him
to reckon to a certainty just how many
paid fares could be produced for a cer-
tain number of passes.

The most cunning criminal of the lot
usually got the business.

It used to be a proud moment in the
life of the exalted ruler of the Independ-
ent Order of the Hoopoos when the or-
der's annual gathering brought all the
passenger men groveling at his feet. For
then he knew that he and the secretary
and the past grand would . get all the
road had except the ties and the good-
will.

Not that way any more these days.

People have legislated themselves out
of all these grand gift distributions.
Everybody pays but — so does father.

For even William Taft, before he
could distribute that celebrated smile
over valley and dale, hillside and moun-
tain, prairie and desert, had to have an
appropriation from Congress to " pay the
freight." Jones doesn't come across with
it any more.

" It is a mystery to me," spoke up
Chauncy, " why the people don't sigh for
a return of those golden days when gra-
cious railroads distributed with free hand
and lavish hospitality that greatest of all
blessings — the pass.

" People demanded railroad legislation,
and they got it just where the Plymouth
Rock got the implement of the wood-
man. Then the representative from Posey
County handed over his annual,, the edi-
tor of the Clayville Clarion his mileage-
book, and the newest minister of the new-
est sect his half-fare permit, and the
railroad was enjoined, prohibited, and
forever restrained from giving away its
goods.

" Brains," continued Chauncy, puffing
up a little, " and the real merit ~of your
line, are what sells transportation in these
practical days."

Recently there died the prince of dead-
heads. He earned this honored title, and
maintained it proudly to the end.

Twenty or thirty years ago he Avas
known all over the land as " The Immor-
tal J. N."

He went from the Atlantic to the Pa-
cific, and from Mexico to Canada, and
recrossed and back-tracked through every
State on every railroad, and some time in
his life visited every town of importance
in America and never paid a cent of car
fare.

He was tall and majestic. His hair
fell over his shoulders in long ringlets.
He was neither clairvoyant nor astrolo-
ger, but ahvays in reserve he carried the
occult power to " remove the pressure "
and " raise the veil."

He adorned the hotel registers with a
distinguished flourish, but he never paid
a cent for keep.

There Avere pomp and circumstance in
his presence. He knew all the railroad
officials and conductors throughout the
broad land.

He never begged a favor. He was
never cowed or confounded, humiliated
or disheartened. He arose and stood su-
perior to all surroundings and to all per-
sonalities.

In his hand he carried the mystic
cryptic scroll, containing the secret of the
universe, which solved all the riddles that
make the existence of man a puzzle, and
wherein was the power to dissolve with a
gesture and a word the sun, moon, and
stars into comet's tails.

When he rode on a train it was a favor
to the road, and a matter of congratula-
tion to the management to be able to
extend the courtesy of travel.

OBSERVATIONS OF A COUNTRY STATION-AGENT.

689

All railroaders, great and small, knew
the " Immortal J. N." and the mystic
power he carried.

He was a restless traveler, never stop-
ping longer than a day in one town.

Now and then a new conductor would
hold out a witless hand for a ticket or
cash fare, and the " prince of dead-
heads " would arise and thunder :

" A vaunt ! I am the Immortal J. N. !
Lay one hand on me,
and I will ' remove the
pressure ! ' Dare to
molest me, and I will
■ raise the veil ! ' "

There are not many
conductors that want
the veil raised ; and
knowing that that was
the Immortal J. N.'s
specialty, and that he
could deliver the goods
on the spot, they passed
him up.

No conductor ever
had the nerve or hardi-
hood to put him off
the train. ^

A few years ago the
" Immortal J. N."
joined all the prophets
who have gone before.
There were no convul-
sions of nature — no
cataclysms when he
went. No peals of
thunder — no quaking
of the earth — no dark-
ening of the sun's splendor. One day
the anchor-chain broke, the bark drifted
away and went over the hazy horizon,
and that was all.

Then a strange impulse seized the
people.

The power and privilege of issuing
passes was taken from the railroads, and
all the deadheads— high or low, or of
whatever degree — perished from the face
of the earth, and the tribe was no more.

And the cause?

Known to philosophers and railroad
men only.

The "Immortal J. N." had at last
" removed the pressure." He had finally
" lifted the veil." He had made good!

" I think you mentioned brains," said
I to Chauncy, after a little. " You used
8 R R

the word in connection with the ticket
business."

" So I did," replied Chauncy. " I in-
formed you that all the business we get
now is by direct dealing and by correct
information. There isn't anything done
like it was ten or twenty years ago. Did
you see me sell that ticket to the young
lady? Didn't you notice the elegance
and polish of the transaction?

AVAUNT ! I AM THE IMMORTAL J. N.!"

" When you were selling tickets, you
would have thrown the ticket and loose
change on the counter and shove it over
to her like dumping garbage. You no-
tice I did not do it that way. I held the
ticket and change between my fingers and
dropped them into her gloved palm as
delicately as if "I were. giving a little child
a pretty flower."

" But you spoke of brains," I per-
sisted.

" So I did," rejoined Chauncy. " I
mean this : A man to run the ticket busi-
ness under the new order has got to seize
every opportunity to stimulate travel,
arouse interest in places and events away
from home, and have the instinct to fol-
low up a hint, or a show of interest that
may be developed into business.

690

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

" You do not seem to catch my mean-
ing. I have gotten beyond you. As good
luck has it, here is a chance to illustrate
what I am trying to make clear to you.
You see that man out in the waiting-room
looking at the map of Florida? "

I had looked out through the ticket-
window, and there was a man looking
and tracing with his finger either a road
or river in the State of Florida. He was
the only passenger.

"I see him," said I, " but what about
it?"

"Don't tell you anything, does it?"
asked Chauncy. " To my discerning
mind it tells me he is interested in Flor-
ida. Now, I will go out and talk to him
and interest him, and before I am done
he will know all about our line and our
connections and our through service.
Some day his interest will take him there/
He will remember me and he will come
straight to me again, because I have
shown an interest."

Chauncy went out to the stranger and
delivered his line of talk.

I followed him out and sauntered
about with a desultory interest.

The stranger gave Chauncy a friendly
nod ; and at once, on this bit of encour-
agement, Chauncy launched forth :

" Ah, looking at the map of Florida, I
see. Beautiful country! Land of flow-
ers ! Why, man alive, the possibilities of
that country are. just beginning to be
known ! All that land down there is the
future garden-spot of the world. Now
is the time to invest. After a while it
will be too late, and people up here will
wonder why they didn't see it before.

" Yes, that's the town of Kissammee
where your finger is. I'll tell you a
story about it. ne of our railroad stories.

" A woman from the North was riding
on a Plant train one day, and behind her
in the next seat sat a Southern gentle-
man ; very gallant, you know.

"'Going to Kissammee?' says he to
the woman.

" She grew red in the face, but made
no reply.

"Thinking she hadn't heard him, he
leaned forward and repeated somewhat
louder :

" ' Pardon me, but I say, are you go-
ing to Kissammee?'

" By this time the woman was enraged,
and finally snapped :

" ' No, sir! '

" ' Pardon again,' said the man very
coolly, ' I thought you were going to
Kissammee.'

" This was more than the woman could
stand. She sprang from her seat. She
called the conductor and, frantically sha-
king her umbrella in the man's face, de-
manded that he be ejected from the train
for repeatedly and persistently insulting
her.

" ' What did he say, madam? ' politely
asked the conductor.

" ' He has asked me to kiss him two or
three times within the last mile, and I
demand that he be removed.'

" ' I meant no offense,' apologized the
man very humbly. ' All I asked the lady
was if she was going to Kissammee.'

" Then the conductor explained to the
lady that the next station was Kissam-
mee, and made everything satisfactory."

Reaching the climax of his story,
Chauncy chuckled gleefully.

On the other hand, the stranger did
not lift his eye from the map. Nor did
he show the faintest sign of any emo-
tion whatsoever.

But, stepping over to the ticket-win-
dow, he took a pad and pencil from his
pocket and wrote :

" When a train for Kokomo? "

He was deaf and dumb.

" I thought you said brains," said I to
Chauncy, as he slid for the office and I
for the open.

Roll-Gall of Veterans.

A Glance at the Glorious Roster of Men Who Link the Birth

of Railroading to Its Present-Day

Crowning Point.

ENTWISTLE GALLED HOME.

Stephenson's Fireman, and Afterward Engi-
neer of the Rocket, Passes Away,
Near the Century Mark.

SOME time ago we published a short
^sketch of Edward Entwistle, the man
who fired the famous engine Rocket on her
epoch-making run. We have now the mel-
ancholy duty of following up that sketch
with an announcement of the death of the
distinguished veteran, which occurred Octo-
ber 31 last, at Des Moines, Iowa.

Mr. Entwhistle was born in Tilsley's
Banks, Lancashire, England, ninety-four
years ago. At the age of eleven he was
apprenticed in the Duke of Bridgewater's
machine shops at Manchester.

It was in these shops that Stephenson's
engine was built, and the boy took such a
keen interest in the locomotive that the
man whose name was to rank first among
the inventors of the world took notice of
him.

When the time came to make a choice
of a man to help him in the running of
the engine, young Entwistle found, to his
astonishment and delight, that Stephenson
had chosen him. For three trips he fired
the Rocket, then he became e'hgirieer, and
was engineer for two and a half years.

STILL ON THE RAILS.

Wildoner Is on the Active List Yet, and

Claims the Distinction of Being Oldest

Working Engineer.

JACOB WILDONER, who, according to
the Railroad Employee, is the oldest
locomotive engineer in active service in the
United States, still answers to his name on
the pay-roll of the Central of New Jersey.
True he is not hauling flyers over the road

any more, nor even way freights, but he
:has charge of the air-compressor and sta-
tionary engines at the famous " Fiddlers "
shops of the company at Jersey City.

Mr. Wildoner began his railroad career
in 1847, nearly sixty-three years ago, on the
Switchback Railroad at Mauch Chunk,
Pennsylvania. The line was then owned
and operated by the Lehigh Coal and Navi-
gation Company, which in turn was after-
ward absorbed by the Lehigh Valley Rail-
road.

Young Wildoner's first duties consisted
partly in driving mules and partly in brak-
ing cars by the exciting and uncertain
method of pushing a " sprig " between the
wheel spokes. To quote the Employee: '

" In 1848 Mr. Wildoner was transferred as
fireman on the stationary engine located on
Mount Pisgah, and in the following year
he took charge as despatcher of operations
at the head of the Mount Pisgah plane,
having supervision over the train runners,
remaining in that position until 1855, during
which period he ran the first passenger-car
over the line.

" In November, 1855, Mr. Wildoner en-
tered the employ of the Lehigh Valley Rail-
road, which at that period extended between
Mauch Chunk and Easton, Pennsylvania, as
fireman of one of the five locomotives
which composed the motive power of the
road.

" In 1857 he was advanced to engineer,
in charge of the locomotive Robert H. Sa-
ger in the South Easton yards, which posi-
tion he retained until May 1, 1858, when he
accepted service with the Lackawanna as
fireman and extra engineer. His first as-
signment was the camel-back locomotive
Connecticut, running between Scranton,
Pennsylvania, and Hampton Junction, New
Jersey.

" He afterward ran the Wilansing, a
wood-burner, from Canademus to Delaware
Station, hauling wood for engine supply.

" Mr. Wildoner remained in the Lacka-
wanna service until December, 1865, when

691

692

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

he entered the employ of the Central in
the year 1866.

" His first work for this company was
setting up two new locomotives of Grant
make, known as the Green Mountain type.
These engines weighed thirty-six tons each,
were equipped with eighteen by twenty-two-
inch cylinders, and were the largest and
most powerful owned by the company at
that time. Mr. Wildoner was given charge
of one of these engines and ran her to
Hampton.

" At this time wood was the universal fuel
for locomotive use and wood stations were
located along the Central at Bloomsbury,
Asbury, and Clinton (now Annandale), and
workmen were employed continuously at
White House and Green Brook cutting, up
old ties for engine supply.

" Mr. Wildoner ran a locomotive on the
Central continuously until December 9, 1893,
when, on account of losing the sight of one
of his eyes from an engine spark, he was
compelled to accept other employment, and
has been located at ' Fiddlers ' in his pres-
ent capacity since, a position created by
former General Superintendent Olhausen, in
recognition of long and meritorious service."

OLDEST EAGLE-EYE DEAD.

Tatem Parsons, Engineer of the John Bull,

Was In from the Beginning of

American Railroads.

TATEM PARSONS, the oldest engineer
on the books of the Pennsylvania,
died at Camden, New Jersey, on the 4th of
November last, at the. age of eighty-nine.
Parsons was famous by the fact that he
was the engineer on one of the pioneer loco-
motives in America, the John Bull, which
ran on one of the earliest roads — the Cam-
den and Amboy.

He was probably also the oldest locomo-
tive engineer in the country- Commenting
editorially on the passing of the veteran, the
New York World says :

" The first rail of the first American rail-
road was laid July 4, 1828, by Charles Car-
roll of Carrollton, then the only living signer
of the Declaration. As President Hadley
wrote in 1885, ' one man's life formed the
connecting link between the political revolu-
tion of the last century and the industrial
revolution of the present.' One man's life,
again, joined the beginnings of the railway
with to-day.

" There are many people in America who
can remember 1830, though possibly none
who in that year worked on the railway.

Tatem Parsons's one life covered the growth
of an industry whose tracks in the United
States alone are long enough to run one
hundred and twenty lines from New York
to San Francisco, whose ' train mileage ' for
a year would encircle the earth fifty thou-
sand times, and whose capital almost equals
the total wealth of the nation at the be-
ginning of the Civil War."

THE OLDEST OPERATOR.

F. H. Zimmerman, Who Retires on a D.

and H. Pension, Seems to Have a

Distinct Title to the Honor.

AFTER over fifty-three years of service,
- F. H. Zimmerman, of the Delaware
and Hudson, and probably the oldest active
railroad telegrapher in America, retired on
a pension on October 1, last year. Mr.
Zimmerman has been night ticket-agent for
the Delaware and Hudson at Binghamton
since 1890.

He was born in 1837, and entered the rail-
road service in May, 1856, joining the Lacka-
wanna as track laborer.

He afterward spent two years in the train
service, and became operator at Henryville
in 1859.

He remained there for three years, when
•iie was transferred as joint agent of the
New Jersey Central and the Lackawanna to
Hampton Junction. In his next position,
with the American Telegraph Company, at
145 Broadway, New York, he was brought
in constant contact "with Professor -Morse,
and Cyrus W. Field, the father of the At-
lantic cable.

On June 20, 1864, Mr. Zimmerman was
employed as operator in Syracuse, New
York, and was employed at different points
until December 1, 1865, when he accepted
service at Great Bend, Pennsylvania. He
remained there for six years, working on
both the Erie and Lackawanna roads.

On November 21, 1871, he went to Corry,
Pennsylvania, with the A. and G. W. Railway,
where he remained until May 1,-1872, when
he resigned and went back with the Erie at
Great Bend, where he worked until April
6, 1874.

He then joined the New Jersey Central
as operator at Elizabeth. New Jersey, and
on May 22 he for the second time became
stationed at Hampton Junction, where he
worked as operator and ticket-agent for
fifteen years.

In 1862 the joint salary at Hampton Junc-
tion was $30 per month. In 1863 it was
advanced to $35.

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

BY BANNISTER MERWIN,
Author of "The Girl and the Bill," "The Sword of Tarroloys," "The Corner."

Fate Chooses for Thekla, and She
Rides at Night Out of the Valley.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS.

LARRY SMITH and Jack Marly, being in possession of some valuable water-rights,
J are building a dam, Smith \ being the engineer and Marly supplying half the
capital. The other half of the capital is supplied by a Denver capitalist named Briggs
and another man named Garth. Briggs comes to view the work, and while there he drops
half of a -broken shilling, which Marly picks up. The capitalist is interested as a
money-lender, and not as a partner, and he holds a mortgage on the dam and all the
rights, subject to a time-limit for the completion of the work.

Jack finds that Garth, Briggs, and Murdock, the contractor, are playing a double-
cross on Larry and himself. A walking-delegate tries to organize the men, and Jack
orders him off the place. Jt is evident that he is paid by Briggs. There is a scrimmage,
in which the walking-delegate loses considerable dignity and some skin.

Jack falls in love with Thekla Wist, daughter of the head man of a Norwegian settle-
ment. The Norwegians are suspicious that the dam project will flood their farms, and
they are very bitter. Wis: opposes Jack, and Thekla is compelled to choose her father.

CHAPTER X.

The Stampede.

]^HE Saturday which saw the
pipe completed was a hard
day for Jack, and it fol-
lowed a night of emotional
stress. He had come to see
clearly — first, that he loved
Thekla WLt so greatly as to make every-
thing in his life secondary to that love.

He realized, too, that she loved him.
Else, why had she wavered when he made
his appeal to her? And with a fineness
of perception that was almost feminine
he discerned the reasons why she had, at
the last, turned to her father.

Self-reproach for a dissatisfaction
which she had, perhaps, regarded too
tragically was surely in part responsi-
ble; but more than that, she had been —
she must have been — frightened by the
strangeness of her suddenly discovered
passion. Therefore, she had sensitively

Began in the October Railroad Man'

thrown herself under the protection of
a love which was as old as her own years
— the love of her father. Her father's
call had aroused in her the maiden in-
stinct of flight to a shelter which might
be rude, but was, at least, safe.

And how well Peter Wist had said just
the right words ! The old Norwegian
had spoken from an insight that was a
high credit to his understanding of his
daughter.

He must have recognized the painful-
lness of the contrast between her life in
the valley and her life when she had been
out in the world, acquiring the wider
view which he, doubtless, had wished her
to have. If his demand upon her seemed
selfish, it was nevertheless dictated by
sentiments that appeared to be worthy.

Peter Wist was not a father to be
ashamed of. The faults of crudeness
that had made her suffer when she re-
turned to him, fresh from an environ-
ment where that kind of crudeness was
not known, had taken on exaggerated im-

; Magazine. Single copies, 10 cents.

693

694

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

portance in her mind for the very reason
that they were so foreign to what, for
several years, she had been accustomed to
see. But the man's rugged qualities were
too strong for him to be in any sense
contemptible.

Jack even found himself excusing the
stubborn suspicions which Wist held to-
ward himself and his associates. A lit-
tle community of foreigners which had
wrested a home from the desert might
well fear the advance of industrialism.
The lies had come from fellow-country-
men— men whom it was most natural for
them to believe.

Thekla, in time, would t realize this
fact, and she would, moreover, forget her
father's faults in her recognition of his
worth. That would be when she was
not bound to the dreariness of a life in
" Sweden " ; when, with Jack as her hus-
band, she would live in the larger world
of the opportunities she most desired,
giving to her father only so much of her
time as a husband might be expected to
surrender to him.

For Jack had not the least belief that
Thekla and he were not to come to-
gether .'again. . The issue was sure to
broaden until it included both her father
and her lover.

He longed to go to her that day, but
common sense held him back. She must
have time herself to work the problem
out — to accustom herself to the recog-
nition of the new yearnings of her own
heart.

About the middle of the afternoon,
Murdoch's men came straggling up from
Klingerman Pass, bringing their outfits
with them. Larry, who had been spend-
ing several hours in an inspection of the
completed work, was not far behind
them ; and after his arrival, in the midst
of the confusion which attended the re-
arrangement of the outfit in its old quar-
ters, Jack found him estimating with
thoughtful eyes the work that remained
to be done on the dam.

"Well?" queried Jack.

" Well, Ave are close to the end. Four
days more ! "

" And those are the days of our great-
est danger, Larry. Briggs will try his
best to choke us now."

" Yes," admitted Larry.

" Bill Murdock will surely keep on

wasting our spare time. I have wanted
to strangle him a dozen times lately."

" Keep cool, Tack."

" Oh, I will," Jack laughed. " But I
haven't had your chance to learn patience
through experience, Larry."

" It will be a queer irony," muttered
Larry, " if those few courses of the dam
prove our undoing. The simplest, easiest
part of all."

"Our agreement with Briggs shouldn't
insist on those last few feet of the dam,
JLarry. We can supply more power now
than we can sell for the next year."

" But you remember that the agree-
ment reads : ' All the construction-work
complete as specified.' However, that
isn't the thing that's bothering me just
now."

"No?"

" I'm wondering how those fellows " —
he nodded toward the workmen's tents
— " will take the order to work to-mor-
row." '

" Sunday? "

" It won't be safe not to make them —
and it is risky to ask it of them in their
present mood. There's the problem."

" Offer 'em double pay."

" Of course ! "

" Triple pay! "

" M— yes."

Murdock approached, glancing at his
watch as he came. " It's four o'clock."
he began. " Hardly worth while to put
the men on the dam to-night."

"What's that?" snapped Larry.

" I say it's hardly worth while to put
the men on the dam now. By the time
the engines get a goin' an' the cement's
mixed, it'll be about time to quit."

" You put those men on the job at
once," said Larry firmly. " More than
that, you work them to-morrow — double
time. Do you hear?"

" Yes, I hear, Mr. High-and-Mighty,"
sneered Murdock. " But when you've
handled hobos's long's I have, you'll be
a durned sight wiser."

" Don't waste time talking to me. Get
your men to work."

" All right — all right. Just as soon
as McGuire finishes payin' 'em off."

" Paying them off?" Larry stared at
the contractor with angry surprise.

" Why, in the name of Heaven, are you
paying them now? "

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

695

" They get their pay Saturdays, You
know that well enough." Murdock
spoke confusedly. He was kicking at a
pebble on the ground. "I didn't sup-
pose you'd insist on their doin' any more
to-day, an' I thought they'd feel a lot
better about things if I gave 'em this
hour."

Larry had suddenly become strangely
calm. " Put them on the job, Mur-
dock," he said quietly; and there was
that in his voice that made the contrac-
tor hurry away toward the tents.

Larry turned to Jack. " It's com-
ing ! " he said.
Jack nodded.

" If we had tried to worry things
along," continued Larry, " they would
have raised Hades with us later on. Bet-
ter have it over Avith ! "
" Right! " said Jack.
Suddenly they heard a low roar from
the tents — the sound made by the col-
lective human animal when it is angry.
Out into the open swarmed a hundred
men, Murdock battling in the midst of
them, fighting his way to the outer edge
of the crowd.

He got free, and, running to one side,
stood looking at the turmoil with' a ma-
licious smile. There was no more to fol-
low him. The men had not turned on
him ; but he had been caught in their
rush, and those nearest him had handled
him roughly.

At first, Jack thought that he and
Larry were the object of this angry ex-
citement. He expected an attack, and
braced himself, resolving to go down
fighting ; but a glance at- Larry caused
him to relax his tense muscles. The en-
gineer was standing in the easiest of
poses, a faint smile on his brown face.
And now the men were forming in a
dense group about a cement barrel. A
man was climbing upon the barrel — a
stocky man, whose face, as he struggled
to his feet and turned to face his ex-
cited audience, was made peculiarly sin-
ister by the gleam of his prominent up-
per teeth.

"O'Neill!" exclaimed Jack.
Jack and Larry had not known that
the walking - delegate was among the
men, but Bill Murdoek must have
known.

A hoarse cheer went up, and the moun-

tains flung iack the sound, for they
would have none of it, so roughened was
it by •animal passions. Then the dele-
gate began to speak.

His appeal was altogether to their
greed. He contrasted their condition
with the condition of the men who em-
ployed them, and urged them to unite
now, at the time when their masters
most needed them.

" Youse can win!" he shouted.'
" Youse can have what you want, if you
act together. These bloodsuckers can't
get along without you, an' youse can
make 'em treat you right."

Murdock, meantime,, had not budged
from his position. It was plain that he
had no intention of interfering. Jack
reasoned that Murdock had made his
own arrangements with the delegate.

" These fellers shows that they needs
youse when they tries to make you work
Sunday. Men, don't you do it! Let
'em find out what it is to get along with-
out youse.

" Come with me to the hall at Larkin
City, an' I'll organize youse to-night.
Monday youse can tell 'em your terms.
Don't give in now, men. Youse are all
together. Now's the time to show what
youse are made of."

" That's right! " They were shouting.
" That's the stuff ! Give it to 'em again,
O'Neill!"

" Hold on ! " Larry had stepped to
the outer edge of the group, and he
raised his hand to get O'Neill's atten-
tion. " Hold on there ! Let me say
something ! "

" Don't you listen to him, O'Neill,"
cried one of the crowd.

"Make him shut his mouth!" yelled
another.

But O'Neill hushed them all. A cun-
ning smile appeared on his face.

" We believe in fair play, even if the
other fellers don't," he said. " Ain't '
that right? "

" Right you are ! " " Good boy,
O'Neill ! " came the answers. A silence
fell upon the crowd, which the moment
before had been as restless as a herd of
cattle at the edge of a stampede.

" Now, then " — O'Neill turned to
Larry — " what you got to say to us? "

" Just this," Larry was still smiling,
" if these men have any grievances, they

696

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

lie between themselves and Bill Mur-
dock, the man they work for. You have
been talking as though they were work-
ing for the company. You know very
well that the company hasn't anything
to do with their wages. That's Bill
Murdoch's affair."

" Get it straight, friend — get it
straight," O'Neill broke in — and Jack
edged nearer to Larry as a murmur ran
through the crowd. " The men are work-
in' for Bill Murdock, you say? "

Larry nodded.

" An' Bill Murdock's a workin' for
you, ain't he? "

" Yes," replied Larry.

O'Neill shrugged his shoulders.
" That's all I got to say about that," he
remarked.

The men, as they felt the force of the
rough logic, laughed. Their champion
had scored. "

But Larry had not finished. " Your
point, then," he said, " is that the men
are really working for the company."

" That's about it ! "

" That being so " — Larry spoke slow-
ly, distinctly — " that being so — and I am
speaking, not for Bill Murdock, but for
the company — I offer them double pay
from now on if they finish this dam be-
fore next Thursday. Is that fair?"

The men were silent. O'Neill lost
his smile.

"That," continued Larry, "means
bigger wages than have ever been paid
around here before. What do you say,
men?" He turned to the crowd. "Will
you stand by the company?

" You have labored hard to see this
job through. Are you going to quit
now, a few days before the finish, just
because that cheap skate tells you to? If
you have not been satisfied before, you
can blame Bill Murdock. Has he ever
offered to double your wages?"

" He couldn't, at the rate youse pay
him," exploded O'Neill.

"What do you know about that?"
demanded Larry with a swift, stern
glance at the delegate. " Bill Murdock
has never complained to the company
that we weren't giving him enough for
him to treat his men right.

" Now, the first time the cofnpany
hears a complaint, it offers you men a
square deal. That's all you want, isn't

it? A square deal! Men, it's really
more than a square deal."

"He's bluffing!" yelled O'Neill sud-
denly. " Who ever heard .of 'em dou-
bling wages when there was plenty of
time and to spare? An' how do youse
know he's got money? He ain't the only
member of this companv."

" I'm the man in charge of this job,"
said Larry.

"If youse take his word for this,
youse' 11 be sorry. He's trying to gain
time. Listen to his fine words, an'
youse'll be lookin' into the muzzles of
Pinkertoii revolvers nex' Monday morn-
in'."

" Double wages, men ! " said Larry
firmly.

The ~ situation hung in the balance.
Among the men, opinion was obviously
divided. The more thoughtful of them
knew that they had no grievance against
the company, but all of them were in-
toxicated by the newly inspired con-
sciousness of their own power. Larry's
offer had, for the moment, put a check
on the delegate's influence; but even
Jack, who had never witnessed such a
sfene before, knew that O'Neill would
not give up easily.

As for Murdock, he had slowly backed
away. His action might have been
ascribed to fear; but the partners, at
least, realized that the contractor's chief
purpose was to keep out of the discus-
sion. Presumably, his part in the game
was, by arrangement, to be entirely pas-
sive.

O'Neill went at the men again. He
cited instances in which employers had
broken promises. He insisted that Larry
could not be sincere in making so high
an offer.

" He's trying to keep youse from or-
ganizing," he said. " It's" cheap" for him
to offer double wages for four days when
he knows it will help him to gouge youse
on the next job."

" We don't object to the men organ-
izing," Larry interrupted. " Organize
'em here — now — if you want to."

" He knows I can't organize youse
here," screamed O'Neill. " He knows
youse have got to come to the Stone-
mason's Hall at Larkin City, where the
ritchool can be carried through. Come
on to Larkin City, boys. Come now !

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

697

"Come and meet the rest of the bunch,
an' have a good time an' talk this thing
over. Don't decide here ! Think it
over ! Youse can't do more work to-
night nohow, an' if youse decide to ac-
cept the company's offer an' go to work
to-morrow, you can come back. That's
7* fair — eh, Mr. Boss?" He leered at
Larry. " That's the square deal all
around, boys — no harm done, an' a good
time thrown in."

The effect was magical. Silver
chinked in a hundred pockets, and, with
a shout, the men rushed to the tents for
their hats and coats.- Within five min-
utes they were streaming down the road,
calling to one another, singing — acting
like boys but of school ; and in the midst
of the procession was the triumphant
O'Neill, surrounded by those who were
most eager to drink of his promises.

CHAPTER XI.

The Beat of Horse's Hoofs.

"TT'S all over," said Larry grimly as
-*- the last man passed them. He had
tried fruitlessly to stop several of them
and induce them to listen to him.

" They won't come back," replied Jack
gloomily.

" No, they won't come back. O'Neill
'will spread the rumor that Aaron Garth,
who is known to be half of our com-
pany, won't stand for my offer. Whis-
ky will do the rest.

" There might have been a chance if
Garth hadn't the name of being so close-
fisted. His character will bear out the
rumor."

" Where are Jones and Armsby and
Ives?"

" I had to send them to the city on
business.- Somebody has to look after
matters in our office there, and I didn't
dare leave the work."

"And the machinery men?

" They went this noon. Two of them
are staying in the city till the middle
of the week, when they are coming up
to start things."

" Then, besides ourselves, there isn't
a man left in the camp, except old Mad-
den at the corral."

" And Wing Fah."

" And Bill Murdock ! " Tack's mouth

tightened. He took a step toward the
contractor's tent.

"What are you going to do?" asked
Larry with a curious smile.

" I'm going to settle with Bill Mur-
dock."

" Let him alone." Larry seized his
arm. " It won't do any good. The
sooner he leaves, the better."

Presently Murdock walked toward
them. He looked worried and embar-
rassed — ' assuming the manner of being
ashamed of his own incapacity.

" You done fine," he said to Larry.
" Nobody could 'a' done more. If I'd gone
among 'em, they'd have murdered me."

Jack turned his back. Seeing Mur-
dock, and knowing his contemptible
trickery, it was hard to keep his hands
off the man.

" I'll take a run down to- the city an'
see what I can do about roustin' out
some more men for Monday. I won't
take any of those hobos back." He made
a show of bravado ; but when Larry did
not answer, he beat a quick, silent re-
treat.

They saw him go to the corral and
get a horse and take a slow pace down
the canon — slow enough to avoid com-,
ing up with the rear of the marching
men.

"That's the last of Bill Murdock!"
exclaimed Larry.

" He'll be back! "

" But we sha'n't deal with him any
more."

They stared gloomily at the unfin-
ished dam. Massive, strong, it lifted it-
self from the canon floor, a gray wall
from slope to slope. It was a thing of
Larry Smith's mind — an embodied ideal
of a triumph over nature.

Deeply founded was its mighty con-
crete base. Its sluices were marvels of
nicety. Three times the water that
would normally fill the reservoir might
push against it, and it would not yield.

But, along the top, those unlaid
courses ! The work of a few days, lack-
ing ! And for want of those few days
of labor, the labor of two years would
count as nothing for Larry Smith and
Jack Marly.

Dejectedly they climbed up to the
shack. Mary was waiting for them. She
made no assumption of artificial good

698

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

cheer, but smiled gravely in greeting.
" I saw it all," she said. " Was it a
strike?"

" Something like it," sighed Larry.

" Will they come back? "

"No!"

" Sit down — here, where it's cool ; and
I will bring you some tea."

They threw themselves down on the
ground before the shack, and she brought
them steaming cups.

" To-morrow," she said, " you will be
going down to Larkin City to get more
men."

" We can't," replied Larry. " There
are no men to be got. Our friends, the
enemy, have seen to that."

" Then you will telegraph to other
cities for them — even as far as Denver,
if you have to? "

Larry was silent.

" Isn't that the way? " she asked
cheerfully.

" Yes, that's the way. WTe shall try
it, of course. But it's only about an
even chance that Ave shall get them. It
goes without saying that no union man
ever will come to us — now."

"Why not, dear?" '

" O'Neill, the man who made the
trouble here, will keep them back."

Jack took the broken shilling from his
pocket and eyed it ruefully.

" I've a good mind to throw you
away," he said to it. " I thought you
were lucky, but now I believe you are
a hoodoo." He drew back his hand to
fling the bit of metal far.

" Don't throw it," said Mrs. Larry.
" Do you honestly believe in luck, Jack!"

" I believe in believing in luck," he
answered. " Believing in luck is what
makes luck."

" Then keep your piece of coin."

He returned it to his pocket.

And so they talked on, and gradually
it came about that their situation did not
look so black. Larry remembered the
name of a Denver contractor who
worked with non-union men. He might
be able to come. It was worth trying.

They figured, too, how the completion
of the dam could be hastened by putting
on night-shifts. By that plan, three days
might suffice, and, at a pinch, the work
need not start until the following Thurs-
day morning.

Oh, they would beat Thomas Briggs
yet ! When he, or his representative,
came to view the work, on the thirtieth,
the dam would be ready, "the reservoir
would be partly full. More and more
hopeful the partners became ; and it is
doubtful if either of them realized how
Avell their spirits had been ordered by^
the persistent influence of Mary's steady
sanity.

The afternoon waned into evening,
and the evening darkened into night.
A gorgeous sunset had been blotted out
by purpling clouds, which slowly inked
the sky and hung, low and sultry, above
the canon. So dark it was that when
Larry and Jack went down the path to
look at the dam, and to see that Madden
had found food for himself, they took
a lantern.

" I'm coming, too," said Mary. " To-
night the darkness seems so awful, so
portentous, that I don't want to be left
alone."

Larry helped her down, while Jack
swung the lantern for them; and after
a few words with Madden, who took his
situation as became an Irishman and a
philosopher, the three of them walked
back past the empty, ill-smelling tents
and the squat power-house, which nestled
in its hollow below the dam, and up the
incline at the right to the top . of the
dam itself.

" See," said Mary to Jack, " this is
built to succeed." She tapped the gran-
ite top of the dam with her foot.

But Jack was thinking of Thekla. He
strained his eyes into the darkness, stri-
ving to picture her as she had looked
in that moment when she had been so
nearly ready to come to him.

Mary turned to her husband. " Jack
is moony about something," she said.
" Do you know where he has been ri-
ding almost every afternoon lately?"

" I've been too busy to notice," re-
plied Larry, lighting his pipe.

" Don't you think it odd," she went
on, her eyes twinkling, " that he should
take an extra saddle-horse when he goes
up the canon? "

"Does he?" Larry showed surprise.
" What have you got to say to that,
Jack?"

But Jack was raising his hand to si-
lence them.

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

699

" Hush ! " he said.

Larry laughed. " Jack won't even let
us talk about it," he exclaimed. We
must get at the truth of this."

"-Listen!" said Larry. He was lean-
ing forward, peering into the darkness
up the canon ; and while they wondered
at him, he scrambled to his feet and
went bounding away from them along
the top of the dam.

Then, startled, they heard' what he
had heard. Out of the distance, from
far up the canon, came the sound of a
horse's hoofs, beating in a steady, rapid
rhythm. Louder it grew, and louder.

CHAPTER XII.

A Sinister Roll-Call.

TITER face jn-essed close against her
A -*• father's coat, Thekla Wist dared
not change her position until she heard
Jack Marly's footsteps die away; heard
him, a moment later, mount his horse and
start back down the road to the Bend-
water.

Had she looked again into his eyes,
she -could not have abided by her de-
cision to let him go alone. In turning
from him, she felt that she was facing
away from the attainment of every true
longing of her heart. Every true long-
ing, that is, which affected her own hap-
piness ; for it would be unjust to suggest
that she did not wish to insure her
father's happiness even more. Yet she
had turned from Jack, because her
father's call to her had seemed to de-
mand the full sacrifice.

Then, too, there was a dread of her
own outrush of passion. It was so
strange to her, so new and unsuspected,
that, after her first acceptance of it, she
feared it — feared even the happiness it
promised.

As with Jack, the knowledge of her
love had come, not by a slow unfold-
ment, but with a sudden, blinding rush
of light. It seemed to expose her soul
to a glare which it could not support ;
and she shrank from it. So, when Jack
went, an odd feeling of relief was min-
gled with her anguish.

Her father was slowly detaching her
fingers from his sleeve. He was press-
ing her head away from his coat. Now

he placed a hand under her chin and
forced her head back until he could look
squarely into her eyes.

Long he gazed. He must have probed
the startled, frightened, shrinking truth.
He must have seen the difficult loyalty
to himself. For at last he released her
gently, and returned to his work without
a single word.

She had expected some sign from him,
and his silence hurt her. She went slow-
ly back to the house and to her own
room, and she looked far down the road
and saw the dust-cloud that was rising
behind the disappearing horseman. He
was taking her heart with him. Soon
he disappeared.

The following day, fortunately for
her, three cases of slight illness in the
valley took much of her attention, and
until late in the afternoon she went
busily from house to house, caring for
the ailing women with a sympathetic ten-
derness that mingled, to an unusual de-
gree, emotion with science and skill. Not
for an instant, however, was Jack Marly
out of her thoughts.

His big, boyish manliness, his gentle
comprehension, his strong, straight hon-
-esty — her mind dwelt on these things,
and always there was an ache in her
heart. She would not see him again ;
or, since she could not say " never," at
least not for a long time.

The dam would be completed and he
would go back to the East, and the
dreary routine of her own life would go
on and on indefinitely within its narrow
groove. She pressed her red lips close
together, and tried to hide the suffering
that sought to show itself in her eyes.

Peter Wist went about his work that
Saturday in a manner of abstraction
which the girl natural ly associated with
her own case. Had she thought, she
might have known that his recognition
of her state of mind did not account for
his frequent conferences with neighbor-
ing farmers, who, one by one, made their
way to the field in which he was work-
ing. Nor could it account for his ob-
vious communication to John Peterman
-of some errand which sent the man,
mounted on his gaunt mare, post - haste
to Willow Canon and down the long
road to Larkin City.

Indeed, the valley hummed with the

700

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

busy undertones of rumor. The morose,
silent men were nodding to themselves,
some of them muttering aloud as they
trod their fields. Their somber eyes
were lighted by dull flames. Their bony
hands were shut into hard fists.

For this was their valley ; this was
their home. Nature had made it a waste
place, but they had caused it to be a
garden spot. By the sweat of their
strength they had forced it to serve them,
and they would not stand idle while
strangers robbed them of it. They would
fight, if need be.

At the evening meal, Peter Wist hard-
ly spoke. His preoccupation went vir-
tually unnoticed, however, for Thekla
herself was looking inward, and her aunt
was condemned to silence by her deaf-
ness. An hour later, after Thekla had
gone to her own' room, she was startled
from a reverie by the sounds of wheels.

She went to her window. The dusk
was just coming on, and from under the
wall of mountains at the western side of
the valley the shadows were creeping
across the fields. Drawing up in the
dooryard was Ole Knudsen's wagon.

It was crowded with men of the val-
ley, and behind it was Fred Seip's hay-
cart with still more men — thirty-five
sturdy Norwegians in all. Every able-
bodied male dweller in the valley was
there at the door of their recognized
leader. They swung to the ground and
formed in a semicircle, ready for the con-
clave which in serious crises it was their
rule to hold. Powerful men they were,
and under their stolidity was a gleam of
something like madness.

Instinctively, Thekla had drawn back
behind the shelter of the muslin curtain
at the window. She knew what this
gathering must mean. The significant
goings and comings during the day, the
nods and shakes of the head, the whis-
per of rumor — she- had not given these
things a thought ; but now, in a flash,
she lost her self-absorption, and her
heart leaped with the dread of impend-
ing danger — danger to her father and to
the man she loved.

Peter Wist had opened his door. He
was standing on the step. Thekla could
look down at the tousled gray of his
hair, a few feet below her. Now he was
speaking.

"Men of the valley," he began — and
his voice stirred them with the Norse
words that they loved — " men of the
valley, yesterday the word -came that the
dam on the Bendwater is almost done.
To-day, John Peterman rode to Larkin
City for news of the scheme by which
our fields are to be flooded and we to be
driven from our homes.

" He was told by persons who know
that within a month the water will en-
croach on us. Pie was told by men of
our own race that the company which
has made the dam has no intention of
rebuilding for us the road through the
Bendwater Canon, but Ave are to be
forced to continue to use the long, rough
road through Willow Canon. These are
the things which we have heard before.
Now they come to us with full assurance
that they are true."

He paused, and the men shifted rest-
lessly from foot to foot.

" For several weeks," he continued, "a
man of the company has been spying out
our valley. He has been riding around
its edge. He has " — the speaker's voice
trembled — " he has been winning the
faith of my daughter, Thekla.

" Yesterday I talked with that man.
He denied that his company would flood
our valley. He offered to show us maps
and plans which, he said, would prove
that they would do nothing to harm us.
But our own friends in Larkin City tell
us that all the time the company has
planned to befool us with maps and
'plans.

" We cannot understand their papers.
What would they mean to us? How
could we put trust in them? They
would say that the dam is to be built
only so high — and that its top" will be
lower than the elevation of this valley.

" But what is to prevent them from
building the dam higher when thev
choose? And that is what they plan to
do. They would lull us in false security,
and then some morning we should awa-
ken to see the water in our fields."

The tense, earnest faces of the listen-
ing men, and her father's clear, relent-
less words, filled Thekla with terror.
Plainly enough, she foresaw what was to
follow; and she hardly needed to listen
as her father's voice went on :

" Men of the valley, this is our home.

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

701

With hard-earned money we bought our
farms when they were nothing but
patches of sage-brush. With harder
work we have made them prosperous.
Shall we be robbed of them in order
that men who are already rich may be-
come richer? "

" No ! No ! " they shouted.

" Shall we permit them to take our
land away and leave us only the slow
process of law to get it back? "

"No! No!"

" They would beat us in the courts.
They could afford to pay skilful lawyers
to weave cobwebs over the eyes of the
judges. We could not. In the mean-
time we should be homeless. What if,
after years of law wrangling, we won a
decision? "

" What if they were made to let the
water run off and to pay us damages ?i
Would our farms be again what they
were? Would the money pay for our
sorrow? "

"To the dam!" shouted Ole Knud-
sen.

Peter Wist's hand went up to enforce
silence.

" Wait ! " he said. " We have all
thought about this matter. It is need-
less to go over the old ground. What
shall we do about it?"

"To the dam! To the dam!" A
dozen voices took up the cry.

" We cannot destroy the dam, but we
can destroy the sluices. A little dyna-
mite will do it. If they rebuild the
sluices, we will destroy them again.
Now, men, listen !

" Our friends at Larkin City have sent
word to us that this afternoon the work-
men at the dam would go on strike.
There will be no one there to-night to
stop us. Men of the valley, shall we go
now to the dam? "

" Yes ! Yes ! " they cried.

" What do you say, Ole Knudsen? "

" Yes ! "

"And you, John Ihlen?"

" Yes ! "

"And you, Adolf Castberg?"

" Yes ! "

" Edwin Paasche?"

"Yes! "

Thus the roll was called, and, man by
man, they answered.

" Men' of the valley!" Thekla had

thrust the curtains aside, and stood in
the waning light at her window. They
stared up at her in surprise, and- her
father got do\$m from the door-step that
he might face her. She was aroused —
brave and strong. Her lips were a firm
line. Her eyes shone.

" Men of the. valley! To satisfy one
moment of madness, are you willing to
wreck all your future happiness? Do
you not see that, if you blow up the
sluices, you will be punished, even be-
yond your deserts, by forces that you
cannot resist?

"You have ruled this valley like a tiny
kingdom." She was talking at her father
now. " Why have you been permitted to
do that? Because the men who rule the
State have seen that you kept order here.

" Do you not know that, if you had
not kept good order, if you had not paid
your taxes, if you had destroyed the prop-
erty of your neighbors, the soldiers would
long ago have been sent to put you down?
And if you do this mad thing to-night — "

" Thekla, be silent ! " Peter Wist's
command came sharply.

" How can I be silent? "

" Your head has been turned by that
young man. You are a woman; you do
not understand these matters. Men of
the valley, give no ear to my daughter.
John Peterman, you have the dyna-
mite? "

" In the wagon," answered Peterman.

" Then, light the lanterns." He
glanced up at the window again. Thek-
la had disappeared.

CHAPTER XIII.

Thekla 's Ride.

T_T ER father's first words to her had
•*- ■*- shown that she could not move
him. The poison of the false story had
been too deeply instilled i-nto the brains
of the men of the valley to be eradicated
by anything that she could say. These
men were set in their purpose. She
could not hold them back.

But the horror of what they had
planned to do made her frantic in her
helplessness. Her father Avas setting out
to ruin himself and to ruin the man she
loved. There might be clemency for
these misU-d men of the valley.

702

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

It might be shown that they had been
goaded to their action by persistent lies. .
But from what Jack had told her about'
his own situation she knew that he could
expect no clemency from the holder of
the mortgage, if the work were not com-
pleted by the thirtieth. The blowing up
of the sluices would set the work back
many weeks.

They were lighting the lanterns now.
In a moment the wagons would go lum-
bering down the road. She had stepped
back from the window and thrown her-
self face downward on her bed.

" Oh," she moaned, " one woman
against all those men ! Wnat can I do ?
What— can— I— do ? "

The hoarse voices without were quiet-
ing clown. She could hear the creaking
of the springs as the men climbed into
the wagon. The hay-cart was first to
rattle away, and the wagon followed at
once.

The thought of being alone for hours
while the men were at their desperate
work was insupportable to the girl. She
must do something. She had failed to
keep them back ; they were rumbling
slowly toward the head of the canon.

But if she had failed to keep them
back, should she not at least carry a
warning to Jack? It was not too late.

She did not stop to reason, for if the
thing was to be done, it must be done at
once. Hurrying down the stairs, she ran
around the house and across the yard to
the stable.

It was dark now. Heavy clouds were,
covering the sky, but she knew where
Freia's stall was — Freia, her father's
driving-mare, a nervous, eager animal.

There was no time to put on her habit ;
no time even to light a lantern. If the
wagons got to the head of the canon
first, she could not pass them.

Feeling her- way to the hooks where
the harness hung, she lifted down a bridle
and carried it to the barn door. Faint
rays from the lamp in the kitchen gave
her enough light to make the bridle
usable.

By that lamp in the kitchen, Aunt
Marta would be in her armchair, with
her knitting in her lap. Her deaf old
ears would keep her peaceably oblivious
to the drama without.

Thekla made her way to Freia's stall.

" So, Freia," she whispered. So — so ! "

She patted the mare's glossy flank and
slid in beside her, and took off her head-
stall and put the bridle on.-

"So, Freia! So! Come, Freia ! Gently,
gently, Freia ! " She backed the mare
out of the stall and led her to the yard.

" Steady, Freia ! Steady, girl ! " The
mare was nervous. The lowering, sultry
night seemed to make her apprehensive.
When Thekla led her to the barrel from
which she wished to mount, the animal
would not be still. —Patience— patience.
Now, Thekla, while the mare is fidgeting.

The girl threw herself upon the mare's
back. Her skirts hampered her, but she
arranged them as she could, while Freia
minced about the yard.

There ! She could do no better. Her
knee's pressed Freia's sides at last, and
with a fleeting glimpse through the
lighted kitchen window— a glimpse that
showed Aunt Marta, busy with yarn and
knitting-needles — she sent the mare for-
ward at a trot, past the house and out to
the road. v

There, for a moment, she hesitated.
To ride without saddle, eight miles over
a rough road, in the midst of blackness
like the blackness of ink ! No, she could
not risk it without a light. Back to the
barn she rode, and in, without dismount-
ing. She took down a lantern, and from
its place, on a beam, the box of safety-
matches. When she had passed the
wagons she would light the lantern.

Back to the road Freia"~trotted. The
mare did not understand these nervous
hurryings to and fro. She was not com-
fortable with human weight on her back,
and she whinnied her disapproval.

But Thekla was looking westward.
The wagons had not gone far. If she
hurried she might yet pass them before
they got to the head, of the canon.

" Oh, Freia! " She brought her hand
down on the mare's shoulder. Forward
they plunged toward the dancing lights
on the wagons. It seemed as though the
men must hear the thunder of Freia's
hoofs, which pushed the road behind her
so swiftly.

The lights were nearer. ■ Thekla could
make out indistinctly the outlines of the
men huddled together on the hay-cart.
Fortunate that she had realized the
dancer of lighting her own lantern!

THE DAM-BUILDERS.

703

Now, the hay-cart was not more than
a hundred yards ahead. She could ap-
proach no nearer by the road. Speaking
to the mare, she turned, still galloping,
into the field at the right.

Now the cart and the wagon were at
her left, a hundred feet distant in the
road. Even if they heard her the men
could not see her in that blackness. Their
horses were walking.

Now she had passed them. Gradually
she swung in toward the road again ; not
at too sharp an angle, lest the men detect
her.

Ah ! Freia stumbled ! She pulled her
to her feet, and the mare plunged on,
until the alfalfa no longer brushed about
them as they flew. Only then did Thekla
know that she "was in the road again, for
the lanterns which had given her a glim-
mer of the way when she first set out
from the house were now behind her.

A second later Freia's hoofs pounded
on the plank bridge which crossed the
stream by which Jack had found her that
first day. She had not got out of the
field too quickly. Fifty feet more before
turning and Freia would have gone down
among the boulders !

While one might count two hundred
she now let Freia gallop forward, un-
guided, into the darkness, trusting the
mare's keen sense to find the way. She
could not go on without light into the
narrow windings of the canon. When
she felt that she had gone a safe distance,
therefore, she pulled up. Freia raised
her head and snuffed at the sultry air.

Three matches Thekla had to strike
before she got the lantern lighted, but at
last it shone out, and its rays, feebly
though they battled against the night,
were like a friendly, hopeful word to her.
Before going forward again she heard
the horses behind her break into a trot.

Perhaps the driver had seen her light,
though she had concealed it all she could
by keeping it in front of her. Perhaps
they were merely getting eager to reach
the dam, and were taking advantage of
the gentle downward slope.

" On, Freia! " The mare bounded to-
ward the fading edge of the rim of lan-
tern-light ahead. Thekla was bending
to the animal's Shoulder, holding the lan-
tern in her elbow, at the right side.

(To be co

"On, Freia! She would reach the
dam in time to prepare Jack for what
was coming. The wagons must be far
behind.

Thekla suddenly remembered that, be-
fore reaching the dam, it would be
necessary to leave the old road for the
bridle-path that led up to one side of the
masonry and above it. How was she to
know she reached the bridle-path? How
was the mare to know?

" On, Freia! " A .new thought surged
through Thekla's brain. She was going
to Jack ! To Jack, whom she had never
hoped to see again !

What now of her decision to abide by
her father? She was leaving him for her
lover, and she could not go back. Yet
it was not too late. Even at this instant
she might rein in, put out her lantern,
find a place where she could, unseen, let
the wagons pass, and return to the valley.

Leave Jack unwarned? Let her father
and the men of the valley do that which
they had set out to do, without one final
effort to prevent them? No, she could
not turn back. Fate was forcing her to
choose her lover after all, and she was
glad. Her heart had come back to her,
and she was glad !

On and on rushed Freia. Blacker and
blacker the night hemmed them in.
Thekla suddenly caught herself swaying
in her seat. Her strength was giving
out, but she shut her teeth together, and
kept her eyes on the retreating patch of
lantern-lit road before them.

The mare stiffened her legs, and came
sliding to a halt. Thekla, plunging for-
ward, dropped the lantern and clutched
the animal's mane with both hands.
Barely she escaped a throw.

Freia stood, trembling. In the road
the lantern still burned, and it illumin-
ated grayly a barricade of timbers across
the road before them. At the right a
path led up the slope.

This, then, was the beginning of the
bridle-path. The old road had been
blocked, and the dam could lie but a
short distance ahead.

But who was this plunging down the
bridle-path, with long, eager strides?

" Jack ! " cried Thekla.

Then she slid from the horse, into her
lover's arms.
ntinued.)

THE PAYMASTER

BY FREDERICK SANDERS

Written for "The Railroad Man's Magazine."

E'S a fellow who is never really friendly —

In fact, I never saw him crack a smile;
Never asks you if you're smokin', never does a bit of jokin'

When you pass his private car in single file.
Still we're always mighty glad to know he's comin',
The world seems brighter when he is aroun' ;
Though there's none of us that know him; sure, each face in line must
show him
That he's got a standin' welcome to the town.

He's far from bein' what you'd call a " mixer,"

You never get a chance to learn his name;
Gee! his conversation's snappy — still he always makes us happy —

The way we crowd arGund him is a shame.
He's an interestin' fellow — for the minute —

We'd hate to hear that he was in a wreck,
For it certainly would grieve us if by accident he'd leave us ;

That is, before he handed us our check.

The missus, too, although she never saw hiniT"

Is extra friendly toward him, so to speak;
Just before he comes she's cheery, and it's then I'm " pet " and " dearie,''

I wish his monthly trips came every week.
She's marked the calendar to show his visits,

She knows just when he's comin' to a day;
He's the one that brings us all joy, from the old man to the call-boy.

We never kick to give him right o' way.

The president can come and go unnoticed —

He's the mogul of the road, we all know that —
But for a genuine reception the paymaster's an exception,

To him we're ready to take off our hat.
He's the one that really makes life worth the livin',

He's the one that helps to make life's track look clear;
Glad to take his hand a minute, when he's got the pay-check in it —

He's the one that brings the money and the cheer.

704

lain

the Rail from Coast
to Coast.

BY GILSON WILLETS,
Special Traveling Correspondent of "The Railroad Man's Magazine."

OWN in southern Arizona, where the Gila monster thrives! " That's

where Mr. 'Willets .takes us this month. Through the land of the

mescalero and the squaw, the desperado and the painted buck.

These stories have the ring of the desert. They are full of the odor of

that frontier country now fast fading before the great march of progress.

Indeed, there are only a few people left to tell such stories as Mr. Willets

relates here.

No. 11.— OUT IN THE "GREAT HOT."

Espee Men, Who Travel Along the Burning Deserts of Arizona and

the Mexican Line, Tell of Thrilling Encounters of

Bad Men with Outlaws.

OARD the Golden State
Limited. Running on the
Southern Pacific tracks
in southern California,
dropping down to the
far-famed Salton Sea.
It was a January afternoon. The suit
of clothes I wore was such as you would
wear in New York in spring. When I
hoarded the train at Los Angeles' that
morning I was comfortable in that suit.
But now, as we passed a station called
Dry Camp, I changed that suit for one
such as you would wear in New York on
the hottest day in summer.

Series began in March Railroad Man'

As we skirted that wondrous sea, cre-
ated in the middle of the desert by the
Colorado River flood — which will not
evaporate in less than twenty-five years,
even in that zone of heat — I took off
high shoes and put on low ones. At Tor-
tuga I swapped a high collar for the
lowest. As we approached Yuma and the
Arizona line, I shed my waistcoat. While
we stood still, within a half - hour of
Yuma — held up for some excellent rail-
road reason of safety — I went into the
buffet and shed my coat and rolled up
my shirt-sleeves. .

The mercury in the car showed one

i Magazine. Single copies, 10 cents.

9 R R

705

706

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

WELL, I M GLAD TO GET HOME AGAIN.

hundred degrees. We were in what the
railroad men call the " Hot Country."

" Is Yuma worse than this?''' I asked
Conductor Marvin, who was counting up
his tickets.

" Is it? Why this is refrigerated air
compared to anything else." Just then
Marvin looked up and beheld a frown on
a man who sat near us. That man was a
traveling passenger-agent of the Espee.

" What I mean to say is this," added
Marvin. " I mean that, compared to
this refrigerated air, Yuma is absolutely
arctic."

Is Yuma Hot?— Well— !

"Yuma hot?" put in the rear brake-
man, who came in with his lantern, for
it was about ten at night. "No, indeed ;
the winter climate of Yuma is simply -fine.
And a Yuma night — why, a Yuma night
is— well, it's a heap cooler there than it
is in Needles or Phoenix — yes, sir."

Here I caught a sly wink in the eye of
the Pullman conductor, who was helping

the train conductor
with his tickets.

" Yes, we just love
to lay oyer in Yuma,
we railroad men do,"
said Marvin, with an
ill-suppressed chuckle.
" You knowT that hoary
old blanket story of
Yuma, don't you?
There was a chap with
a pen - name of John
Phcenix and a real
name of Derby. He
was a lieutenant in the
army, and once was
stationed at Yuma.

He said a soldier
died at the garrison
in Yuma, and that his
ghost came back for
his a r rri y blankets.
Well, I'm just remind-
ing you of that story
in order to tell you the
latest news. It's a lie.
That soldier's ghost
didn't come back after
his blankets'; no, sir,
he didn't."

And Marvin chuck-
led again, and fairly shook with smiles.
" The lack of sincerity noticeable in
your speech, Marvin," here spoke up the
traveling passenger-agent, " will get you
disliked.

" Yuma, sir," he went on. addressing
me, "is a God - given climate for the
bringing of crops to a head and for de-
veloping that peculiarly fine flavor that
characterizes the lemons and other fruit
grown in that neighborhood."

" That's right," said Marvin, closing
his ticket-box with a slam as the train
moved on. ''The climatic joke about
Yuma i».>«,s dead as a door-nail all along
the Pacific division of the Espee."

That I was much mystified by all this
talk goes without saying. But before I
had been in Yuma half an hour that
night I was " on."

Weary of the Title.

The first thing I did was to get a
room in the hotel, which is on top of the
railroad station, or should I sav that the

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST

Yl/i

hotel comprises the second story of the
station? The second thing I did was to
look at the thermometer. It showed nine-
ty-eight degrees. The third thing I did
was to rustle around the station below
till I unearthed the cause of that phony
talk of the railroad men on the train.
And here's the great secret :

Yuma, through its board of trade,
made known to the Southern Pacific that
it was tired of being called the " hottest
town in the country." The Yumans were
weary of the notoriety gained through
stories of excessive heat. And the Espee
was asked to help Yuma get rid of its
unjust and unwarranted reputation, for
high mercurial figures.

Thereupon Traffic Manager Fee, of

the Espee, jumped in to the aid of the
Yumans in their struggle for a reputa-
tion for cold, and issued a general letter
to all employees of the line, asking them
to cut out levity as applied to the cli-
mate in and about Yuma. I quote part
of Mr. Fee's letter, and the quotation
will help you, as it helped me, to under-
stand the remarks of the railroad men on
board the Golden State Limited. The
famous letter reads :

Joking remarks concerning- Yuma,
are not only annoying to the people
trying to develop this land of great
possibility but a positive and serious
detraction, no matter how good-
naturedly or thoughtlessly made. Your
cooperation is earnestly solicited in

^/^O,

"i BELIEVE I AM ADDRESSING BURT ALVORD, HEAD OF THE
GANG OF TRAIN-ROBBERS."

708

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

creating for Yuma, and the section
thereabout, the reputation it is en-
titled to, as a region unexcelled in agri-
cultural and horticultural advantages,
and possessed of many attractions, and
to do away with any needless and
unjust references to ancient climatic
jokes which might well have been for-
gotten years ago.

A Climatic Joke.

And I want to acid to this the state-
ment, founded upon my own experience,
that the climatic joke as applied to Yuma
is a libel. I was as comfortable in Yuma
as I had been in Los Angeles, and as I
afterward was in Tucson, Benson, and
Deming, farther east on the line. Tour-
ists who fail to stop over at Yuma miss
a lot.

At sunrise in the morning I had al-
ready finished breakfast. Now, I put my
feet tip on the rail of the hotel's Italian
" gallery," watched the sluggish Colo-
rado River flowing below me, watched
the Yuma Indians coming and going on
the iron bridge that spans the river,
smoked, and listened to the stories of
Jared Llilpin, who was one of those rail-
road men who had to lay over frequently
at Yuma and " loved it."

" See they got that greaser that escaped
from the Territorial penitentiary here a
bit' back," said Jared Llilpin. " He
vamosed in the night, and they tracked
him up the Gila River. They lost his
track, however, and returned, saying :
' Oh, never mind ! Either the heat will
drive him back, or else we'll find his
bones bleaching somewhere in the Hot
Country — in due time — just like we
found the bones of that half-breed who
escaped some years ago and starved to
death in this same Hot Country.'

Glad to Get Home.

" Well, some days later they unearthed
that greaser I was speaking of down
here in a stable not a stone's throw from
the prison. He had doubled back on his
own trail, thinking he was making a get-
away. Being nearly dead with the heat
and lack of water and food, he didn't
know where he was going. And when
they landed him back in prison he said :
' Well, I'm glad- to get home again.' He

meant, you see, that prison walls were far
better than being a fugitive in the Hot
Country."

Jared Hilpin looked at the narrow,
sunken Colorado River, and continued :

" That Yuma is the capital of the Hot
Country, the Yumans frankly admit.
What they kick at is folks hinting that
the town is unbearable. We're comfy,
ain't we? Well, so's any one else who
comes here and behaves himself. It is
hot .in the country roundabout here, of
course — a simply fierce heat, to be sure —
but right here in Yuma it's tolerable, as
you'll testify.

" But when folks come here and insist
upon going for automobile-rides out into
the Great Hot at one o'clock in the day,
they must expect to be brought back dead,
like Spaulding was.

" Spaulding came here from San Fran-
cisco with a man named McCauley. It
was last August, right when we're at the
hottest. Spaulding had a mine out at
Gila Bend that he wanted to show to
McCauley. We warned them not to start
out at one o'clock, but to wait till night.
But they thought we didn't have sense.
So away they went in the hottest time of
the day and in the hottest month.

Get a Man Quickly.

" Now, let me show you how quick
these burning sands get a man not used
to them. To live in this heat you must
drink gallons of water. We railroad men
know all this, and that's why track-walk-
ers in this Hot Country drink more water
than camels. But Spaulding and Mc-
Cauley wouldn't listen to us. They
didn't take water enough. I said I would
show you how quick these burning sands
get a man not used to them. The two
men I've mentioned started from here, as
I said, at one o'clock. At six o'clock
that same night our folks at Blaisdell
Station saw a son of a Mexican drive up
in a buggy with one dead man and an-
other man almost dead.

" The Mexican boy said he had found
the two men lying face down on the
sands, alongside their motor-car. with the
fierce sun beating upon them. The dead
man was Spaulding. The Hot Country
had finished him in less than five hours.
McCauley, too, was in serious condition.

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

709

" Moral : When you come to Yuma,
stay in Yuma, except at night."

" You spoke of a half-breed escaping
from the penitentiary here, Mr. Hilpin,"
I said. "What's the story?"

Can't Live, Anyhow.

" Oh, his story doesn't amount to much,
except to show that no prisoner ever got
out of this prison here and lived to tell
the tale. The Hot Country will get 'em
every time. His death occurred in the
desert about four years previous to that
time when the railroad boys here, all
armed, made a rush on the prison to save
the life of the superintendent, Tom
Gates, and his guards.

" That was the time when there took
place right here in Yuma the most daring
and most deadly attempt at wholesale de-
livery ever made in any penal institution
in America.

" It was a morning in October, 1887.
I was a kid brakeman, working through

here at that time, in freight. We pulled
in here that morning and found the town
in an uproar, with folks calling on us to
get a gun quick and make a rush to the
prison. At the same time a fusillade of
shots smote my ears, and then came the
sharp crackcty-crack-crack.oi a Gatling.

"'What's going on here?' I asked.
' A battle with Indians or a celebration ? '

' Trouble at the
prison,' was the reply. /" "'
' The whole kit and ca- ' -. -v'-v^

boodle of them is prob-
ably trying to vamose.'

" With that I ran
back to the caboose,
seized my gun, and
joined the rest of the
fellows who Were scram-
bling for the prison.
When Ave got there,
ready to shoot the first
man in convict garb we
clapped eyes on, all was
silence. We found half

J/Mim^/m

r I

"the yumas manage sometimes to get
whisky, and we know the fire-water
comes mostly from tramps."

710

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

a dozen guards lying dead, and about a
dozen wounded.

" Outside of the prison lay the dead
bodies of nine convicts. Inside were more
dead convicts and a lot of wounded ones.

" And there was Tom Gates, wounded
so that he became a permanent physical
wreck. He killed himself ten years ago,
after years of suffering.

" Poor old Tom Gates ! He came out
of his private quarters -in the prison that
morning, to be set upon by four prison-
ers. The tussle took place within sight
of the armed guards on the prison walls.

" ' Shoot! ' yelled Gates.

" ' We daren't, for fear of hitting you,'
called the guards.

"'Never mind me. Shoot, I say!'
shouted Gates. And the guards let fly.
At the sound of those first shots, the
whole prison broke into Bedlam. Twenty
convicts slipped from the shops and fell
upon the guards and knocked them in-
sensible. Twenty others broke out of the
kitchen and laundry, and ran into the
prison office and snatched rifles and re-
volvers kept there for emergency.

" Then the slaughter began in earnest.
Guards and prisoners shot each other
standing so close together that their
bodies fell upon one another. In the
midst of the fray, twelve convicts got
over the walls and started on the run for
Yuma.

Let the Galling Loose.

"It was just then that I arrived in
town on the freight, for then it was that
the Gatling let loose. You see, they had
not been able to train the Gatling on the
men in • the prison yards, because they
couldn't get the proper angle to work the
gun. But, now, you bet the man behind
that Gatling opened up with the most
terrible fusillade ever heard of in these
parts.

" In as many seconds, he had laid nine
of the fleeing convicts in the dust, all
dead as a riddling of bullets could make
them. The other three, scared by the ap-
palling mortality list among their fel-
lows, threw up their hands and marched
back meekly to the prison yard.

" Inside the prison, meanwhile, the
convicts had used up all the cartridges
in their stolen weapons ; and now they,

too, threw up their hands. It was a
bloody battle, all right, even if we rail-
roaders did not, after all our rush, get a
chance to fire a shot."

So much for the morning " sitting "
with Jared Hilpin. He now induced me
to " move on " — " to show me round
town." When noon came, and Jared
pulled out on a freight, I found he had
left me with enough stories of the Hot
Country to keep me busy with my note-
book all through the siesta.

While everybody else in town was doz-
ing through the heat of the day (the mer-
cury now showed something over — well,
never mind!) I jotted down the skeleton
of this story :

Burt Alvord's Hold-Up

One Burt Alvord and his pals held up
a Southern Pacific train in the Hot Coun-
try, down Bowie way, in the spring of
1899. Alvord and his fellow train-rob-
bers were captured and lodged in jail in
Tombstone. Alvord - escaped, and for
three years lived as a fugitive in the des-
ert just over the Mexican line. And then
Burt Mossman was appointed captain —
the first captain — of the Arizona Rangers. -

Now, Burt Mossman's first work was
to get a notorious bandit named Chacon,
wanted in Arizona for the unprovoked
murder of four or' five peaceful denizens
of the Hot Country.

Mossman heard that Chacon was hiding
somewhere over the Mexican border in
company with the train-robber, Burt Al-
vord. And Mossman determined to go
alone to the camp of those men and get
Alvord to act as stool-pigeon in the cap-
ture of Chacon.

Alvord, the train - robber, was a des-
perado, of course, and was wanted. But
Chacon was-worse, and was wanted a
good deal more than Alvord. Mossman,
feeling that he could not take both men,
determined to try his hand, alone and un-
aided, in taking Chacon.

Accordingly, he rode over into Mexico
and hunted through the desert for days
in search of Alvord's camp. At last he
spied an old dobe hut near an arrovo.
Contriving to hide himself from view,
Mossman watched the hut for hours, and,
as a result, decided that the number of
inhabitants of that hut was just one.

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

711

Riding leisurely, he came to the hut,
was confronted by the one inhabitant
whom he had been observing, and said
to him :

" I believe I am addressing Burt Al-
vord, head of the gang of train-robbers
who held up the Southern Pacific near
Bowie three years ago, and who later es-
caped jail at Tombstone."

Stole to His Gun.

Any man except one with Mossman's
audacity might have been shot to death

on the part of the lone inhabitant of the
hut, and then Mossman said :

" Cut that out, Alvord. I told you I'm
here on a friendly errand. I'm starved
and thirsty, and I guess I'm a bit weak-
ened by heat. A little grub and water

"CHIEF JOSE. YOU ARE A LIAR, FOR YOU ARE NOT KEEPING YOUR WORD."

on the spot. The hand of the man ad-
dressed stole toward his gun. But Moss-
man continued :

" I'm unarmed, friend. I am here on
a friendly errand. My name is Mossman.
I'm the captain of the Arizona Rangers."

Another stealthy move toward the gun

would greatly facilitate these proceed-
ings." And with that Mossman dis-
mounted and walked up to Alvord, say-
ing, " Where's Chacon? "

" Reckon I see your game, Mossman.
I'm the stool-pigeon, am I?"

" You certainly are. There's a big re-

712

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

ward out for Chacon, dead or alive, as
you know. Deliver him to me, and you
get the reward. Then surrender your-
self, and I'll stand by you at your trial."
" I ain't hankerin' after surrender,"
observed Alvord, as he set about supply-
ing Mossman with food and drink, " but
I reckon that reward is worth riskin' a

"THANK YOU, YOUR HONOR. I LIKE THAT
PRISON BETTER' N ANY I'VE PATRONIZED."

gentleman's say-so when he says he'll
stand by me at trial. Maybe I recognize
the sound of a gentleman's voice when I
hear it."

Delivering Chacon.

The upshot of the matter was that when
Mossman rode away from the dobe that
night, arrangements had been made to
meet Alvord at a certain water-hole in

the Hot Country on the United States
side of the line, some twenty-five miles
from Benson, on the Southern Pacific.
At that water-hole Alvord promised to
deliver Chacon.

Mossman, as agreed, joined Alvord.
and Chacon at their camp, Alvord intro-
ducing Mossman as a fellow bandit and
fugitive who wished
to join with them in
a train hold-up which
Chacon himself had
planned — this ac-
counting for his pres-
ence within Arizona.

During the first
night in camp Alvord
awoke Mossman and
whispered: " I've kept
my part of the con-
tract. You've got Chacon. Don't forget
that I get the reward, together with your
stand-by at my trial — if I surrender."

Alvord stole away into the silence of
the desert night.

Next morning Chacon awoke to find
himself gazing into the muzzle of a six-
shooter.

"Throw up your hands, Chacon!"
commanded Mossman. " And don't
move ! Your rifle and revolver are out
of reach, and they won't be any further
use to you. Sorry I can't tarry for you
to have breakfast, but we've got to move
on to the railroad to catch that limited
to Benson. Now, stand up, keep your
back to your weapons, mount your horse,
and ride in front of me in a direct line
for the Espee tracks."

During that ride to- the railroad Cha-
con tried several times to throw himself
from his horse.

" If you fall," said Mossman, '.' I'll
drag you to the railroad by your neck."

At one of the desert water-tank sta-
tions, where the two at last arrived, Moss-
man flagged the limited, put Chacon
aboard, rode with his prisoner to Benson
— and later watched Chacon hang by the
neck until dead.

" Train-robbers," observed Jared Hil-
pin at the conclusion of his story, " have
thus their uses in this Hot Country. The
way Mossman used that train-robber to
capture a worse outlaw caused the cap-
tain of the Rangers to be highly respect-
ed by all the outlaws along the Espee in

RIDING THE RAIL FROM COAST TO COAST.

713

Arizona, right up to the time when he
was succeeded as head of the Rangers by
Tom Rynning, who was lieutenant of
Troop B of Roosevelt's Rough Riders."

On the station grounds at Yuma, when
a train pulls in from east or west, sit half
a dozen Yuma squaws, gaudily blanketed,
with wares to sell.

Like Our Coin.

" The squaws are all right as far as
they go," said a station man, " because,
through trading with white people, they
have learned to like us for our coin. But,
while the squaws sit there selling their
woven basket wares to travelers, the bucks
sit on yonder fence and leer at the whites
with truly racial hatred.

" Look at those bucks there now. Why,
when a train comes in and a white man
speaks to them, they will treat the stran-
ger with downright discourtesy.

" Yes, the bucks hate us, and they hate
especially the men connected with the
railroad, because they hold us responsible
for the bringing in of strangers. One
time one of the bucks got into an alter-
cation with a track-walker here, all be-
cause the track-walker wouldn't give the
buck a swig of whisky. Giving whisky
to redskins is forbidden here, as every-
where else in the country, and the rule
makes us lots of trouble. The Yumas
manage sometimes to get whisky, and we
know the fire-water comes mostly from
tramps who pass through here by the
hundred.

" Well, in the altercation the buck
stabbed the track- walker — and immedi-
ately a lot of folks here, including men
with authority, got after that buck. They
caught up with him ; and when he showed
fight, they shot him dead — ' killed while
resisting the law.'

" Gee ! There was more trouble. When
we held the body for the necessary in-
quest the Injuns thought they were to be
denied the right to receive the buck's body
and to bury him according to their own
peculiar tribal rites. So they prepared
for war. About a hundred of them turned
out ready to wipe the white man off the
earth and to send all railroad men here-
abouts to a kind of unhappy hunting-
ground.

" But just as they were about to march

over from their reservation over there,
across the river on the California side,
one of their squaws — a young girl — ■
rushed up to them and addressed them.
The result was the Yumas laid down their
arms, as it were, and let us whites live a
while longer.

"Now, that squaw who addressed
them was one who had been educated in
the Indian school over there — that
nice, cool-looking, brown-painted build-
ing across the river. One of us went to
her and asked what she had said to her
kinsmen.

" ' Common sense,' she replied. ' I told
them you white men would send them the
way of our Amigo Powder-Face, whom
you killed for resisting your law. And
I promised that you would give them
the body of our Amigo when you were
through with your legal proceedings.
Will you? Because if you won't, I'm to
be killed and buried myself in Amigo's
place. Yes, I promised them my own life
if I failed to secure the body of Amigo
for them.'

Fearless Miss Egan.

" ' The Indians that live nearest to
Hades.' That's the way I heard the
Yuma Indians designated — not in Yuma,
-be it said — because, I suppose, they live
in the hottest area in the United States.
But there's- one woman, at least, in that
Hot Country who would not so designate
the tribe. She is Miss Emma Egan, head
of the Indian school to which the station
man had referred.

" She's the bravest woman in the whole
Hot Country, I was told, and, in cor-
roboration of that statement, listen to the
incident that made Miss Egan famous.

" It was last April," said the station
man. " The Yumas were holding what
will doubtless be the last mourning feast
that we'll ever see here. Our road had
brought a lot of tourists and sightseers
and professors and ethnologists and
Smithsonian boys and photographers and
all like that into Yuma from east and
west to witness the mourning feast.
Heaven, how the Indians hated to see
the strangers pouring in !

" The mourning feast included a sham
battle, and fully fifteen hundred Indians
had gathered for the make-believe fray.

714

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

They were headed by Chief Jose, one of
the worst haters of the whites.

" Just before the battle was to take
place, Chief Jose comes down to the In-
dian school and asks for Miss Egan, the
superintendent. She weighs about a hun-
dred pounds ! But then weight hasn't
anything to do with bravery. For here's
what happened :

" Chief Jose takes one look at the di-
minutive boss of the school, and then
grunts contemptuously and says :

" ' Him white man must all go away.
Him white man not welcome.' And more
talk to this effect, during which time
scores of bucks joined their chief, all
grunting and backing him up with ' Yi !
Yi ! ' in everything Jose said. From all
of which Miss Egan finally gathered
that the Indians actually wanted every
white, person to withdraw from the res-
ervation during the battle and the feast.

"Was Miss Egan frightened? I guess
not! Miss Egan can have anything we
railroaders have got, and all we've got
any time, including our last drop of blood
in fighting for her, if ever she needs our
backing. When Chief Jose got all
through with his demands for the with-
drawal of the white people, Miss Egan
folded her arms and said :

" ' Chief Jose, you're a coward for
speaking to a woman as you have spoken
to me. There's a number of United
States government men on this reserva-
tion. Why didn't you go to them with
your demands? You didn't dare. So you
came to me, a woman. Also, Chief Jose,
you are a liar, for you are not keeping
your word. You promised to give this
sham battle for the whites to witness.

Was She Frightened — Nix!

" ' These white people have spent lots
of money to get here, paying their money
solely on your word to give this exhibi-
tion by the members of your tribe. Now,
then, you just get back in the field and
shoot off your guns, and go right on
with this battle for which the whites
have paid. Scat ! Away with you ! '

" And Chief Jose and his scores of
braves slunk away from that little school-
ma'am like so many whipped curs.

" Yes, we railroad men regard Miss
Egan as one of us ; and, if ever the In-

dians give her trouble, she'll find the boys
of the Espee hereabouts fighting for her
to the last."

After the siesta, that afternoon at
Yuma, I meandered "through the railroad
yards in quest of anything in the story
line the gods might grant.

" He's back — Will Douglas is back! "
I heard one of the men say to a comrade.

"What's he been doing now?" asked
the comrade.

" Robbing the Espee depot at Tuc-
son," was the answer.

At this point I joined the freight train-
men, for such they were, and asked :

Best Jail on Earth.

"Who's this Will Douglas?"

" Oh, he's a boarder at the Territorial
pen here. He has boarded here before.
He likes the life. He's spent twenty-
three out of the last twenty-five years in
one prison or another. He was here two
years, and the boys here know him well.

" We didn't think he'd rob the railroad
that's treated him good and kind, though ;
for many's the time we've given him a lift
in the short periods when he wasn't in
jail. Yes, besides his terms here, he has
spent eleven years in California prisons,
two in Colorado, and five in New Mexico.

" Well, when he swiped money from
our depot at Tucson not long ago, he let
himself get caught, and then pleaded not
guilty, telling the judge he did so be-
cause he knew he would get a longer
term in prison than if he pleaded guilty.
The judge took him at his word, and gave
him fifteen years in this pen here."

' Thank you, your honor,' says Will
Douglas. ' I like that prison better'n any
I've patronized. They treat you better
there than they treat prisoners anywhere
else in this country.'

" And now Will Douglas is home once
again. On the way here on the train, he
told Conductor Hayes — so Hayes tells
us — that his great ambish is to be the
official photographer of this pen.

" You see, Will Douglas is a Hot Coun-
try criminal. He works his games only
where the heat is at its greatest. And
he says the prison here is a nice cool place,
and that the mess-room where the prison-
ers eat has got the broiling sun of the
desert skinned to death for comfort."

-SAY, PERFESSOR, IF YOU WANT TO HOLD

CONVERSE WITH ME, YOU'LL HAVE TO

DO IT IN UNDEFILED ENGLISH."

WHAT DID DUGAN DO TO HIM?

BY E. FLORENCE

He Fell Asleep in Signor Aviati's Balloon
and Did a Marathon Athwart the Sky.

P at Darky's Gap the train
was held by a washout
which had weakened the
bridge piers. The repair
gang had arrived, and
their work was nearing
completion. Meanwhile, the passengers
were fretting at the delay and indulging
in caustic comments about mismanaged
railroads.

Dugan, the fireman, was seated on a
boulder, enjoying- the solace of his dhu-
deen, when the college professor strolled
up and borrowed a match. After light-
ing his cigar, he seated himself on another
boulder and remarked:

" The rigors of your calling are evi-

dently productive of a disposition which
ignores the annoyance incident to events
of this character."

" Hey — wot?" asked Dugan quizzi-
cally.

" I remarked that you were probably
accustomed to such delays as this," re-
iterated the college professor.

" Say, perfessor," continued Dugan,
" if you want to hold converse with me,
You'll have to do it in undefiled English,
and cut out your linguistic accomplish-
ment. I understand your proposition as
stated last, and I wish to remark that
you don't see me losing any sleep over
the delay.

" There are some on board that sup-

7r5.

716

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE. '

HE TURNED LOOSE A VOLUME OF

LANGUAGE THAT MADE THE

BALLOON SWAY."

pressed express who are, no doubt, even
now hankering for the mirth-marts of the
metropolis, but when you put me in ad-
jacent juxtaposition to a scene like this
you place me in what I consider the me-,
tropolis of the universe."

" Drawing an inference from the sen-
timents you express," said the college
professor, " I should hazard the opinion
that you are attuned with the infinite in
nature — er — that is, you are, no doubt,
a lover of nature."

" You threw high ace on the second
throw, perfessor," replied Dugan. " It's
me for nature, every time."

" Communion with nature," continued
the college professor, " is commendable,
in that it develops the intelligence. When
man awakens to the grandeur of nature,
he metamorphoses from a barbarian, bat-
tling for existence, to a living, thinking
intelligence — er — that is, I should say,
nature-lovers are always men of more
than average qualifications."

" Say, perfessor, just eliminate the im-
pressionistic word-picture prelude from
your next observation," cautioned Dugan.
" When a man puts in most of his time
shoveling the resurrected carbonized re-
mains of primeval forests into the capa-
cious maw of a hog-back, the opportuni-
ties for extending his vocabulary are
necessarily limited."

" Do you never tire of the
monotony of the same mode of
locomotion?" queried the col-
lege professor.

" Tire of it? " asked Dugan.
Why, perfessor, it's the diver-
sification of the business that
makes it alluring. I've trav-
eled in almost every kind of
conveyance contemporaneous to
railroading. I've been an un-
willing passenger on a run-
away freight, bumping down
the mountain; I've raced ahead
of a forest fire that would have
made Dante's Inferno crack
an auroric blush for paucity of
caloric, and I've traveled in-
cognito as chaperone to a lot
of bellowing bossies on board
an Atlantic bateau, but the
tour de resistance in the trav-
eling line was when I took a
trip through the trackless at-
with Signor Aviati in his bisj

mosphen
balloon."

" Was it a dirigible?" asked the pro-
fessor.

" No," replied Dugan, with spirit.
" It was a discourageable."

" Aeronautics and the science of avia-
tion are making rapid strides in the con-
quest of the realm of space," continued
the college professor. " Do you realize,
my friend, that this is the age of air?"

"Hot or cold?" questioned Dugan.

The professor ignored the irrelevant
remark, and continued : " This balloon
experience of yours — what was it like ? "

" Well," replied Dugan, " it had its
incipiency at one of the big county fairs
that are held annually in different sec-
tions of New Jersey. I was heaving the
bituminous on the Jersey Central at the
time, and, on one of my off days. I
thought I would take in the festivities
and mingle with the exponents of the
' Three Acres and Liberty ' theory.

WHAT DID DUGAN DO TO HIM?

717

" After viewing all the attractions at
the agricultural aggregation, and trying
to guess the weight of an obessified hog
and a number of seeds in a pompous
pumpkin, I wandered over to the feed-
garage and used my meal-ticket.

" Then, in reconnoitering for a cozy
nook in which to take my postprandial
siesta, I ran across the balloon, inflated
for the ascent of Signor Aviati. The
basket looked inviting, so I climbed in
when nobody was looking, curled up on
the bottom, and was soon sound asleep.

" The next thing I knew was that
some one was shaking me, trying to
awaken me. Opening my eyes, I recog-
nized Signor Aviati, and in my half-
dazed condition I imagined he was serv-
ing a writ of ejectment.

" I started to climb out of the basket,
when he grabbed me and turned loose a
volume of language that made the bal-
loon sway. With my chin and one leg
thrown over the edge of the basket, I
looked down, and promptly dropped to
the bottom of the basket."

"'What has happened, signor e? ' I
asked.

" ' You fell asleep in the basket, and
I only discovered you after we had start-
ed up,' he replied.

"'Are we going up?' I shrieked.
' See here, signor e, just you jam on the
air, and let me off at the next stopping-
place.'

" ' Impossible,' -replied the signor. ' I
cannot let you out without descending,
and if I descend I shall not have enough
gas to rise again. You may as well ac-
cept the inevitable and get what enjoy-
ment you can out of this experience.'

" Well, Signor Aviati finally convinced
me that there was no use getting. up in
the air, so I concluded to keep my feet
on the ground, or rather on the bottom
of the basket. I looked over the side,
and was soon lost in the enjoyment of
the novel sensation. We appeared to be
suspended in mid air, while the scenery
below floated by like a huge panorama.
As we gained a higher altitude the build-
ings seemed to grow smaller, but the
toot-onsomble of the scene was magnifi-
cent.

" Signor Aviati said we were floating
westward, and very soon he pointed to
where the Delaware River shone in the

landscape like a silver ribbon. On we
sailed, and very soon we were traveling
over the State of Pennsylvania.

" ' Say, signorc,' I remarked, ' I don't
suppose there is any danger of running
into an open switch or indulging in a
rear-end collision?'

No,' he replied ; ' you are as safe
here as in the cab of your locomotive.'

" We continued to travel for some
time, Signor Aviati pointing out the in-
teresting spots, when suddenly the bal-
loon started rapidly downward. I asked
the signor if he couldn't slack up a little,
as I had no desire to knock a dent in the
landscape.

' ' ' Here— get busy ! ' he replied. ' We've
got to get rid of some ballast.' He
picked up a bag of sand and emptied the
contents over the side. I did the same.
The throwing out of the ballast seemed
to check our downward course, and 1
noted we Avere approaching a manufac-
turing town, judging from the number
of great high chimneys.

" After floating along for some time
that blooming air-ship started downward
again at a fast clip. We sprinkled some
more sand over the landscape, and I
must confess I wras rapidly losing my
stock of the same substance.

There must be something wrong
with the valve,' said the signor anxiously.

"'Got a monkey-wrench aboard?' I
asked. ' Maybe I can fix it.' Then I
realized, from his grin, that I was dis-
playing my superior ignorance.

" Well, we got rid of all the sand, but
still continued to descend. Signor Aviati
looked worried.

Say, signore/ I remarked, ' if you've
got anything heavy on your mind, you'd
better get rid of it. We seem to be
carrying too much weight as it is.'

" The signor made no reply, and we
continued to descend toward that busy
burg, while the chimneys rushed up to
meet us. Suddenly we banged into some-
thing, and came to an abrupt stop.

" ' What's up? ' I asked, as I suddenly
sat down in the bottom of the basket.

" The signor gathered himself together
and looked over the side. ' Well, I'll be
blowed ! ' he ejaculated.

" I arose and took a peep over, and
what do you suppose had happened?"

" I ] >resume you had landed in. the

718

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

branches of a tree," ventured the college
professor.

" Worse than that," replied Dugan.
"In our swift drop downward we had
shot straight for one of those tall chim-
neys and had struck it plumb center, and
there Ave Avere, our basket stuck in the
top of that blooming chimney like the
corrugated cork in the top of a tall cham-
pagne bottle.

" The signor got busy, and climbed up
the ropes to the gas-bag.

" ' Say, sport,' I called after him,
' you've got your nerve with you all right.
What you going to do ? '

" ' You keep quiet,' he replied. ' I'm
going to fix that valve.'

" Well, he climbed to the top of that
swaying gas-bag, and I lost sight of him.
Pretty soon he came down, and said he
had fixed the valve all right.

" ' Say, signoref I inquired, ' are you
in the habit of doing this Santy Glaus
act in your aerial flights? This trick
we've just pulled off may give the na-
tives the impression that we're in the
habit of hitting the pipe.'

" ' Dugan,' he replied, ' this is no joke.
We're stuck, good and tight. Look at
those natives down there.'

" I looked down, and saw a lot of men
gesticulating wildly. ' What appears to
be the matter with the wildly waving
working men?' I asked.

" ' I guess they want us to get off the
chimney,' answered Aviati.

" ' Why should they be so anxious to
have us vacate our snug harbor ? ' I ques-
tioned.

" ' Can't' imagine,' replied the signor.

" That they were extremely anxious
that Ave should depart was evident from
their actions. They stood there and
waved their arms and shook their fists at
us, and even tried to shout their desires.
One fellow even got a megaphone and
pointed it our way, but his voice failed
to reach us.

" Then I noticed one of the grimy
mechanics running toward the fields, car-
rying a flat, oblong object. He skir-
mished around for a while, and I realized
that he Avas trying to raise a kite. Final-
ly he got it up, and it dawned on me
that he was trying to send it our way.

" ' Looks as though there was a mes-
due here shortly,' I remarked.

" ' Well, I guess AA-e're equipped for
taking care of that kind of wireless,' com-
mented Aviati.

" That felloAv was certainly an expert
in the art of kite-flying, for Ave could see
it coming directly tOAvard us. We Avaited
until that aerial epistle-bearer got Avithin
reach, then Aviati grabbed it, Avhile I
held on to his coat-tails. On the face of
the kite was Avritten :

If you don't Avant to be roasted alive,
get off the chimney, quick. We pull our
next blast in half an hour.

The Exgixeer.

" The information was startling. We
looked at each other in dismay. There
Ave AArere, marooned on top of a fiery
\rolcano that Avas likely to go into execu-
tive session shortly. Suddenly I -realized
that the bottom of the basket Avas getting
hot.

" ' Say, signoref I remarked, ' don't you
feel the heat coming up the chimney? '

" ' Yes,' he replied ; ' I\*e noticed it
for some time, and it has given me an
idea. If Ave can cut a hole in the bottom
of the basket, and let some of that hot
air into the gas-bag, it Avill make the gas
more buoyant, and Ave Avill be able to rise
again. Of course, it "will be necessary
for you to get out on top of the chimney
and loosen up the basket.'

" ' Yes,' I replied, ' that's all very
pretty; but how are we going to steer
that superheated oxygen into that pran-
cing gas-bag? Signor e, suppose you ap-
point yourself a committee on ways and
means to deAdse a scheme for escorting
the eager air to the waiting bag.'

" ' I have it ! ' he exclaimed excitedly.
' I have a scheme for getting that hot air
into the gas-bag. HaA-e you a knife?
Good ! Take off your coat and cut the
sleeves out at the shoulder, and Ave will
put my plan into execution.'

" I got busy, and ruined my best coat.
The signor handed me his coat, and I
cut the sleeves out of that also. Then he
put them together like a stovepipe, fas-
tening them with pins. That gave him
a sort of tube about ten feet long. He
took one end of it and, climbing up into
the ropes supporting the basket, he man-
aged to reach the neck of the gas-bag,
which extended down three or four feet.

WHAT DID DUGAN DO TO HIM?

719

To this he fastened our improvised tube of the chimney and see. if you can't

and descended into the basket. loosen the basket.'

" Then we got to work and cut a hole " I didn't relish the assignment, and

about three inches in diameter in the bot- protested. * Suppose I fall off, or sup-

ARE YOU IN THE HABIT OF DOING THIS
SANTY CLAUS ACT IN YOUR AERIAL
FLIGHTS ? "

torn of the basket. As the piece dropped pose the balloon gets away before I can

down the chimney a blast of hot air shot climb back? ' I cried.
up through the hole. The signer grabbed " The signor evidently didn't like my

the loose end of the tube and held it in -objection, for he let loose a lot of cuss

position over the opening. words in his native tongue. His garlic-

" ' Quick ! ' he cried. ' Get out on top tinctured language seemed to have a seda-

720

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

live effect on' me, for I got out on top of
that stately stack and pulled' at the basket
with all my might.

" The balloon, meanwhile, was sway-
ing and tugging like all possessed. Sud-
denly I felt the basket loosening up and,
giving a last tug, I sprang in just as we
pulled away from the chimney's loving
embrace and went soaring skyward.

" We didn't make our get-away any
too soon. From a safe distance we saw
a volume of flame suddenly burst from
the chimney, which would surely have
cremated us had we been there."

" A very narrow and sensational es-
cape," commented the college professor.
" The necessity of quick action invariably
calls into play the latent resources of
man."

" Yes, but our troubles were not yet
over," continued Dugan. " Signor Avi-
ati announced that we could not possibly
land for some time, owing to the rough
and wooded nature of the country over
which we were traveling.

" Counting the time we were stuck on
the chimney, we had been up in the air
about three hours. The sun was sinking
rapidly, and if we did not effect a land-
ing pretty soon we would be compelled
to remain up in the air all night.

" c Signor ef I inquired, ' have you a
buffet-car attached to this outfit? A
club-sandwich and a bottle of ale would
be going some just now.'

" For reply the signor produced a flask
from the region of his hip and handed
it to me. Unscrewing the stopper in
gleesome anticipation, I said : ' Well,
here's how, signorc. Prosit ! '

" I took a long pull and handed the
flask back. ' Say, signorc' I spluttered,
' that stuff isn't spiritus jrumenti.'

"'No,' he chuckled; 'it's tea. The
Aeronautists' Union prohibits the taking
of spirits into balloons.'

" ' I shouldn't think you'd be afraid
of the walking-delegate up here,' I grum-
bled.

" We continued floating over the
wooded country, and presently our bal-
loon developed a new trait. We appeared
to be sliding down hill — that is, we
went forward and downward at the same
time. Our anchor was swaying at the
end of the rope, about a hundred and
fifty feet below. Suddenly we stopped

with a jerk. The anchor had caught in
the branches of a tree.

" ' Well, signore,' I observed, ' I guess
we're safe now.'

" ' No,' he replied, ' we can't make a
landing among those trees. We've got
to get that anchor loose somehow.'

" ' Do you think it is caught good and
tight ? ' I inquired.

" ' It's caught too blamed tight,' he
replied.

" ' Good ! ' I exclaimed. ' I'm going
to shin down that rope. You may con-
tinue your journey, if you wish, but it's
me for the haunts of man,' and I climbed
over the edge of the basket, and started
down that rope like a jolly Jack tar.

" I had descended about three-fourths
of the distance, when I felt the anchor
break loose. We started ahead once more,
with a frightened coal-heaver hanging
onto that rope like grim death, and swing-
ing in the breeze like the pendulum of an
aerial horologe.

" We raced along for some time, when
suddenly I heard the shrieking of a loco-
motive whistle. It was a familiar and
welcome sound, but not very reassuring
to one in my position.

" Looking down, I noticed that we
had cleared the wooded country, and
were traveling along over a railroad. A
fast freight was approaching in the same
direction. The balloon continued to de-
scend. As the locomotive passed beneath
us the anchor barely missed hitting the
smoke-stack. The train passed by with
a roar, and suddenly, as the last car
passed, there was a jerk on the rope,
which nearly dislodged me, and we went
sailing along in the wake of that train
like a hungry hawk chasing a plump
prairie pullet.

" The anchor had caught in the brake-
Avheel of the rear car.

" I hung on like grim death, while
the scenery rushed beneath me. ' This
is all right,' I mused, ' so long as that
towing engine don't go under a bridge
or into a tunnel. I Avonder whether that
engineer has recently passed the eye-test?
He don't seem to notice the local color-
ing that I am giving to the occasion.'

" I was beginning to give up hope,

when that thug at the throttle whistled

• ' down brakes,' and the train quickly

came to a standstill. I negotiated the

WHAT DID DUGAN DO TO HIM?

721

distance between me and that freight in
record time, giving a good imitation of
the famous slide for life.

" The crew came running back over the
tops of those cars to see what kind of
game they had landed.

" ' Say, you durned sky-pilot,' growled
the engineer, ' don't you know better than
to hold up a freight-train?'

" ' What's eating you, you consarned
engine-pusher ! ' I sassed back. ' I hap-
pen to be a railroad man myself, and if
you know your business you won't have
to work very hard to make that hog-back
make up the little time we delay you.'

" Then I gave them the signal of dis-
tress, and they took me into the caboose
and administered to my spiritual needs.
When we emerged I found that the
sign or had let the gas out of the balloon
and effected a landing. We gathered it
up and loaded it into an empty freight-

" ' Need any firemen
up there ? ' I asked.

" ' Yes,' he answered.
' Old Hinchman wants
a man to fire on the
through express. You
might land that.'

" Well, I saw the old
man, and got the job
I'm now holding
down. Not often a
fellow can catch '
onto a job as I

SWINGING IN
THE BREEZE LIKE
THE PENDULUM
OF AN AERIAL
HORO-

car. Then the sign or and myself climbed
into the caboose and continued our
journey.

" ' Where you bound for?' I inquired
of the brakeman.

" ' Altoona,' he replied.
10 R R

did. Hey, per-
fessor? "

"No," replied
the college professor.
" You have entertained
me with a highly inter-
esting and extraordinary
recital of almost incredible
adventure, for which I am your
debtor. Judging from the activity
of the attaches of the train, I would
-hazard the opinion that we are about
to proceed.

" Before we start, I wish to re-
mark, apropos of your dropping into
a situation as you did, that man, in
the pursuit of his avocation, is often
handicapped by a plethora of power
and a paucity of opportunity. The
mills and the marts of the world are
crowded with workers; and when a
man can descend from the ethereal
void and figuratively land in the lap
of opportunity, it is, to
say the least, remarkable.
" The aerial flight which
took you from one posi-
tion and deposited you
into the arms of the
waiting Hinchman, was
certainly taken at the psy-
chological moment."

" Well," remarked Du-
gan, "old Hinchman isn't v
throwing any bouquets, so
I don't know whether or
not he regards me as a
heaven - sent emissary to fill a vacancy.
All I know is I landed on the job, and
I'm holding it down. I guess now I'll
get busy and make steam, so we won't
have any trouble pulling your vocabu-
lary. Orry war, perfessor."

Largest
Electric
Engine.

Its Unique Drive and Simplic-
ity of Control — To Be
Used for the Penn-
sylvania's Under-
ground Service.

N untrained eye, glan-
cing at the cut on
this page, will
doubtless be puz-
zled for a moment
to decide what
definite class of machine the mon-
ster belongs to. At first sight, if
it were not for the aid of the
dotted diagram, it might be mis-
taken for a track-laying machine,
or a wrecking engine, or almost
anything but a high-speed, power-
ful electric locomotive.

That is what it is, nevertheless.
It is the last word in electric lo-
comotives, and it is spoken by the
Pennsylvania. The larger of the
cuts opposite represents the chassis
of the first electric locomotive to
be used in the New York tunnel
extension of the Pennsylvania.
The smaller cut is the complete
locomotive.

When work was first started on
the Pennsylvania tunnels and sta-
tion the engineers of the railroad
company, cooperating with those
of the Westinghouse Electric and
Manufacturing Company, took up
the problem of designing an elec-
tric locomotive which would cope
successfully with the heavy grades
necessary in the river tunnels.
Since then electric locomotives
have been designed, constructed,

722

LARGEST ELECTRIC ENGINE.

723

and tested, and special recording track
sections have been laid and electrified.

Number 3998, the locomotive shown,
weighs 330,000 pounds. It will develop
4,000 horse-power — about three times as
much as a giant freight locomotive — and
could pull a heavy freight - train at a
speed of some sixty or seventy mires per
hour. In appearance, it is similar to two
passenger coaches, with huge driving-
wheels and rods.

The cabin conceals the giant motors
with which the driving-rods connect, but
a view of the chassis gives an excellent
idea of the intricacy of the machines,
which are soon to haul some one thou-
sand trains in and out of New York sta-
tion every day.

. The " Pennsylvania " type locomotive,
as the design is named, is built in two
sections ; that is, there are two cabs and
two running gears, jointed at the middle.
Each section has eight wheels, four of
which are drivers, sixty-eight inches in
diameter, the other four being truck
wheels, thirty-six inches in diameter, con-
stituting in their arrangement and weight
distribution what in steam locomotives is
called the " American " type.

Two pairs of drive-wheels are coupled,
not to the customary cross-head and pis-
tons, but to a crank-shaft, called a jack-,
shaft, in line with the driver-axles, which
in turn is coupled to a motor crank-shaft,
to which a single motor delivers all its

power. The cranks are ninety degrees
apart, so that there can be no " on-cen-
ter " position. The motor-crank revolves
uniformly and at constant effort.

The single motor weighs, without gear,
forty-five thousand pounds, and in weight
and power it is the largest railway motor
ever constructed. It projects into the
cab and, in fact, fills a large part of it.

The main control apparatus is in a
bulkhead centrally located so that there
are ample passageways along the sides.
At one end is located the electrically
driven air-compressor for operating the
air-brakes.

The controller on the " Pennsylvania "
type is scarcely as large as that on a Hoe
printing-press. None of the main power
passes through it, as it is' really a switch
corresponding to a telegrapher's key,
operated by electro-pneumatic means.
With a lever, which can be moved with
one finger, the engineer can admit to the
locomotive a current equal to that avail-
able in a hundred trolley-cars.

The total weight of the locomotive is
166 tons, 103 tons being mechanical parts
and 63 tons for electrical parts. The
maximum speed is from 60 to 70 miles
an hour under load. The maximum
draw-bar pull is 60,000 pounds, and a
mechanical shock without injury can be
sustained up to 600,000 pounds. The
total wheel-base is 56 feet, and the weight
on drivers 14 tons.

PENNSY GOES TO FARMING.

THE Pennsylvania Railroad has bought a
farm of fifty acres at Bacon, Dela-
ware, on the Delaware Railroad, to operate
as an experiment station for the farmers of
Maryland, Delaware and Virginia.

President James McCrea made a trip
through the peninsula and saw thousands
of acres idle, with the adjoining farms flour-
ishing. Knowing the success of Long Island
experimental farms, which have now been
in operation four years, Mr. McCrea sug-
gested the present experiment.

The cooperation of the farmers of the
peninsula in this enterprise is already as-
sured, and the State agricultural colleges
and horticultural societies are supporters.

This peninsula is favorably situated.
Fruit and vegetables are delivered in one
day in Maryland and Pennsylvania, and
fast freight trains are run to all points
east of the Mississippi.

The demand is greater than can now be
met, and the railway is taking steps to
aid in increasing the number of farmers to
supply it. H, S. Lippincott, a graduate
of the agricultural college at Cornell Uni-
versity, is superintendent of the farm.

He will visit the granges and farmers'
institutes on the peninsula and will be pre-
pared to make addresses. He will make ex-
hibits of some of the products raised on
tlie farm.

"Uncle Holly's" Record Run.

BY SAM HENRY

THE TRUE STORY SERIES. Many people believe that the
fastest time is made by limited trains. This is true so far as long
distances are concerned, but frequently a local train running between
small towns will make faster time than those having the right of way.

This is a story of a race between that famous train known as the Sunset
Limited and No. 19, a local passenger. That is, it is a race 'in so far as the
local made the best time under pretty difficult circumstances. The train had
one hour to make the distance between Rosenberg and Houston; and, all
things taken into consideration, 'it is a pretty slick run.

Holly Pierson, on No. 19, Was Ordered Out Under the Rule of First

In First Out. He Had a Hot Time Keeping Ahead

of the Limited.

TRUE STORY, NUMBER FORTY.

OLLY PIERSON, whom we citizens for coming in contact with this
lovingly called " Uncle grand old man, not from any counsel he
Holly," had been with the gave them, but from his splendid ex-
Southern Pacific ever since ample.

the old Galveston, Harris- He observed all rules strictly, never

burg and San Antonio exceeded a speed limit, always had his

Railroad had reached Alleyton, Texas, train on time to the minute if there were

and was running trains from Harrisburg, no delays — but when late, he would make

Texas, to Alleyton. up very little time.

As many as ten of the Southern Pa- It was said that if the despatcher or-

cific's best living engineers, now classed dered him to make an unusual run,

as old-timers, with possibly as many more " Uncle Holly " could be depended upon

gone over the " Great Divide," had shov- to carry out the order; and, never hav-

eled coal to make steam for " Uncle ing had an accident, the officials had un-

Holly's " engine. limited confidence in him.

Men in all walks of life were better Up to the writing of this story, I had

Editor's Note: All the stories published in this True Story Series have been carefully
verified by application to officers or employees of the roads or companies concerned who
are in a position to be acquainted with the facts. Contributors should give us the names of
responsible persons to whom we may apply for such verification, in order that fruitless
inquiries may be avoided. This condition does not imply any lack of confidence in the
veracity of our contributors, but is imposed merely to give greater weight and authenticity
to the stories.

Series began in the October, 1906. Railroad Man'i Mtcatiac. Single Copiei, (0 reott.

724

"UNCLE HOLLY'S" FAST RUN.

725

been riding as a mail-clerk for twenty-
five years, right behind the engine, and

1 believe that no one can better judge
the merits of an engineer than a mail-
clerk, because he gets the full force of
an engineer's action.

During those twenty-five years of serv-
ice, the most exciting run I had was be-
hind " Uncle Holly," in 1894, between
San Antonio and Houston, Texas.

At that time the Southern Pacific was
running their Sunset Limited three times
a week, due to leave San Antonio at 2.15
p.m., arriving at Houston 7.45 p.m., mak-
ing only three stops in the two hundred
and ten miles.

No. 19, originating at C. P. Diaz,
Mexico, was due to leave San Antonio at
11.20 a.m., arriving at Houston at 7.15
p.m., but on this particular day we were
very late, arriving at San Antonio at

2 p.m., the Sunset Limited at 2.05 p.m.
After the limited arrived it was found

that something was wrong which would
cause a thirty-minutes delay. No. 19 was
ordered out at 2.15 p.m., and under the
rule of first in first out, " Uncle Holly"
and Peter Vahey, due to leave with the
Sunset Limited, were ordered, instead, to
take No. 19.

These two men were the oldest engi-
neer and conductor, in point of years and
service, on" the G. H. and S. A., an eight-
hundred-mile part of the Southern Pa-
cific System.

Several railroad boys, standing where
" Uncle Holly " could hear them, said
that there was nothing wrong with the
limited ; it was only a trick to get him
on No. 19. Being sixty-four years of
age, he was too old to make the time of
the limited, which would pass No. 19
twenty-five or thirty miles out, under the
fifteen-minute rules.

" Uncle Holly " was a very silent man.
He said nothing until Peter Vahey came
up with orders and to compare watches.
After reading the orders that the Sunset
Limited would run thirty minutes late to
Glidden, he started to climb his engine,
saying: "Pete, the limited will never
pass me to-day if we are not stopped by
orders."

I knew that I was about to enter upon
one of the most exciting experiences of
my train life.

Our engine was sixty tons, with five-

foot drivers, and we had six cars. The
limited had the same number, only her
cars were of sleeper weight.

We got the signal at 2.15 p.m. On the
start was a heavy hill, a hard pull, where
a good deal of slipping of drivers was
required to get out ; but the moment
" Uncle Holly " touched his throttle the
engine seemed to enter the race with hu-
man interest. She picked up the train
without a slip. When we hit East Yards,
at the top of the hill, we were making
forty miles an hour.

Down a steep hill we went, round a
curve, up another hill — faster, faster, all
the time. The engine seemed alive !

I had my watch and a time-table be-
fore me all the way, and the rate we
were making strained every nerve to the
highest pitch. At Seguin, thirty-five
miles out, we had made three stops and
had gained a minute. From there to
Luling, twenty-five miles, I was certain
we would lose two or three minutes, be-
cause of the heavy hills and many curves
— but on we rushed.

I thought that we would not stand the
curves while going at such awful speed,
but just as we would get ready to hit
with full force we would feel the air-.
•brake slip on, and around we would go,
easily, without much swing.

At Luling we had picked up three
minutes of the limited's time, made five
stops, and flagged a railroad crossing.
While taking water and oiling around,
I heard Peter Vahey reading a despatch
to "Uncle Holly," which said: "Track
is clear for No. 19. We have confidence
in Pierson's judgment."

The next seventy-five miles were al-
most from one curve to another, from
one hill to another, with stops more fre-
quent, but it seemed to have no effect on
" Uncle Holly."

On ! On ! He almost flew !

The passengers had caught the spirit
of the race, and, looking back as we
swung around the curves, we saw men
and women waving as if to encourage
" Uncle Holly."

One hand on the throttle, the other on
the air-brake, he looked straight ahead
— and needed no encouragement.

At Schulenburg, one hundred and five
miles, we were thirty-five minutes ahead
of the limited. Ten minutes for lunch-

726

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

eon was announced. We generally had
twenty minutes for dinner, but the pas-
sengers were so worked up over the race
they declared that they were not hungry,
and protested against even the ten min-
utes allowed for luncheon.

We left Schulenburg twenty-five min-
utes ahead of the limited.

The coal in our tender was getting low
and required double passing ; but the
porter volunteered to pass it down until
Glidden was reached, where we could
take on more at the shoots.

From Schulenburg to Houston it got
out that No. 19 was beating the limited's
time. Everybody was at the station to
wave us encouragement.

We arrived at Glidden twenty-eight
minutes ahead of the limited, loaded our
tank with coal, and received orders there
that the limited would be turned loose
to make up her lost time.

The conductor and others lost hope
when this was announced, but not " Uncle
Holly." His jaw just set a little firmer,
and not a word left his lips.

From Glidden to Houston is about
eighty-eight miles of straight track over
an open country. We left Glidden,
where it seemed our real race began,
twenty-four minutes ahead of the lim-
ited, and I have never heard an engine
worked as that one was. I have often
wondered how the machinery stood the
strain.

The cinders rained upon the top of
my car ; the throb of the engine must
have been heard for a mile, and the
noise was so great that I had to scream
to the man in the car with me to make
him hear. At Columbus, where we passed
right through the heart of the town,
there was, for about a mile, a strict six-
mile-an-hour rule, but on that day the
people were out, even to the chief of po-
lice, all cheering us on. " Uncle Holly "
made about twenty-five miles an hour
through that town.

At Eagle Lake, allowing the limited to
make five minutes, we were still twenty-
five minutes ahead. From there to Ro-
senberg, over a straight, open prairie,
with a fine track, I figured that we would
make the run in forty minutes with one
stop, but we only needed thirty-five min-
utes.

I learned afterward that the passen-

gers almost fought for space on the rear
car to watch for the limited's smoke,
but no smoke was to be seen. At Rosen-
berg it was conveyed to us- that we had
one hour in which to make , Houston,
thirty-six miles away, with five stops and
two crossings to flag, also to slow through
the town to the depot.

On that part of the run, " Uncle
Holly " showed the hand of a master.
The run of thirty-six miles was made
in fifty-five minutes. We rolled into the
Houston and Texas Central Depot at
7.45 p.m.

In five hours and twenty minutes the
run of two hundred and ten miles, from
San Antonio to Houston, had been made,
including twenty-seven station stops, five
crossings flagged, and ten minutes taken
for luncheon.

The limited pulled into the depot
thirty-five minutes later, having picked
up only five minutes from Glidden. Her
crew was staring with surprise. " How
did you get here?" they asked. "Why. we
passed you at Eagle Lake, wre thought."

" Uncle Holly's " run has never been
equaled by a local train over this divi-
sion, and, I am told, five hours is the
best time that has ever been made by a
special.

The passengers crowded about " Uncle
Holly " at the depot, and plied him with
questions — but not a word could they get
from him. He went about as coolly in-
specting his engine as if he had just made
his regular time.

His run Avas the talk of the road for
a number of years, and many railroad
men have had to be shown the records
before they could be convinced. To-day,
with ninety-pound steel, one-hundred-ton
engines, and a seven-hour-and-twenty-
minute schedule over this same division,
it is hard to make some of the new men
believe that " Uncle Holly's " time was
made over a track where there was only
one hundred and seventy miles of sixty-
pound steel, with the other forty miles
a lighter rail.

" Uncle Holly " has been retired on
pension for a number of years, having
passed thirty-five years as an engineer on
this same division.

He is still hale and hearty, and long
past the threescore-and-ten period al-
lotted to man.

THE GOLDEN SERPENTS.

BY GEORGE E. HALL.

Greaser Beans Gave the Prospectors a Tip
Which Led to Something Unusually Exciting.

LEVERAL years ago I was sent
by a syndicate of Eastern cap-
italists to look over a gold-
mining concession in the State
of Oaxaca, Mexico, which lies
toward the southern end of
the land of tamales and tor-
tillas. The claim was in one of the foot-
hills of the Sierra Madre, about twenty
miles east of a little town called Octolan
— a poor collection of flea-bitten huts
and high-flavored greasers. I took with
me five men who could shoot straight
and stood for nothing that wore hide or
hair, because, for some reason or other,
Americanos didn't stand at par in those
parts.

We made camp, and began to round
up the necessary local help. At last we
did manage to rope a cook and a sort of
general help. The first was a queer
little fellow, a new pattern of " greaser "
to me. He was small, and had a head
and face unlike any Mexican that I had
ever met. That he wasn't pure Mexican
I was positive, and that he wasn't the
usual half-breed I was dead certain.

What he really was I couldn't make
out, and he wouldn't tell, although I
tried more than once to draw him out
about himself. The most curious thing
about him was his high, sloping fore-
head, and nose shaped just like an eagle's
beak. He sometimes put on airs like a
prima donna, and served our chile con
came as if he was doing us a great favor.
Beans, we called him, for his real name
had five syllables to start with and more
to follow.

Our other helot, Jose, was just bad
half - breed. Like all of his kind, he
was a thief by nature. He did general
chores, carried instruments, loafed when

he could, and ate and slept most of the
time.

Beans seemed to take a liking to me
from the start. His ways of showing
this were various, including queer hot
hashes and soups that he had made for
me only. When work was over for the
day, the little chap would squat content-
edly as close to me as I'd let him, hud-
dled up in his serape, and listen to yarns.
The boys called him my " pet monk."

Beans when he liked would speak sur-
prisingly pure Spanish, although he had
a fair smattering of good English. Once
or twice, too, I overheard him crooning
a kind of chant in a tongue that was new
to me. JWhen I asked him what it was,
he shut up hard and tight as a sun-dried
steer hide.

The boys liked to have fun with
Beans in their own way, and sometimes
they'd go a trifle beyond. Then Beans
would look appealingly at me— and I'd
usually call a halt ; not exactly because I
was afraid he'd get hurt, but because he
was a good cook and I didn't want him
to quit. He didn't know this, however,
and so would whisper his thanks in his
musical lingo and stick closer than ever.

Between Jose and Beans there was
bloody war all the time. The half-
breed was everlastingly trying to raid the
commissariat department when Beans
wasn't looking; and when Beans would
get wise, he'd go for Jose like mad.

One evening, when dinner was over,
while Beans was busy cleaning up in a
willow lean-to that served him as a
kitchen and storeroom, Jose, trying to
swipe some canned stuff, was pounced
upon by the little cook. In an instant
the pair — clawing, spitting and swearing
— rolled out of the lean-to.

727

728

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

The moon was full — one of those big
Mexican moons that makes the night al-
most-as light as day. So we could see
the little tragedy quite plainly without
the need of footlights.

Suddenly Beans's single upper gar-
ment— the usual shirt-like affair of the
poor Mexicans — was torn from the neck
down by the infuriated Jose. As the
garment parted, I saw Beans's hands re-
lease their grip on the throat of his op-
ponent and fly to his own throat, covering
it and the upper part of his chest with
a sort of desperate eagerness.

As he did so, however, I caught sight
of something yellow hanging from his
throat, over which his hands snapped
and remained. Jose, like myself, had
evidently seen the thing ; and while, with
one hand, he tried to put Beans's
Adam's apple out of place, with the
other he tugged away at the cook's hands,
evidently with the intention of getting
at what was under them.

At this point poor Beans gave a gurg-
ling cry for help, and I stopped the
fight. Jose glared sullenly at me, and
hesitated when I ordered him to release
Beans and keep away from him, too.
Then I helped the little chap to his feet.
But his hands remained as they were,
and he hurried away to his lean-to, mut-
tering.

Beans didn't show up that night, con-
trary to his usual custom. Jose disap-
peared somewhere in the shadows, and
he, too, was invisible for the rest of the
evening. As for the rest of us, we had
had a heavy day and a hearty meal, and
we turned in somewhat earlier than usual.

Judging by the position of the moon,
it must have been about two o'clock in
the morning when I was awakened by a
shrill scream, followed by another, and
yet another. Swinging myself out of
my hammock and taking my gun from
the tent-pole, I ran in the direction of
the sounds.

The moon threw the shadows of a
clump of mesquit on Beans's lean-to ; but
in the midst of the darkness I could make
out a confused, struggling mass, which
separated itself as I came near into two
men, one of whom made tracks in a way
that justified me in blazing away at him.
At the third shot I heard a groan from
the darkness, which told me that one of

my bullets had found flesh. Then I
turned my attention to the man still on
the ground. It was Beans.

By this time the other boys were on
hand; and we took Beans over to my
tent, where we struck a light and looked
him over. He was pretty badly done up.
There were knife-marks over most of his
face and chest, and from one ugly cut in
the region of the right lung came little
bubbles of blood. Beans was nearly
all in.

"Jose!" I cried, pointing to his
wounds.

" Si, sefwr/' he said weakly, throwing
up his hand.

" Allen," I said to my chief assistant,
" I think I have plugged the half-breed
out beyond the kitchen. Go look him
up."

" And I'll get a rope," said one of the
others.

Beans raised himself with an effort
and beckoned me to put my ear close
to him.

He spoke to me in Spanish. " Seiior,"
he said, "ask them all to go. I have
something to tell you which no other
must hear."

" Mean this, Beans? " I asked.

He nodded, and replied slowly : " I
go — hence — pretty soon. I have no time
for much talk. Hasten; send them
away."

I did so ; and Beans, between hacking
coughs due to his injured lung, began :

" How I came here, seiior, it is no mat-
ter. Who I am, though, concerns what
I have to tell you. Listen. I am a de-
scendant of the Incas. There are few,
very few of us left, and none of us are
of pure blood. But, nevertheless, we
have that about us which makes us dif-
ferent from these — these Mexicans."

He spoke the last word with a sort of
bitterness and contempt, while his left
hand seemed unconsciously to stray over
his face and head, as if these could at-
test that he was not of the race amid
which he lived. " You will ask why I
am here — in this region — or how I came
here when my people, those who remain,
are so distant ? "

Although it is not generally known,
there still live in a radius of thirty or
forty miles of the city of Mexico, a half
dozen or so families that claim descent

THE GOLDEN SERPENTS.

729

from the Incas. These people are
mighty modest about their ancestors, and
it is only when an outsider knows them
more or less intimately, which is not
often, that he gets an inkling of the fact
that in their veins runs the ancient royal
blue blood of an older race. You will
understand, therefore, what poor Beans
meant when he said that he was far from
his people.

I wiped the blood from his mouth,
placed him in as comfortable a position
as I could, gave him another drink, and
he continued :

" You are learned, senor, and, I have
no doubt, know as much about the past
of our people — the past that was before
Spain destroyed them. When it was seen
that destruction was sure, certain of the
priests — they who guarded the treasures
of our great temples — were given the
golden serpents and told to hide them in
a place known only to them and the chief
of the temples.

" The golden serpents ! What were
they? I will tell. you. The worshipers
brought gold in those days in abundance
to the temples as offerings to the priests
and for beautifying the high places.

" Much of this gold was devoted to the
gods, and to them only. It was fash-
ioned by skilled workmen into serpents —
beautiful, watchful — having crimson
eyes. The Spaniards were many in the
land, lying roundabout, watching lest
any gold escape them, killing, crucifying,
and burning those who ran counter to
their cupidity.

" When the priests drew near to the
hiding - place, they found that some
traitor had told of it. They hastened
to another hiding-place, but found the
Spaniards awaiting them.

" Then the priests sent back runners to
the chief, asking counsel. The chief re-
plied, saying : ' Go far southward, where
the curse of the Spaniard is yet unknown,
and select a hiding - place. Tell none
where the serpents lie hidden, save three,
chosen by you.

" ' Give each of these three one of the
golden serpents to protect them from the
invaders. If a custodian of a serpent
die, he shall will the serpent in his
charge to another, and so on through
the ages, until the time for the annihila-
tion of the invaders shall come.'

" One of these serpents has been passed
down to me."

Another fit of coughing seized Beans,
and I thought that he would breathe his
last; but he revived, and, extending his
left hand, which all this time had re-
mained tightly closed, opened it and
showed me a little pouch made of what
was apparently golden scales.

" Open it, sefwr," he gasped.

I did so, and inside I saw the snake,
which is now on my fob, and a small,
tightly folded piece of what appeared
to be deerskin.

" Unroll," whispered Beans. I obeyed.
The skin was about six inches square,
and on it was traced a rude map.

" The priests journeyed on and on,"
went on Beans feebly, " until they came
to a spot about five miles from where we
now are. The map tells.

"It was to get this map and the ser-
pent that Jose stabbed me. See ! Here on
the map. Go east — to the river that wets
the foot of the hill of two heads. And
thou shalt cross the river beneath the
shadow of the heads. So, climbing, thou
shalt pass up to and between them and
descend to the other side, and there rest.

" And the morning following, rise be-
fore the sun shows above the hills across
the valley, and watch. And presently
thou shalt see the tip of one rock on the
farther side of the valley turn into blood
beneath the sun — one rock and no other.
Go thither — to the rock — and behind it,
and hidden by it, thou shalt find a
stream, because at the point of its issu-
ance it falls into a basin studded with
pointed rock.

"/ It is known as the Basin of the Spear
Heads. Now, go up the stream— a
mile or more — until thou comest to
Painted Rock on the north bank. And
in the rock, and hidden, as it were, by a
rock door, is a hole that leads into a cave
■ — the dwelling-place of the serpents.

" Take this, the snake here, with thee,
placing it on thy breast, thus. When my
people ask, give them the gold that you
find there — they will — "

Beans raised himself, touched my
hands, choked, and fell back dead.

Just as I laid the body of the poor
little chap in my hammock, I heard a
slight noise from the other side of the
tent, and, looking up, saw the face of

730

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Jose peering through the flap. He dis-
appeared before I had a chance to take
a shot at him ; but, as I dashed toward
him I heard the boys returning from the
opposite direction.

We put in an hour or two trying to
round-up that half-breed, but were un-
successful I had, though, an uneasy
conviction that Jose had overheard some
or all of Beans's talk about the serpents.
Then I told the others what had hap-
pened, and after a talk which lasted well
on toward dawn, we turned in, deter-
mined to test the truth of Beans's story.

It took us nearly three days to locate
the hill described by Beans, and another
day in getting at the whereabouts of the
little stream, Painted Rock, and the cov-
ered hole. The stream was low at the
time,, and we had no difficulty in wading
to where the tall rock, with its strata of
brilliant color, stood out boldly and
abruptly in the little canon through which
the water ran.

Near the rock, the stream channel
dropped a little, or rather, the rock face
retreated so as to leave a sort of rough
pathway. Suddenly Jack Winstead, one
of our party, stopped and held up his
hand warningly. Then he beckoned me
and pointed to something on the bank.

I could see nothing.

" Somebody has been here before us,"
he whispered. " See the signs? "

I looked closely, and saw that Win-
stead's keen eye had detected some
bruised blades of grass, broken twigs,
and displaced pebbles.

" Hold the rest of the boys together
while I look this thing over." He pro-
ceeded cautiously to follow the path for
a few feet, nosing it like a hound that is
on a hot scent.

Then he returned to us.

" It is an Injun that has been here ;
foot signs show that," he muttered.
" Judging by the looks of things ahead,
this is the only path to and from the
hole."

I saw what he meant. Beyond the
rock the path ceased, and the cliff face
extended indefinitely onward, the water
washing its foot as far as we could see.

" Who ever went up there has not
come back," continued Winstead, " and
.the probability is that he is in the hole
now."

He loosened his revolver from its
holster, the others followed suit, and
thus we crept cautiously toward the hole,
which was partly hidden by a rock frag-
ment or door and a growth of tall weeds.
As we drew near, we heard, rising above
the rattle and ripple of the stream, a
choking noise.

However, there was no stopping, and
so I led the way. Not without an effort
of will, I parted weeds in front of the
mouth of the hole and looked in.

I shall never forget the sight just in-
side the entrance. Jose was standing
upright, his naturally swarthy face a dirty
yellow with agony and fear, his eyes pro-
trading, his mouth open, from which were
issuing the rattling screams that we had
just heard. But about his body, ~a«d
from his ankles almost to his neck, was
twined an enormous snake, whose scales
shone with a kind of vivid yellow me-
tallic glitter, such as I had never before
seen on a reptile.

As I looked, Jose, with a final, des-
pairing effort, got the thing by its throat,
so as to prevent it from completing its
final and fatal coil around his neck. So
they stood, the frightful reptile with its
mouth wide open, hissing and glaring
into the eyes of the man, who in turn
glared back at it with eyes that were
barely less horrible than its own.

Paralyzed at the sight, none of us
moved for a second or two. Then Win-
stead drew his revolver. As he did so,
Jose's arms relaxed, and like a flash
the snake twisted itself around his throat.
We could see a ripple of muscular effort
run through ite body. Blood issued
from the half-breed's mouth, nose, and
eyes. There was a horrible crunching
sound, and snake and man fell to the
ground.

We opened fire on the reptile, but,
with incredible swiftness, it uncoiled it-
self and disappeared hi the inner recesses
of the little cavern, apparently unharmed,
leaving the crushed body of its victim
within a few feet of us.

"What is the cursed thing, anyhow?"
Winstead whispered huskily. " The boas
you get in the Brazils and down around
those parts don't come so far north as
this. That snake, too, ain't any kind
that grows in Mexico."

We were silent at least a quarter of

THE GOLDEN SERPENTS.

731

an hour or so, each trying to think out
the next thing to be done. One thing
was certain : we had to get the body of
Jose out of the cave and give it decent
burial. With the sweat of fear trick-
ling down us, we began our unpleasant
task. The long one with the yellow
scales we knew was somewhere hidden
in the cavern.

" Well, boys," I said, when we had
finished planting the unlucky man,
" what next? "

" Back to camp for mine," said Allen,
who was as vacillating a proposition as
ever looked through the sights of a Colt.
" I allow I ain't a cravin' no more
horrors."

I was rousing glad that the boys
weren't ardent on going back to the cave,
for my nerves were twittering like a
prairie-dogs' parliament.

So back to camp we got. None of us
could eat, and we turned in early. Also,
we turned out early, for that night the
heavens opened and the rain descended
and the bottom fell out of a year-ahead
supply of wind, thunder, and lightning,
which we caught all at once.

When the weather did let up, the first
thing we did was to start for Painted
Rock. It took us nearly three days to
reach our objective, the delay being
caused by the fact that -a lot of usually
insignificant creeks and streams had
swelled themselves up to an unfordable
stage. So we had to wait till they shal-
lowed up.

When we finally fetched up to the
point where our streams fell into the
Hole of the Spear Heads, the latter was
chock-full of debris. The bed of the
stream, too, was pretty well chock-a-
block with stuff that didn't belong there.
The banks on either side showed the
height and the torrential force of the wa-
ter during the storm.

We found the mouth of the hole packed
tight with a tangle of reeds, small trees,
and mud. It took hours to blast the en-
trance clear. I crawled inside. The
others came behind, each with his Win-
chester and a couple of blazing candles.

The cave rose abruptly right from the
mouth of the hole, till we couldn't see
the roof. It ended as abruptly in a flat
rock face in which were the three open-
ings, or fissures, six or seven feet in

height and about three feet in width.
Their floors sloped sharply downward,
and their walls were curiously carved
into all sorts of fantastic shapes, appar-
ently by the action of the water.

Taking a candle from one of the men,
I stepped inside the center opening. A
sparkle came from beyond. It was the
reflection of the candle flame in a mir-
ror of water near my feet.

Allen, behind me, grunted. " Plumb
full of water. No need of snakes to
keep them other snakes safe," he said, and
stepped back into the cave.

Winstead uncoiled a light lariat from
his shoulders, snared a rock in the loop
and threw it into the blackness. There
was an echoing splash and the line drew
tight.

" Boys," he said, " there's twenty-five
feet of moistness in them depths below,
and how many more feet is uncertain.
The total width of this stray limb of river
is unknown."

It was too true. There was nothing
to do but pack up and get back to camp
to think the matter over and decide on
our future course. -

The morning following, three of us
didn't get up to breakfast. We laid in
our hammocks and gabbled about Heaven
knows what. We had what the Mexi-
cans call " storm fever." "It's due to
cold, exposure, and the miasma bred of
wet and decaying vegetation.

Well, there happened along another
Yankee outfit, bound for a concession
located not far from ours. In this outfit
was a doctor, and he gave me the choice
of dying or getting out of the region. I
chose the last.

A year later, in Houston, Texas, I
was thinking over the possibility of or-
ganizing an expedition to visit Painted
Rock, when, to my surprise, I ran up
against Winstead.

Winstead grinned as he shook my hand.

" I know that you'll ask particulars
about that Painted Rock and them
snakes," he said. " But they ain't no
more."

" What ! " I cried.

" Nope. The Sierra Madres is al-
ways uneasy in their innards, and a
month or so after you left us, they kind
of spasmed into our neighborhood, sha-
king the circumjacence to smithereens."

Recent Railroad Patents.

BY FORREST G. SMITH

Describing a New Style of Locomotive Frame — New Vestibule Arrange-
ment for Street-Gars — Steam -Heated Running- Board, and a
Car-Fender Lowered and Raised by the Motorman.

HEATED RUNNING-BOARD.

Made Hollow So That Ice and Snow Will

Not Form On It As Steam Is

Blown Through.

A DECIDED improvement over the pres-
ent form of foot-board for locomotives
is shown in patent No. 936,786, October 12,
1909, issued to Albert Krutsinger,~of Pasco,
Washington. In the present form of foot-
board, snow and ice is allowed to collect,
and on a long run may accumulate to such
an extent as to render it impossible for a
trainman to obtain a safe foothold on the
board.

While it is true that the snow may be
swept from the board, this consumes consid-
erable time, and is not practical when the
train is going at a high rate of speed. Even
when cleared in this manner, there is a
chance of a crust of ice being left on the
board, which will render it more dangerous
than ever. Mr. Krutsinger contemplates
providing a foot-board which will have a
hollow base and which will be covered with
planking or other suitable covering. Exhaust
or live steam is admitted into the hollow
portion, so as to heat it to such a degree
as to warm the covering and melt any snow
which may fall upon it.

A NEW LOCOMOTIVE.

Design of Engine Frame That Will Permit

Old Cylinders Removed and Larger

Ones Fitted.

A PATENT, No. 936,198, October 5, 1909,
has been issued to Samuel M. Vau-
clain, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and
assigned to one of the largest locomotive

works in this country, disclosing a novel con-
struction of bed frame for a locomotive.

In the ordinary construction of locomo-
tives, it is, owing to the present method of
mounting cylinders, practically an impossi-
bility to substitute for the original cylinders
ones of larger diameter, without materially
increasing the width of the locomotive. In
the patent mentioned, however, there is
shown a means for so mounting the cylin-
ders that they may be of practically any
size without affecting the width of the loco-
motive.

The bed frame of the Vauclain locomo-
tive is of composite structure, embodying
main and intermediate frame sections, of
which the intermediate section is of much
less width than the main frame sections.
It is upon this intermediate section that the
engine cylinders are mounted, and they are
in this manner so well positioned within
the bounds of the locomotive in general that
cylinders may readily be substituted without
in any way altering the width of the loco-
■jnotive.

NEW BRAKE-SHOE HANGER.

Device That Will Prevent the Uneven Ap-
plication of Air-Brake Surfaces.

IN the ordinary forms of brake-shoe hang-
ers, wear of the parts may cause the
shoes to engage the wheels unevenly. In
fact, this frequently happens. In patent No.
935-83I. October 5, 1909, issued to Walter S.
Adams, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, there
is shown a hanger which will overcome this
difficulty, and which has been adopted by one
of the largest car-manufacturing firms in the
United States.

The ordinary hanger is suspended from a
pivot in such manner that the pivot will soon
become worn so as to cause the non-aline-

732

RECENT RAILROAD PATENTS.

733

ment of the brake-shoe and wheel, but in the
patent mentioned the pivot is so arranged
that wear will be automatically taken up.

The pivot disclosed in the patent to Mr.
Adams includes the usual pivot bolt which
is passed through a head having conical or
tapered ends. The hanger arms are sus-
pended from this pivot and support the
brake-shoe, and upon the pivot ar-e arranged
springs which bear against the upper ends of
the arms. These ends are formed with seats
to receive the ends of the head, and nuts
are threaded upon the ends of the pivot
and bear against the springs to hold them
firmly against the arms.

As the wear between the arms and the
tapered ends of the head increases, it is
taken up by the springs automatically, at
both ends of the head, so the brake-shoe
is at all times in alinement with the wheel,
regardless of wear.

NOVEL GAR-FENDER.

Guard That Can Be Lifted As Well As

Lowered by the Motorman in

the Vestibule.

AN innovation in the line of car-fenders
is shown in a patent, No. 935,828, Oc-
tober 5, 1909, issued to Albert J. Thornley,
of Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The fender
disclosed in this patent is of that type which
are hung beneath the front platform of the
car back of the main fender, and ordinarily
such fenders are supported in raised position
by latches which are mounted beneath the
platform and .may be released so as to drop
the fender by means of a foot pedal under
the control of the motorman.

After such a fender has been dropped,
however, and they frequently drop by acci-
dent, they must be returned to normal posi-
tion by reaching beneath the platform. Very
often, when they drop by accident, they will
strike some rough place in the roadway
and will be destroyed.

The fender covered by the patent men-
tioned is mounted or hung in substantially
the same manner as the ordinary fender, but
means is provided, under the control of the
motorman, for both raising and lowering it.

A rocker is mounted beneath the car plat-
form and has connection by means of a
rod with a crank upon the shaft from which
the fender is hung, and mounted in the
platform are two foot pedals which rest at
their lower ends upon either end of the
rocker.

The pivots are so arranged that when one
pedal is depressed, the connections will be
beyond a dead center and will support the

fender in raised position. When the other
pedal is depressed, however, the connections
move to a position to the other side of the
line of dead center and the fender is
dropped. As a result, the motorman, with-
out leaving his platform, may raise or lower
the fender.

NEW STREET-GAR DOOR.

An Improvement for " Pay -as- You Enter"

Cars by Which the Conductor

Stays Inside.

A " PAY-AS-YOU-ENTER " car of such
-*"*- construction that the conductor is
located within the car is shown in a patent
(No. 922,430, May 18, 1909) issued to
Henry Howson, of Philadelphia. In the
car construction disclosed in the patent
there is a space reserved within the body
of the car to be occupied by the conductor,
and so situated as to divide the entrance to
the body into two passageways.

A guard encloses this space and has a
swinging extension which divides the en-
trance side of the platform into two ways,
which may be closed by a door consisting of
two sections, one arranged within the other.
When the door is moved bodily without
separating the sections thereof, the exit way
is closed, and while the door is in this
position one of the sections may be moved
independently of the other to close the
entrance-way to the car.

The double door is so arranged within
one side of the car-body that no appreciable
room is taken up, and for this reason more
entrance room is had than is possible in
the present constructions of such cars
wherein the door slides both transversely
and longitudinally of the car-body.

TO ANCHOR TIE-PLATES.

Ribs That Bite Into the Upper Surface of
the Ties in Order to Pre-
vent Creeping.

CONSIDERABLE trouble has been ex-
perienced in properly anchoring tie-
plates so that they will not creep, both in
the line of track extent and also in the line
of extent of the ties upon which they are
disposed, and while some of the present
forms of tie-plates are provided upon their
under-sides with spurs, which are intended
to prevent such creeping, they are generally
unsatisfactory for the reason that the
spurs, being sharp and pointed, will tear
through the fiber of the ties and not only
creep but will wear out the ties.

734

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

A simple construction of tie-plate which
will overcome these disadvantages, and
which is very cheap to manufacture, is dis-
closed in a patent (No. 921,724, May 18,
1909) issued to Andrew Morrisson, of Pitts-
burgh. The tie-plate of this- patent has
formed upon its under-side and at each
side edge, a rib, and also upon its under-
side, but at right angles to the side ribs,
others which effectually prevent creeping in
the direction of track extent, the first-men-
tioned ribs serving to prevent creeping in
the direction of extent of the ties. It will
be understood that these ribs bite into the
upper surface of the ties upon which the
tie-plates are disposed, but that they do not
tear the fiber of the tie as do the spurs
usually provided.

NEAT UPPER BERTHS.

A New Construction for Sleeping - Cars

Which, When Closed, Gives the

Effects of Paneling.

A CONSTRUCTION of upper berth for
sleeping-cars r/hich is very neat in
its appearance when not in use is disclosed
in a patent (No. 922,850, May 25, 1909)
issued to Edward G. Budd, of Philadelphia.
The berth comprises end members, which
are pivoted at their inner ends to the side
of the car and are curved in the direction
of their length, and of side members, which
are secured at their ends to the ends of the
end 'members, and in connection with the
said end members complete the frame of the
berth.

A stout sheet metal panel is secured at its
end edges to the under edges of the end
members, and at its side edges to the under
sides of the side members, and this panel
is curved to the same degree as are the
end members and presents a plain convex
surface when the berth is folded, resembling
the ordinary panelling seen in the day
coaches, with the exception that it is reversed.

A mattress is arranged upon .the concave
surface of the panel. This berth is ex-
tremely simple in its construction and is
not unsightly.

TROLLEY - WHEEL DEVICE.

Wheel in Two Parts, Allowing Pivotal
Movement of the Rim at Any Angle.

been complicated by the employment of spe-
cially constructed harps, embodying swivels,
which are liable to get out of order in a
short time.

A device for this purpose, which embodies
numerous advantages not to be' found in
similar devices, is shown in patent No. 935,-
852, October 5, 1909, issued to Albert M.
Levering, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In
this device, the usual form of harp is made
use of, and in it is mounted the ordinary
spindle such as supports the present trolley-
wheel.

Upon this spindle is mounted a hub, and
upon the hub is fitted a rim which is grooved
to receive the trolley-wire. This rim is
pivoted on the hub so that it may have
pivotal movement with respect thereto, and
may consequently assume positions at vari-
ous angles with respect to the hub, although
rotating therewith.

In rounjling a curve, the rim will assume
the proper angle to the hub, and will conse-
quently follow the wire. One of the most
noticeable advantages of the device lies in
the fact that whether the rim or the hub
becomes worn so as to be unfit for use, a
corresponding new part may be readily sub-
stituted for the worn one without the ex-
pense of providing an entire new wheel.

SIMPLE CATTLE-GUARD.

Invention with No Moving Parts, which Will

Keep Animals from Track Without

Hurting Them.

NUMEROUS devices have been proposed
having as their object to provide a
trolley-wheel which will not leave the wire
in rounding a curve, but such devices have

AN extremely simple form of cattle-
guard for railway tracks is disclosed
in a patent, No. 932,634, August 31, 1909,
issued to Benjamin E. Mosher, of Pales-
tine, Texas. Ordinarily, cattle-guards are
constructed with a number of moving parts
which have to be constantly kept in repair,
or they are constructed with devices which
are liable to injure the hoofs of cattle at-
tempting to cross them.

The guard patented by Mr. Mosher is not
only devoid of moving parts but is so simple
that it can be manufactured at a fraction
of the cost of the ordinary guard now in
use, in addition to being as efficient. In
construction, the guard consists of a number
of wooden strips which are substantially V-
shaped, and are spiked to the upper faces of
the ties at the point to be guarded, being
disposed with one of their two broader
faces upon the ties.

These strips are covered with sheet-metal
plates, and cattle attempting to cross will
be unable to secure proper footing owing
to the slippery inclined surfaces presented.

THE TELEGRAPHIC TWINS.

BY CROMWELL CHILDE.

How They Ticked Out Their Verbal Sweet-
ness When They Went to Meet Gussie.

- EORGE MATSON, the op-
> erator at Mount Savage,

had been " listening in."
A most promising flirta-
tion was going on over
the wire.

" No, sir," the Shelbyville girl was
saying, in a series of dainty, quaverless
clicks — it was evident how delightfully
supple and strong her little wrist must
be — " that lumber consigned to William
Patchen's Brothers hasn't been heard of
yet. I am so sorry you've been put to all
this trouble."

" It's no trouble at all," came from
Hawk's Nest. "The man that wins. in
this world is the man that has a never-
ending grasp on detail, who regards no
effort as too great, no hours spent too
long. That's a man's place."

" There are so many young men — "
Shelbyville murmured.

" Yes, careless, faithless, thinking only
of their own selfish pleasures. Do you
know that beautiful old poem, Lahore est
orare? Got that? It's Latin. It means,
' To work is to worship.' An old monk
sings it. Isn't that a grand idea? "

" A man should be strong," the wire
clicked back.

" Yes, his labor is worship. Man is
his own star, you know. He rises on
stepping-stones of his dead self to higher
things."

" It's just too lovely to find men with
ambition." You could almost hear her
purring and see her big, appreciative
eyes.

" Ambition ? That's made by a woman.
A man never feels it until a woman
comes into his life. It may be always

there, though, waiting for her to come,
an undercurrent that he does not under-
stand, a force behind all his work."

" I like to hear a man talk like that.
They're such beautiful ideas ! Men —
most men — talk so silly nowadays, and
think of nothing but baseball and clothes
and dances and ' shows.' You must have
read lots and lots."

It had begun over a shipment of lum-
ber that somewhere between its starting-
point, Hawk's Nest — to George's east —
and Shelbyville — far to his west — 'had
mysteriously disappeared. Ordinarily, the
operator at Hawk's Nest, having made
the first inquiries in vain, would natural-
ly have notified the general freight-agent,
and let him do the tracing.

But the Hawk's Nest operator had
violated all precedents, and had kept up
the inquiries himself. Why? The op-
erator at Shelbyville was a girl. George
did not wonder that the chap at Hawk's
Nest was fascinated, for when she sent
it was the most musical, beautiful Morse.

He, George, could almost shut his eyes
and dream about it. To him the clear
cadence of her dots and dashes was like
perfect music to a musician. And the
pretty way she could express herself when
the villainous Hawk's Nest man drew
her into general conversation over the
line — as he cunningly did very often —
was maddening to a man altogether out
of it, who could do nothing but wretched-
ly eavesdrop by casually throwing his
key open at the proper time.

The flirtation was getting along alto-
gether too well for George. The man
and girl on either side of him, a hun-

735

736

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

dred or so miles each way, though he
could tell from their talk that they had
never laid eyes on each other, were rap-
idly becoming as thick as two peas in a
pod.

George had wild notions of getting
her on the wire himself, and he racked
his brains for a good excuse. It would
be fatal to call her for no reason at all.
And Mount Savage was not having a sin-
gle occasion to get the station at Shelby-
ville on any pretext.

The day before, when No. 6 stopped
at the station, and Tom Judson, its con-
ductor, came up to the window for orders,
he had waylaid him.

" Tom, tell me about that girl at Shel-
byville. What does she look like?"

" A peach," said Tom sententiously.
" A peach ! Snappiest little girl on the
road. Black hair, nose that tips up in
an aggravatin' way, bully little hands and
feet — oh, I can't describe her ; but she'd
hit you, George !

" Say," he went on, " it's funny, come
to think of it, how that girl's gettin' in-
quired about. Only a day or so ago
Alley, who takes my run east, told me a
feller down the line was askin' 'bout her
— feller at — lemme see — Hawk's Nest,
that's the place.

" 'Cordin' to Alley, he was mighty
anxious, and Alley got all the points
from me he could. Flossy sort of chap,
that Hawk's Nest feller, Alley tells me.
Got a lot o' poetry and story-books, and
reads 'em as you and I do the news-
papers. Well, so long, George! Name's
Gussie, if you want to know — Gussie
Sparks."

All this was very disquieting. But
George had gotten a step farther — not
that it did him any especial good. He
had identified the man. Who this tele-
graphic rival under such extraordinary
circumstances was came to him an hour
after Tom Judson had given him partic-
ulars about the girl.

The Hawk's Nest man had Gussie
again on the wire^ with another question
about the lumber shipment. As he flashed
two hundred miles a neatly turned senti-
ment that made the listener writhe,
George remembered.

" Gee whiz ! " he cried. " So it's you,
Mister Man? Gosh! That codger's
Frank Benton, who, they say, sends just

like me. Some folk's figure you can't tell
us apart when you're at the other end of
a wire. It isn't once in a thousand years
that you'd strike that. Some funny fel-
lows down in the Louisville office speak
of us as ' the twins.' "

Now he knew it was Frank Benton,
the man he had been told about a hun-
dred times, George's desire to see him be-
came extreme. What manner of chap
telegraphically was his double, and yet
had such a wonderful way with a girl?

A misty yet enduring picture of just
how stunning the Shelbyville girl must
be stuck in his mind. Whee !

In despair, George turned to the wom-
an's page of the Louisville Sunday Cou-
rier. That might give him some light on
how to handle a girl like this. Hawk's
Nest, it was evident, carried too many
guns for him. Even if one could per-
form the impossible feat of getting him
out of the road telegraphically, what sort
of a figure would he, George, cut in his
stead on the wire?

" Bernice Astorgilt," who gave expert
advice every afternoon as to affairs of the
heart, might have some suggestions. At
all events, it would do no harm to read
her " dope."

But the " Lovers' and Etiquette Col-
umn " gave no -help at all. Nor did the
battered copy of Shakespeare, borrowed
at the house of McGill, the station-agent,
that George took a whirl over that after-
noon. If anything ever looked hopeless,
it was this.

Meantime, he asked another conductor
and several brakemen to tell more about
Gussie, and each account that came to
him was additionally flowery, all agree-
ing, however, that she was decidedly
stand-offish, though pleasant-.

" It's this way," explained Buddy Bru-
erton, the " dude " brakeman of the divi-
sion, who was acknowledged to have the
best eye for girls anywhere about ; " she
isn't turning one of us down ; she's nice
to every one, and has a little smile for
all of us. But we don't figure -at all.
She's got some one in her mind that
counts us all out. Gee! An' she's that
kind of a girl it hurts to be six feet away
from."

For twenty-four hours George sternly
tried to stop " listening in," and thus
avoid the torture to his nerves of hearing

THE TELEGRAPHIC TWINS.

737

such pretty speeches as he could never
think of poured into the ears of the girl
at Shelbyville.

It was especially maddening" to con-
sider that these might just as well have
been ticked out by him — if he could only
have thought of them. Miss Gussie

" I told the G. F. A.'s operator how
hard you had been working on it," she
continued, " what a splendid man there
was at Hawk's Nest."

And then she had gone on to say how
blue she felt, what a stupid old place
Shelbyville was, with never any fun

" OH, I CAN'T DESCRIBE HER ; BUT SHE'D HIT YOU, GEORGE ! "

would never have known the difference.
Yet it was far worse to close the key and
know that Frank Benton had the ear of
the pretty girl again and was making
strides that were wonders.

"Into each life some rain must fall."
The wires had been quiet an hour, and
the silence was at length broken by Shel-
byville, who wanted to tell Hawk's Nest
that William Patchen's Brothers were
getting very mad indeed about the delay
of the lumber, and all that morning had
been stirring up the general freight-agent.
11 RR

there, how cross they had been at home
that morning, how the dressmaker hadn't
finished her new dress, as she had prom-
ised.

"Of course, a big, brave man doesn't
worry about silly little things like those,"
she half moaned over the wire, " but a
girl does. It's the awful round of petty
things that make it so tiresome. And
just think, out in the world people are
doing big, splendid tilings, and there's so
much to do and see."

Even a hundred miles away, you could

738

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

fairly see Gussie almost crying. And
yet George Matson had to sit calmly at
his table and hear Frank Benton talking
like a double of himself on the wire, a
hundred miles farther off than he was,
and comforting her.

As Hawk's Nest dripped oil and honey
over the wire to Gussie, with a command
of words and thoughts that were simply
beautiful, George Matson bitterly regret-
ted that up to this time he had made a
specialty of the sporting pages only.
What were you to do when you were up
against such talk as this?

" Some days, dear girl, must be dark
and dreary," Hawk's Nest said. " There
cannot be roses or joys without thorns.
Always remember that endurance is the
crowning quality, and patience the pas-
sion of great hearts. The poetry of earth
is never dead."

" I wish I could be brave and strong
like you, and see it just your way," she
answered him back. " You make me
feel so much better already. Men have
so much strength. We poor women are
so helpless."

" Helpless? Never. Have you never
heard how a woman floats upon the river
of a man's thoughts? She is behind all.

WITH CAREFUL FORETHOUGHT, HE HAD IRONED
HIS TROUSERS.

Why is it when duty whispers, ' Thou
must,' the youth replies, ' I can ' ? "

" You mean — Oh, you don't mean
that."

" One of my inmost thoughts is: When
she had passed, it seemed like the ceasing
of exquisite music."

" O — h, how do you ever think of
lovely things like that? Do men really
believe such things about girls? "

" Don't ask me about all men. I can
only say for myself. But there are a
few who can touch the magic string
which is real life. And you're not alone
at any time, dear — don't fear that. Do
you know what I am thinking always?
What the great Milton has so wonder-
fully said of a lovely woman, ' A thou-
sand liveried angels lacquer her.' "
Yes, Hawk's Nest said " lacquer."
It was too much. George shut the key.
He seized the paper that the mail had
just brought, and applied himself with
great assiduity to the standing of the
National League.

He gloated over the latest triumph of
the Pirates, and set himself to a sum of
complicated figuring that would prove
his own theories right. But the canker-
worm was in his very soul.

He would forget her. Prob-
ably Buddy, Tom Judson,
and the other fellows were
simply talking wild. The
chances were, anyway, that
she was an ex-schoolma'am
of close to thirty-five. Some
little railroad business came
along, and he commenced to
be more cheerful. But —

That was the voice of his
rival over the line again, and
what was he saying? Great
Scott ! Each ear became at
once automatically primed. -
" I've got the leave, sweet-
heart. Yes, I'm going to
call you that. Nobody
else's got the right, and I'm
going to take it. I'll be in
Louisville at two-thirty to-
morrow afternoon on No. 7.
You can get away, can't
you? "

" Oh, you're awfully
quick, and — I don't know —
ye-e-s, I can. There's a girl

THE TELEGRAPHIC TWINS.

739

here who'll take my key. But bow'll
I know you? We've never seen each
other. I ought not — "

" Dear, do you think I'd ask you to do
anything that wasn't right? I've thought
it all out. Here's what we'll do. You
know those little toy telegraphic sound-
ers that cost ten cents? As soon as I get
to Louisville, I'll get one of those. Then
I'll go to the upper end of the waiting-
room, and stand there.

"You'll know me because you'll. hear
my message in Morse. I'll send a little
wireless wire to you over and over again.
Nobody there'll know what it means.
But you will. You'll hear your Frankie's
touch. Wouldn't you know that, Gussie,
dearest? "

" Yes — yes, I would. Oh, Frank, it's
the sweetest, most romantic idea ! How
did you ever think of it? Out of all the
people in that waiting-room only your
little girl' 11 know some one's talking to
her. It's perfectly plush. How do you
send a k — over this old wire? Oh, I
mustn't ! "

She flashed a telegraphic good-by to
him, and left — to her infinite astonish-
ment, if she could have known — a young
man at the operator's table at Mount
Savage, whose face was fairly wreathed
in smiles. For a great big, brilliant idea
had ^struck him. A series of long, jubi-
lant whistles came from his lips.

" Say, has a long-lost aunt left you
money, George? Gee! You're frisky!
What's up? "

McGill, the station-agent, having lit
his pipe and made himself comfortable
on the platform, surveyed his young
friend in astonishment.

" You've gotten over the indigestion
you had for a couple of days. 'Twas
a grouch you had, for sure. Glad you're
O. K. again. Got a good tip? "

" Mac, me to Louisville on No. 7 to-
morrow, if you'll help me out? Back
the day after. Is it a go? "

The Scotchman was an obliging man.
Besides, George had trained his young-
ster, Sandy Mac, to be, at the age of
eleven, the crack kid ball-player of the
region, a circumstance that gave the
father infinite reflected glory. Cunning-
ly, George added :

" Going to get Sandy a new bat while
I was down there, if I could get off."

The matter was then and there settled.
" Sure, boy," said McGill. " I'll tend

to things."

The Shelbyville office closed at seven;
and the Hawk's Nest man, to get into
Louisville at two - thirty the next day,
would be starting on his long journey
across the West Virginia mountains by
a little after ten. Though the telegraphic
ear of Mount Savage was attuned, no
more affectionate ihessages passed down
the line until six-thirty, when, hastily,
Shelbyville was told, " Remember. To-
morrow."

At so close to seven that Gussie must
have been putting on her hat, and all but
gliding out of the door, George grasped
his key firmly. This is the message that
he sent in the best style and with every
characteristic of his telegraphic twin :

Gussie — You know who's ■ talking.
Glad I caught you. Make that the
lower end of the waiting-room, not the
upper. Tell you why to-morrow. An-
gels ever guard thee, fair.

George had been "thinking over that
ending for two hours.

" I'll bet it made a hit," he said, as he
climbed up the hill to McGill's to sup-
per. ' " Now, I've got you, Frankie.
Wait till I get in that station. Wow ! "

More than one very pretty girl was
in the waiting-room of the C. and O. sta-
tion at Louisville the next afternoon at
half past two o'clock on the arrival of
the train from the East.

Miss Gussie Sparks was just a trifle
worried. Confident of her own personal
attractions and the fit of the new dress
on which the dressmaker, under tearful
persuasion, had put the last touches at
noon, it seemed, as she looked about her,
that .there was altogether too much girl
competition for the eyes of an impres-
sionable man who could quote poetry the
way her Hawk's Nest admirer did.

Yet these other girls did not know the
romantic message she was to get. Pshaw !
She was safe.

It took about two minutes for George
to get the toy sounder ; and then he was
hack in the waiting-room, making his
way down to the lower end. With care-
ful forethought, on the night previous
lie had ironed his trousers ; and the

740

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

creases, made sharper by being between
the mattresses while he slept, were things
of beauty.

A hasty glance assured him that he
was as spruce as any young fellow there.
He plucked up heart more than ever.
Slipping his hand into the pocket where
the sender was, he glanced over the wait-
ing crowd.

Could that be she, that girl in blue?
Or, was it the one in brown?

Stay ! Over here was a little- beauty in
gray — just the saucy, petite type Tom
Judson had described.

But, for all that, it might be the one
in red, whose eyes were as black as coals
and fairly snapped. And there were
three or four more that he was not at
all sure of. All were evidently waiting
— each might prove the girl of the wire.

He gripped the sounder. And then,
like a flash, the horrible thought came
over him: What was he to say in Morse?

His telegraphic touch was Hawk's
Nest's to perfection ; but how could he
make up his language — how get off the
flossy stuff Gussie had been drinking in
eagerly for days?

He hadn't the slightest idea what to
begin with. His mind was a wild blank.
The girl, whoever it was, that was stand-
ing within a few feet of him, would see
through the telegraphic forgery in an
instant.

But there was not a second to waste.
Something had to be done. George had
saved many a ball-game by action. Three
men on bases and two out. Look out !
Let it go ! Play ball !

He had seen his salvation. The news-
stand bore a sign, " Conversation Candy."
In no time at all he was smiling into the
eyes of the much-marceled young person
in charge and saying to her in an under-
tone :

" Half a pound of the talk-fest candy,
sister."

She understood. Never was a sale
more quickly made. George, with a
happy flash of inspiration, had remem-
bered those lozenges with their splendid
red mottoes. Many a time they had made
a party bright and joyous for him. You
didn't have to think when you talked to
a girl. The mottoes did that for you.

He was much easier in mind. His
hand went into the bag in his pocket and

"THIS GENTLEMAN,'' — INDICATING

brought out a sugar disk. Surreptitious-
ly he read it behind his fingers and
plumped it into his mouth. Another and
another.

Click ! And a succession of them. He
was strolling nonchalantly about.

"Are you ready, dearest?" "Ever
thine!" " D aiding, do you love me?"
" I am happy when near you."

They did not sound as well as he had
thought they would. There was some-
thing lacking. Whoever, wherever, Gus-
sie wTas, she was giving no sign.

He dug his hand into the bag. He
had almost ticked off the motto on the
pink heart that came uppermost before
he realized what it was :

"Do you kiss boys? "

Almost in a panic, he reached for an-
other. " Come, love, come." it read.
There, that was better. He put that on
the " wire; " and the next — for that, too,
seemed good — " Just one smile, love."

He fairly shuddered at what he drew
out next, " Cut your stick," and " Draw
it mild." These he dropped hastily on

THE TELEGRAPHIC TWINS.

741

TEE UNHAPPY GEORGE, — " IS A LEMON AT POETRY.

the floor and ground under the heel of his
shoe.

He might have fled in despair had not

a memory of a verse flashed upon him

"just at that moment. It came in the very

nick of time. Ah, ha! He had it now!

Again a rush of Morse in the prosaic
station. .Anybody that could have " read "
it would have known that George was
saying :

" Ah, cruel maid, why did thy charms
so keenly pierce my heart? "

O-ho ! And he remembered he'd sent
a valentine once. Yes ; ah, yes, here it
was. Now, Gussie, look out !

I wish I were a china cup, from which

you drink your tea,
For then I'd know at every sup you'd

give a kiss to me.

Let Hawk's Nest do all the clicking
he pleased at the upper end of the station.
Here was the boy who was delivering the
goods. Mighty funny, though, Gussie
wasn't making herself known.

Which was she? He didn't dare do

a thing but click. The girl in blue was
slipping away. She had just been joined
by a fine-looking young fellow. The
beauty in brown was in the arms of an
admiring and welcoming feminine group,
who were hugging her and talking vocif-
erously as they commenced to carry her
off. Another and another girl disap-
peared. The black-eyed one in red, after
looking over everybody, finally walked
out.

There remained, among possibilities,
only the girl in gray. She was pacing up
and down, a little frown of disappoint-
ment on her pretty face, her head perked
up in the most catchy manner. She was
surely waiting for somebody — or some-
thing.

George's pulse commenced to beat
furiously. Here was a dream! Why
couldn't lie speak?

But, no. She might have been a thou-
sand miles away, for all the attention
she was paying. Calmly oblivious, she
walked up and down. Was his " conver-
sation" absolutely a frost? She must

742

THE RAILROAD MAX'S MAGAZINE.

know it was he. Seeing him, hearing
him, had she turned him down? Had she
really nagged him?

Horrors ! He became more and moxe
rattled. His clicking stopped. Then he
saw that would never do. Of a sudden,
his sounder seemed to work of itself.
Without his being aware, it merrily
clicked out :

" Say, can't we go to the ball-game
this afternoon? "

He stopped, terrified. The faintest
suspicion of a smile came upon the
beauty's face. But she made no sign.

Into his pockets, George dug frantic-
ally once more: " My beloved star! Are
you happy? "

A great effort now: "When stars are
in the quiet skies the most I pine for
thee."

The lady of his love turned and slowly
walked up the room. As well as his agi-
tation would let him, George followed
her. He could think of little to say. All
the phrases that were left on the candy
hearts and diamonds were such stray ones
as, " Certainly, darling," and " May I see
you home? "

They were more than half-way up the
waiting-room. Faintly, at first, louder
and louder as they kept on, came to the
ear a procession of telegraphic clicks :

"Oh, my love; my dear love. And
o'er the hills and far away — don't you
remember, dear — and straight into the
never - to - be - forgotten dying day the
happy princess followed him. , Where
are you, dear? "

The face of the girl in gray lighted
up. She took one step, and then another
toward a slight, dreamy young man, who
was looking anxiously about. At once
the tick-tick-tick came to an end.

" Gussie ! " the man exclaimed — but
not in M_orse.

" Not at all," cried another girl, in a
stunning purple gown, who appeared
suddenly from behind a telephone-booth.
" I'm Gussie. She's my friend. So this
is Frank! Jennie, who's this other gen-
tleman? "

" I don't know," said the girl in gray.
" I'm all mixed up. Are there two op-
erators at Hawk's Nest?

" You told me he said the most beauti-
ful things over the wire. This gentle-
man,"— indicating the unhappy George,
— " is a lemon at poetry. I never heard
such awful truck." She glanced coquet-
tishly up into the eyes of the Mount Sav-
age operator, and added: " I haven't any
use at all for poetry myself."

"How about that ball-game?" asked
George.

LOUNGING LIBRARIES ON WHEELS.

A COMPLETE library for the traveling
people — something distinctively new in
railroad service, has been adopted by the
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, par-
ticularly for its fast trains between Chicago
and Denver.

The Burlington has equipped four new cars
with the " Five-Foot Library," selected by
Dr. Charles W. Eliot, president emeritus of
Harvard University, and in addition will
supply other works intended to give selec-
tion of the broadest possible scope to the
amount of space available.

The new cars are unique in many ways,
embodying the idea of a lounging club on
wheels. One end of the car is devoted to
a sort of sun parlor arrangement, which is
regarded as a big improvement on the cld-
style observation attachment. This section
is entirely enclosed in glass fitted in bronze
window sashes and bronze doors. The
windows are so adjusted to the sash,
which is parted in the middle, that they can

be lowered and raised to suit the atmos-
pheric conditions.

When -the weather permits, this part of
the coach may be used iri much the same
way as the observation platform. In weather
that is less favorable, the windows may be
adjusted so as to entirely eliminate the
dust feature.

The cars are seventy-eight feet in length.
They are split up into a buffet smoking-
room, seating nineteen passengers, a writing-
room, with two desks and a ladies' parlor
fitted with twenty-two chairs and a couch
accommodating three.

The sun-parlor feature of the car, on
bright days, promises to be the most at-
tractive innovation. Here the passengers
majr bask in the sunshine to their hearts'
delight or, shaded, read any of the books
supplied by the Burlington Library. The
cars were installed on the Burlington's
Chicago-Denver trains with the recent in-
auguration of the new speed schedule.

Railroad and Commuters in
Battle of Jokes.

BY GEORGE JEAN NATHAN

IT is estimated that over one million people commute daily between New
York City and the great stretches of adjacent country where they make
their homes. One of the largest suburban services is operated by the
Erie Railroad, which, several years ago, became the butt for all sorts of
jokes. The commuters started them, and the vaudeville performers and
newspapers took them up until the Erie became a byword for all the ancient
puns and hoary-headed jokes since the ark. Then the worm turned. It was
a lively warfare while it lasted.

President Underwood, of the Erie, After Listening Patiently for Years

to the Jokes On His Road, Turns Them On the Public

in the Shape of a Book.

EATED around a lunelieon-table
in a down-town New York
restaurant were several men
whose outburst of laughter
made the diners at the tables
close by regret that they had
not been privileged to hear
the quip that had caused the merriment.
The luncheon - party in question was
made up of F. D. Underwood, president
of the Erie Railroad, and two of his
close friends. The latter gentlemen
were regular commuters over the road
of which Mr. Underwood is the chief
executive, and the conversation had
turned to the jokes that were being told
all over the country at the expense of
the rural, service of the Erie.

"If 'it were not for the Erie," said
one o£ the men to Mr. Underwood,
" half of the vaudeville performers in
this country would be looking for jobs.
A vaudeville act without- a funny remark
about your railroad would he like home
without mother."

" Yes," put in the second diner laugh-
ingly, " half the pleasure we commuters

get out of life consists in springing
jokes on the service of the road during
our trips to and from the city."

Mr. Underwood thought a moment,
and slapped the table with his hand.
" Right ! " he exclaimed. " And now
my plan is made. I am going to make
the joke-bread you have cast upon the
waters come back to you. I am going
to get even with the commuters."

" How in the world are you going to
do that?" asked the others.

" Wait, look, and listen," replied the
chief executive.

How Mr. Underwood, aided by his
associates, succeeded in turning the mul-
titudinous array of Erie jokes on the
commuters, and how, by turning the
tables on the latter, he succeeded in put-
ting almost a full stop to the ubiquitous
puns and sarcastic funnyisms through
making the commuters realize that the
joke was on them, has been well appre-
ciated ere this by the suburban travelers.

Mr. Underwood's plan, in brief, was
this: He collected every good joke that
had been told at the expense of the

743

744

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

Erie's suburban service. These jokes
were inserted in the time-tables of the
railroad, and in such positions that the
commuter who was looking up the trains
could not fail to see them.

New jokes were to be inserted as new
batches of time-tables were issued, and
not a joke was to be allowed to go un-
noticed. For more than a year and a
half this order was put into execution,
and only recently, after several thousand
commuters had written to the Erie com-
pany that the laugh was on them, was
the great joke campaign called off.

To demonstrate the extent to which
the " campaign " was carried, and to
give an idea of the huge variety of
jokes that were turned against the com-
muters by making the latter read them
regularly in the time schedules, the fol-
lowing collection of the. best of these
jests was made.

Included in the list, the Erie officials
assure us, are all of the very finest jokes
that have been cracked at their expense.
And, assuredly, the collection is a unique
one, to say the least.

The jokes are reprinted herewith just
as they appeared in the time-tables :

rolling down the bank, thinks Oi, ' Be-

gorry, if Oi kin kape up this gait a

thrifle longer, I'll be in Binghamton
ahead of the train.' "

MAN FALLING MIGHT BEAT
ERIE.

Recently an old man en route to
Binghamton, while passing from one
coach to another, fell from the train
and rolled down a steep embankment,
but was not seriously hurt. One of
the train crew asked him what he
thought of as he was falling.

" Well," he said, " Oi don't want to
hurrt yer feelings, sor ; but whin I was

MORE INFORMATION.

On a certain section of Erie Railroad,
track repairs were being made and the
cars vibrated considerably. A passen-
ger requested information from the
conductor as to the cause, and it was
given. In a few moments the rocking
motion subsided, and upon further in-
quiry of the conductor, the passenger
learned " the train is now off the
track."

"WHO BUILT THE ERIE?"

A motherly old lady, anxious to
reach her destination, was informed
that the train would be somewhat de-
layed, but she concluded to make the
best of it. While discussing the prob-
able time, of arrival at her station, she
asked the conductor, " Who built the
Erie Railroad?" As he did not know
she volunteered the information that the
Lord must have built it, for does not
the Scripture say: "And God made
the beasts of the earth . . . and
everything that creepeth on the earth.
— Genesis i.25."

TO DISCONTINUE RETURN TICK-
ETS.

Nelson. — " It is intimated that the
Erie, is going to discontinue the sale
of return tickets from New York to
stations on the New Jersey and New
York Railroad."

MacDougal.— " Why? "

Nelson. — " Because their lease of
that line will expire in ninety-nine
years."

WORTH THE FARE.

It was during a very tedious ride on
the " Erie," and the- passengers, tired,
'dirty, and thirsty, all berated the com-
pany with the exception of one man.
His fellow passengers commented on
this, and asked him why he did not de-
nounce the company, too.

" It would be hardly fair," he replied.
" as I am traveling on a pass ; but, if
they don't do better pretty soon, blame
me if I don't go out and buy a ticket
and join you."

RAILROAD AND COMMUTERS IN BATTLE OF JOKES. 745

PUT THE COWCATCHER BE-
HIND.

During the floods a few years ago,
many bad washouts occurred on the
Erie, and the trains were run at a low
rate of speed. When the conductor
was punching the ticket of a passenger
he remarked :

" Does this railroad company allow
passengers to give it advice, if they do
so in a respectful manner?"

The conductor replied that he
guessed so.

"Well, then,, it occurred to me that
it would be well to detach the cow-
catcher from the front of the engine
and hitch it to the rear of the train ;
for, you see, we are not liable to over-
take a cow, and what's to prevent a cow
from strolling into this car and biting
a passenger? "

It is an old joke. It originated with
Mark Twain, back in the '80's, but even
the conductor laughed. _

TIME-TABLES. •

At all the shows ridicule is the big
hit. The minstrel middleman asks the
endman, ." Where do you get your
funny jokes? "

Endman replies : " Comparing the
running time with the time-tables of
the Erie Railroad."

Returning from an excursion, he. got
off the train at Pompton to purchase
some peanuts, and the train started be-
fore he had completed his purchase.
Nothing daunted, he started 'after the
train, crossing lots and bridges, and
when the train stopped for about a
minute at Pompton Junction, the swift-
footed newsboy, out of breath, swung
aboard and rejoined his astonished
companions, who believed that he had
been left behind for the night.

EDUCATION.

An ordinarily bright schoolboy from
an Erie town, while reciting his les-
sons one day, did so in a very hesita-
ting and slow manner. The teacher,
when chiding him for his slowness,
suggested that if riding on the Erie
had such an effect, he had better com-
mute on some other line.

IN VAUDEVILLE.

Two vaudeville actors in their work
discuss the many medals which one
of them has upon his breast as decora-
tions. One, much larger and "more
showy than the rest, was given to him,
he said, for specific bravery. When
asked what particular act entitled him
to such distinction, he replied : " I am
a hero ; I got that for riding between
Buffalo and New York on the Erie."

BOY

RUNNING BEATS ERIE
TRAIN.

An Upper Montclair newsboy heat an
Erie passenger-train from- Pompton
to Pompton Junction.

HEARD AT THE POST-OFFICE.

" Weir, spring is here at last. I no-
ticed this morning that the Erie has
replaced the snow-plows on the cow-
catchers with mowing-machines." .

746

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

SUBURBAN SERVICE.

A shipper, in conversation with a rep-
resentative of a foreign line, stated
that the Erie Railroad had discontinued
shipments of grain because it had been
found necessary to take off their two
box cars and use them for suburban
passenger service.

DEFINITION.

A passenger just returned from a
trip over the Erie, called on the ticket-
agent who had sold him the ticket, and
stated that he had a model trip.

The next day the agent bethought
himself to look up the word " model "
in the dictionary, and this was what
he found :

MODEL: — A small imitation of the
real thing.

A SAD CASE.

" This is a sad case," said the at-
tendant at an insane asylum, pausing
before a padded cell. " There is no
hope for the patient whatever."

"What's his trouble?" asked the
visitor.

" He thinks he understands an Erie
time-table."

BASEBALL.

At a recent game of baseball between
two National League clubs at the Polo
Grounds, one of the players made an
attempt to score by sliding to home-
plate, but arrived too late. While
brushing the dust and dirt from his
clothes, a " rooter " in the " bleachers "
exclaimed :

"Serves him right; he looks as if he
came in on the Erie."

ANOTHER ON THE ERIE.

It is said the Erie Railroad stopped
the transportation of corpses between
York and Buffalo. Reason : Fear that
they will not be able to get them there
in time for the resurrection.

A LIMERICK.

A commuter who rode on the Erie
Grew daily more doleful and dreary.

Quoth he : " There's no fable

That beats this time-table,
Trains run here as though they were
beery."

This limerick, incidentally, was the
prize-winner in the New York Evening
World's prize limerick competition.

PROBLEM.

If it takes five days for the Erie Rail-
road to transport an egg thirty miles,
as testified in a traffic investigation
conducted in Rochester recently, state
approximate age at time of frying for a
five-cent sandwich of an egg laid by a
Middle Western hen, stored in Chicago
for some months and then shipped to
the Eastern market by Erie.

HALF FARE.

A patriarch who presented a half
ticket for a ride between Suffern and
Jersey City, was informed that he must
pay full fare. He replied: "When I
purchased that ticket before boarding
this train I was entitled to the half-fare
rate."

RAILROAD AND COMMUTERS IN BATTLE OF JOKES. 747

A TOOTHACHE STORY.

A passenger on an Erie train with
toothache asked the conductor if there
was a dentist aboard who could give him
relief, and incidentally he showed him
the cause of his trouble. The conduc-
tor, astonished, asked why he hadn't
seen a dentist before taking the train.
He replied that his teeth were all sound
when he left Chicago.

NOT THIS COMMUTER.

There once lived a commuter who
refused to roast the train service be-
tween his town and New York — but he
didn't live on the Erie.

The following set of verses, sent in
to the railroad by a sarcastic commuter,
was reprinted under the caption, " On
the Poor Old Erie."

long. President Underwood regards
the new shade as more " sootable " to
things across the river, where dense
clouds of smoke still obscure _ the
scenery, fill the eyes of long-suffering-
commuters, and befoul pretty villages.
No wonder the Erie poet sings :
" The poor commuters howl and cuss
Upon the road bituminous."

I have ridden on the trolley,

I have ridden on the ice,
I have ridden on the rollers,

And bumped me once or twice.
I have ridden in the Subway,

I have ridden on the " L,"
I have ridden on the Erie,

And have ridden very well.

I have ridden in an auto,

I have ridden in a boat,
I have ridden on a mule,

But I never " rode the goat."
I have ridden on a hand-car,

I have ridden on a truck,
But always on the Erie

Had the very best of luck.

I-have ridden on a camel,

I have ridden on an ass,
I have ridden on a ticket,

I have ridden on a pass,
I have ridden in a Pullman,

I have ridden in a freight,
I have ridden on the Erie,

And never once was late.

ERIE IMPROVEMENTS.

Now, that the Erie Railroad Com-
pany has rented $i50,ooo-a-year floor
space in the McAdoo tunnel buildings,
it has '"been an' done anr gone " painted
its freight-sheds and ferry-houses a
dark color, and we no longer see
the familiar dirty-yellow that illumi-
nated ttee foot of Chambers Street so

REQUESTING INFORMATION.

When an Erie train stopped rather
abruptly between two stations, a pas-
senger asked the conductor, the cause.
He replied : " There is a cow on the
track," and passed on. The train pro-
ceeded, and within fifteen minutes
stopped again ; the passenger asked :
"What are you stopping for now?"
The conductor replied : " We've
caught up with the cow again."

A COMMUTER'S COMMUNINGS.

It's a wise child who knows his own
father — especially when father has
bought a home on the Erie.

Together with these jeers and jokes
and verses, hundreds of others of a like
character were printed in the time-tables,
which, in a few months after the joke
campaign was begun, became known as
the Erie Joke Books. The extent to
which this characterization went is made
known in the following quotation from
one of the schedules :

" While looking for information re-
cently in connection with the running
of trains for certain shipments, a pa-
tron was referred to the superintendent
of transportation for a set of working

748

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

tables. When making application for
them in writing, he requested that
' Erie Joke Book No. 2 ' be sent to him,"

Many of the letters that were received
at the Erie offices from commuters, after
the joke campaign was well under way,
were quite as amusing as were the jokes
that had been turned on them.

One commuter wrote : " The jokes are
worse than the train service. Please
discontinue one or the other."

Another wrote: " I will never say an-
other mean thing about the Erie if you
will only stop those awful jokes. I can
bear rough travel better than be com-

pelled to hear, or read, the same funny
story twice."

Still another wrote: "I will agree to
quit kicking if you will agree to stop
printing and reprinting that weird array
of old jokes."

But the favorable outcome of the joke
campaign — favorable to the railroad —
was best illustrated by a letter from a
commuter in Tenafly, New Jersey.

"Your time-tables," read the letter,
" have had the effect of a sort of Keeley
cure on us Tenaflyers. If you will stop
dosing us with our town jokes, we prom-
ise you to henceforth abstain from all
forms of alcoholic Erie jests."

LARGE SALARY TOO SMALL.

He Could Make Both Ends Meet on $40 a Month, but with $1,800
a Year He was Always in Debt.

WHEN A. B. Stickney, president of the
Chicago and Great Western Rail-
road, was owner of a small railroad in the
West, he had* a vacancy as station-agent,
which was worth eighty dollars a month.
Looking around for a suitable man to take
the place, he selected Tom Jones, a young-
ster who was getting forty dollars a month
on- another railroad for a similar position.

Jones was a bright young man, and he
jumped at the chance to double his salary.
After a time, his work made such a good
impression on his new employer that he
was taken into the office of the president
and his salary was raised to one hundred
dollars a month. He " made good " in his
new position, and he was raised again to
one thousand five hundred dollars.

Mr. Stickney began to notice that Jones
received callers in the office, who some-
times stood talking for a long time. One
day, after such a visitor had gone, Mr.
Stickney said: "Tom, who was that man?"

Jones was evidently worried. A care-
worn look settled on his countenance.
" That man," he said, " was trying to col-
lect a bill from me."

" How much do you owe ? " asked his
boss.

" I don't know," replied Jones.

" Don't you get enough salary to live on ? "

" Well, I don't know how it is," was the
answer, "but when I. got forty dollars a
month I was able to live and pay my bills.
Now I can't make ends meet."

" Find out how much you owe," was Mr.
Stickney's rejoinder, " and let me know
what it is."

Jones presented to Mr. Stickney the next
day an itemized statement showing that he
owed $150. His employer presented him
with a check for the amount. " There," he
said, " pay up, and your increased peace of
mind ought to make you that much more
valuable to the railroad. I shall increase
your pay to one thousand eight hundred dol-
lars. Do you think you can live on that ? "

" Oh, yes, I can do that, all right," replied
Jones.

Soon after that Mr. Stickney sold the
road, he and Jones parted company, and he
forgot the man whom he had boosted along
into a good position. Ten or fifteen years
later he. was in the Canadian Northwest
with a party of friends.

At a small station where his train stopped
he saw a smiling, gray-haired man who
looked familiar. They looked at each other,
then Mr. Stickney put out his hand.

"Hello, Jones: is that you? What are
you doing here?" he asked.

" Station-agent," replied Jones.

"How much?" queried the railroad
president.

" Fifty dollars."

" Can you live and pay your bills ? "

" Yes, getting along bully," replied the
man who could not make ends meet on
one thousand five hundred dollars a year.
Then they both laughed.

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

BY EDWARD BEDINGER MITCHELL,
Author of " An American Knight Errant," " The Yellow Rose," Etc.

Several People Show Their Hands -
and Some Go Into the Discard.

SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS,

STEPHEN PAGET, a retired newspaper man, and his friend Marshfield, are attracted
by the sight of a beautiful girl in a poor building opposite Paget's apartments. A few
minutes later a middle-aged woman in the street below is heard to scream hysterically, and
on Paget rushing down to find out the reason, she says she has seen the evil one, indicat-
ing as the place the room in which the two men have just seen the girl. Paget escorts
the woman to her store in the basement of he cheap house, where he learns that her
name is Rosa, and that she and the girl, Maria Bigontina, live in the room above. Some
days later, Paget finds the girl in a park, homeless. Rosa has disappeared and Maria's
brother is also lost. Paget arranges for her to stay at the Walton until her people can
be found. He goes to interview the landlord, who has turned her out, and in her room
has an adventure with several Italian cutthroats. Dining with Maria, he is warned by a
Hungarian orchestra leader not to take the first cab or walk when going home.

The cab they do take breaks down, and in the confusion they are actually led into
taking the first cab. The driver tries to abduct them, but Paget thrashes him, and after
seeing Maria to the Walton he changes coats with the driver and goes to the place the-
latter was instructed to driv; them to. He sees his enemy, but fails to learn anything.
Next morning, with Maria, he dodges the spies and carries the girl to the seclusion of
his cousin's home.

As Paget is going home he is met by Marshfield, who insists that he go to his house
to dinner. A scheme is on foot through which the elder Marshfield may purchase valu-
able mining property in Abyssinia, and it is practically settled that Paget and young
Marshfield shall go to look things over. Paget sees one of the guests at the dinner in
conversation with one of the Italians of his previous adventure, and later, he and Marsh-
field overhear a conference of the cutthroats, in which it is planned to get possession of
Maria.

Paget declines, and when Rocca attempts to trap him_ he proves too smart, and instead
traps Rocca in a secret closet. He discovers that Maria's brother is imprisoned at the
warehouse, so he and Marshfield go there while they have Rocca trapped, and by a sub-
terfuge release the boy.

to tell
added,

CHAPTER XIX.

The Outline of a Hand.

AVID'S abrupt question broke
the silence which followed :
" What did you tell him
to go to West Eleventh
Street for?"

" I don't know. I had
him somewhere. I suppose " — I
conscience-stricken — "I suppose

I was thinking of Maria. It's all right "
— for David was smiling grimly at me —
"Rocca knows she's there. We can't
give anything more away. We'll send
everybody off somewhere, and then
we'll hunt these dogs down. It's plain
sailing now, and the police have got to
help us."

" I'll stay at home nights if they
don't," returned Marshfield, and there-
after held his peace until the carriage

Began in the August Railroad Man's Magazine. Single copies, 10 cents.

749

750

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

stopped in front of Mrs. Noyes's house
in West Eleventh Street. Then he
opened the door and stepped out.

" Here you are," he said. " Now for
the reunion and the gratitude. Shall
I stay until it's all over?"

" Don't be a fool," 1 laughed. " Come
in. Mrs. Noyes will be glad to hear — "

I stopped short. In front of us, at
jthe, head of the high stoop, by the open
door, stood Mrs. Noyes. There was no
welcoming smile upon her kindly fea-
tures. For once in her life my cousin
was a messenger of evil.

"What is it?" Together, David and
I rushed to the foot of the steps, read-
ing at the same instant the disaster in
her face.

" She's gone, Stephen ! "

" Gone ! But it can't be ! I warned
you not to let anybody in. She can't
have gone." Every instinct in me cried
out in denial of the blow. " I told you
about tricks. I — "

" Hush, Steve ! " Mrs. Noyes held
up her hand to silence me, and her voice
was low with compassion. " There were
no tricks. I let no one in. She went
of her own accord, my poor boy. I
knew nothing of it."

" Of her own accord ! She went of
her own accord ! " I doubt if the words
meant anything to me as I ^echoed them.
Dimly I was aware that my cousin was
looking at me with eye* of infinite com-
passion, that David's hand held my arm?
in a steadying grip, that the rescued
Pietro stood in bewilderment and ex-
haustion, motionless by my side. To me
their figures were shadowy and lifeless.
I had come to see Maria, to restore her
brother to her, and she was not here.

Slowly the truth 'came to me — she was
not here. I did not storm nor cry out.
The full meaning of Mrs. Noyes's' words
sank too slowly into my brain for that.
I could do nothing but stand and stare
helplessly at her, and it was David's
voice which first convinced me of the
sickening reality.

" She left of her own accord, Mrs.
Noyes?" he was saying. "No one
came for her, then?"

" I saw no one. Jane told me that she
gave a note to Miss Bigontina. And she
left this behind her."

My cousin held out- a large envelope

to Marshfield. Like one who had no
possible interest in the business, I
watched him take it from her, open it,
and spread out a large piece -of paper.
In a second he had jammed it into his
pocket, with one quick glance up and
down the quiet street.

" Come inside," he ordered. " We
must think of this."

Within the .formal drawing-room, as
calm and dignified as when I had left
Maria there with my cousin's arm
around her waist, I came to myself.

" Let me see that paper," I said, and
without a word Marshfield took it from
his pocket and put the crumpled sheet in
my outstretched hand.

In the center of it a great splotch of
black, framed by the dingy white of
some chemical smeared upon the paper,
was the outline of a hand. Underneath,
in the small writing of an educated man,
were a few words in Italian. I carried
the missive over to the window, pushed
aside the heavy curtains, and bent to
read the message :

You will follow the man who brings
this, or the head will follow the hand.

They had reached her ! The ordinary
ruses I had thought to ward against —
the gas men, the telephone men, the
hackneyed devices of the common sneak-
thief — these were child's tricks to the
villains I had dared to pit my wits
against. They had reached her with a
secret weapon, a threat of which I knew
nothing. I raised my gaze from the
sinister message, to meet three pairs of
eyes fastened on me.

" What does it say? " David demanded
sharply.

" You will follow trie man who brings
this, or the head will follow the hand,"
I repeated slowly.

Pietro Bigontina leaped upon me and
tore the paper from my hand.

" It's mine ! " he screamed. " It's
mine ! They took it yesterday. Look —
look!"

He slapped the sheet on the table and
his own hand beside it, heedless of the cup
that shattered on the floor. It was one of
Mrs. Noyes's most treasured possessions.
I learned afterward, the last of an an-
cient set ; at the moment no one thought
of china, broken or whole, new or old.

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

751

For the hand upon the paper was the
image of the living hand beside it. No
one save me had understood the boy's
cry ; the fact was there for every eye to
read.

" But, how? " Mrs. Noyes's awed whis-
per broke the silence that fell upon the
room. " How did she know it was yours
— and who are you? "

In reply, Pietro raised his hand from
the table and pointed with the other to a
deep scar that ran across the palm. In
the same place, through the black effigy
on the paper, ran a broken line.

" I cut it when I was young," he said
in halting English. " She knows, for
she is my sister."

His hand dropped back beside the
paper, and silence fell once more upon
the four around the table.

"Who brought this?"

With the question I raised my head to
begin the long battle before us. We had
won Pietro — we would not lose the
greater prize.

" I do not know. Jane says — "

" Where is Jane? "

" I will call her." With extraordinary
calmness, Mrs. Noyes walked over to the
bell and rang it. A moment later the
withered figure of the old servant ap-
peared in the doorway. " Jane " — and
my cousin's voice was as quiet as though
she were ordering afternoon tea — " Jane,
Mr. Stephen wishes to know exactly what
happened this afternoon."

" Yes, ma'am." The woman was on
the verge of hysterics ; her nerves had
never been of the strongest, and she was
old ; but the familiar voice soothed her.
" Yes, ma'am."

"Who came here, Jane?"

I pushed the terrifying sheet of paper
behind me and faced her with what ease
I could assume. If we were to learn
anything at all, there must be nothing
more to frighten her.

" There was nobody, Mr. Stephen — I
mean nobody came in. Mrs.. Noyes told
me not to let anybody in, and I shut the
door in his face; indeed I did, Mr. Ste-
phen— and all the years I have been in
this house I've never shut the door on
anybody before, rich or poor. There's
always been the hall for them that came,
whoever they were.

" But I shut the door on him, Mr.

Stephen ; and I chained it, too ; for that
was what Mrs. .Noyes told me, and it's
too long I've been with her, and her
mother before her, to do different now,
Mr. Stephen."

" My dear Jane, you did quite right.
I only want to know who it was that
came."

The gentleness with which I interrupt-
ed the maddening flood' of apology was
more than forced. I would have liked
to choke the facts, from her trembling
lips, and behind me I heard David move
impatiently; but there was no help for it
— she would tell her story her own way,
or not at all.

" It wasn't anybody, Mr. Stephen. It
was just a driver-man. It's not the likes
of him you would be knowing — a red-
faced loafer — there's hundreds of them
round here ; more shame to the place I
say, and you a Paget if ever there was — "

In her excitement, Jane had fallen
back into old habits of speech and
thought. She was headed for an endless
dissertation on the glory of the family,
when I interrupted her :

" What did he want? "
_ " It was a letter he had — a letter for
Miss Bigontina."

" What happened then? "

" Happened? There was nothing hap-,
pened. He was gone already when I
came back, and why shouldn't he be?
It's not me that would be letting him
hang around the steps all day, like it was
a saloon here."

" Of course not, Jane. And when did
Miss Bigontina go? "

" Not ten minutes after, it was, Mr.
Stephen. I know, for it was the old
black dress she wore that's not fit for a
lady, Mr. Stephen ; as you know yourself,
for all you're a man, and all the pretty
things Mrs. Noyes got for her, not one
did she touch. Oh, it was a shame to
see her walk out the door like that ! "

" My Heaven, why didn't you stop
her?" The cry broke from Marshfield
and me simultaneously, goaded beyond
endurance by the thought of what had
happened under the very eyes of the old
woman.

" Stop her, Mr. Stephen ! It's not for
me to be stopping the guests of the fam-
ily in their comings or their goings. It's
not me who asked her to come, or me

752

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

who asked her to stay. I do my duty,
Mr. Stephen ; and I know my place, but
such goings on I never saw here before
in the house that was here before ever
you were, Mr. Stephen."

" That will do, Jane. We are much
obliged for your story. It will be all
clear; very shortly."

Mrs. Noyes cut in upon our dialogue
wit/h swift decision, and the faithful old
woman betook herself elsewhere to re-
cover her wonted composure. _

" That's the whole story, Stephen." .
Mrs. Noyes turned to me with the gentle
sympathy which had greeted me. " That's
all I know, except this: Jane said it was
left on the table for me. It's from her.
Read it. The other paper was in her
room."

It was a single piece of writing-paper
she held out to me, folded over in the
center and addressed to " Mrs. Noyes."
Inside, the English words strange in the
fine Italian handwriting, I read :

Before I go I must thank you for your \
great kindness. I know it was your
cousin and not you who brought Rocca
here, and I will think of you often with
great love. Now I must go to save
others. Good-by forever,

Maria Bigontixa.

"Who is Rocca, Stephen? The man
in the cab with you this morning? If it
was, then — " My cousin stopped in
amazement, her gentle voice lost in a sec-
ond wild outburst from Pietro. '

" Rocca ! What do you know of
R.occa? He is not here — you cannot
know him! "

"Do, you?"

I jerked myself abruptly back from
the livid face that was screaming in my
very ear. The boy Avas shaking with pas-
sion, his slim hands opening and shut-
ting convulsively, his dark eyes blazing
with a light that was hardly sane. The
long imprisonment had shaken his nerve,
I knew ; but, even so, such uncontrolled
rage could have no ordinary source.

" Do you?" I asked again, for Pietro
had not answered.

" Do I know him? It was for him I
left Palermo. It was... he — Do I know
him ! " The boy broke off to mouth at
me in incoherent frenzy.

" Then, perhaps, you can tell me what
this means."

I shoved Maria's letter into his hand,
resolved to find without delay the bottom
of the abominable business. My answer
was astounding. The boy bent to read
the letter, frowned at it for a second in
the rather scanty light — then dropped it
to the floor and sprang at me.

" You brought Rocca to hex ! Juclas !
Judas ! " The last word ended in a cho-
king gasp as Marshfield stretched out his
hand and plucked the boy by the collar
from my grasp.

" Behave yourself," he growled, sha-
king him like a naughty child. " Paget's
the only friend you've got."

"He betrayed her. He told Rocca!
He—"

" Nonsense. You keep still and listen
for a while." David's grim voice and
strong grip forced the boy into reluctant
attention. " We got you out of that hole,
didn't we? We didn't do it for love of
you that I know of. We did it for your
sister. If you want to see her again,
stop howling and tell us who Rocca is,
and what he wants of her."

Helpless in my friend's hold, Pietro
glared savagely from him to me, seething
with impotent rage.

" Listen, Mr. Bigontina." Mrs. Noyes's
hand was laid on his trembling arm, and
her quiet words seemed to restore its ac-
customed peace to the old room. " Listen,
these are your friends and your sister's.
She has misunderstood them, and she has
gone. You must help us to get her back.
Why do you fear this Rocca? "'

She won him, as my cousin Avon every
one she met. Beneath the steady gaze of
her grave eyes, the Avildness faded from
his own. He ceased to writhe in Marsh-
field's grip ; and, as DaA'id's hands
dropped from his shoulders, he turned to
her, speaking for the first time Avith re-
straint :

" He is our great enemy, signora.^ It
Avas to escape him that I took my sister
from Palermo. Noav it seems that he
has folloAved her and this man — if it is
he of whom she speaks — has be — "

" Oh, no, I haven't," I interrupted him
sharply. "Be careful Avhat you are say-
ing."

" Be still, Stephen. What do you care
Avhat he says? Rocca learned that she
was here by accident. It Avas partly my
fault. Why is he' your enemy? "

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

753

"He calls it love."

There was a world of bitterness in the
words, but that was easier to deal with
than the hysteria of a minute before.
Mrs. Noyes soothed him with voice and
hand.

" I see now. We did not know. But
if she did not care for him, why did she
go?"

" To save me. That is my hand."
He pointed to the outline on the white
paper. " He Avould have killed me, and
she knew it. She went to save me."

"Not to him! She has not gone to
him ! " This time it was I who sprang
forward beside myself with rage.

Pietro faced me with a dull despair in
place of the former frenzy. " Where
else, then?" he asked.

" By Heaven, we'll — " I had started
blindly for the door to do I know not
what, when Marshfield's voice, ringing
through the room, brought me to a halt.

"Steady on, Paget! There's more to
this yet. Wait a minute."

" Wait ! And she in that man's — "

" Yes, wait. You might as well decide
where you are going before you get there,
you know. Rocca had other business
here besides Miss Bigontina. If she was
all he wanted, he'd duck out of this so
fast there's no detective in New York
would see him go. But it's not."

"What does he want, David?"

Of the four persons in her drawing-
room, Mrs. Noyes was undoubtedly the
calmest ; and yet we were men who were
supposed to have seen something of the
world, and she was a woman who had
lived all her 'life in that sheltered house,
secure from turmoil, free from even the
thought of strife.

" He wants money, Mrs. Noyes. He
came here to interest my father in an
Abyssinian scheme. He may think he's
in love with Miss Bigontina, but I know
he's in love with gold. Well, he's got
Miss Bigontina, but he hasn't got the
gold. The Abyssinian business is still in
the air, and he'll try for — "

"By Jove!" My ' exclamation cut
Marshfield's theories short. " Look at
this."

Down on the tea-table, by the side of

the black outline of Pietro's hand, I

threw the papers I had seizec? from Roc-

ca's desk. The conversation we had over-

12 RR

heard in the Auvergne came back to me
as I studied them.

A map lay uppermost, but it was a
map with letters where legitimate, open-
hearted maps have figures that mean lati-
tude and longitude. It was no good with-
out the key, Ghedina had declared — and
the key was safe in my desk. Marshfield
was right. Rocca had Maria, but we
had the gold he hoped to have.

Would he try for. it again? Would
he trade what he called love for the
wealth those papers meant? If he would
not, could I force him?

The questions were rioting in my
brain when I was pushed roughly to one
side. Pietro's boyish hand fell on the
table, and his shrill voice rang through
the drawing-room again :

"They are mine! They were stolen
from me. What have you to do with
them? They are mine, I tell you."

Ccnfound the boy ! I could have
slapped his face ; and, if he had not hap-
pened to have been Maria's brother, I
think I would have done it. Here we
had rescued him from a most unpleasant
predicament and were striving to rescue
his sister, and all he could do was to
scream out what we were quite well
aware of without him. My thoughts
found sjDeech in David's terse words :

" You darned fool, suppose they are
yours? What are you going to do with
them?"

The boy fell back from the table, star-
ing blankly at my friend. With inherited
quickness, David had fathomed the puz-
zle. Rocca had been trying to sell old
Marshfield ,what did not belong to him —
a share in an unlocated mine and a rail-
road that- was not yet built. The hitch
in the negotiations had been caused by
his failure to produce the title to this
property.

All the time he had been confident that
his agents would ultimately succeed in
stealing the papers from young Bigon-
tine. They succeeded ; but I, too, had
succeeded as a thief better than I knew.
The papers were ours and, as far as Abys-
sinia was concerned, Rocca was back
where he was when his agents captured
Pietro and turned Maria out of her hum-
ble refuge opposite my apartment.

All this, or the essentials of it, David
grasped as well as I, while the boy stood

754

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

glaring at him; and Mrs. Noyes waited
in silent, restrained bewilderment.

" What am I going to do with them? "
Pietro muttered at last. " They mean a
fortune. My father told me he left them
to me for Maria and me. It's a fortune,
and I am going to give it to her."

"What's her address? " retorted Marsh-
field grimly. " If you are going to send
her a fortune, you might find out first
where you are going to send it."

CHAPTER XX.

The Cabman's Gratitude.

CILENCE fell upon us. David had
^ stated the problem, but no one of
the four in that formal drawing - room
could find the solution. What was her
address? Until we knew that, the papers
on the little tea-table were of no more
service than the bags of gold Robinson
Crusoe found in his wrecked ship.

Idly, I turned them over as one might
play with the contents of a waste-basket.
It was all plain enough now. There was
the map, with the route through the
mountains of Abyssinia to the mine that
was rich enough to bring Rocca from
Italy to grasp at its wealth ; the deed
from Menelik, " King of Kings," grant-
ing to " Luigi Bigontina and heirs for
all time " property, the location of which
was expressed in cipher ; a paper that
gave to the same Luigi Bigontina the
right to construct a railroad from this
property to the coast ; everything was
there except the key to the map and the
deed, and that was safe in my own rooms.

" How did you get these? " I asked at
length.

" They were my father's," said Pietro.
"He traveled much. He was in Abys-
sinia before there was war and the Ital-
ians were driven out. He told me that
he died poor; but that, if I was wise, I
could make myself rich, and Maria also.
He gave Maria to my care, and now — "

The boy broke off with a sob that came
from his heart. For the first time, I
think, my own heart went out to him.
After all, he was only a boy, and the
odds had -been heavy against him.

"Your father is dead?" My cousin's
hand was laid on Pietro's shoulder again
with undeniable sympathy.

" Yes, he is dead. I knew that he had
been negotiating with Rocca about this
mine, and I tried to carry on the nego-
tiations. But Rocca saw I was young.
He wanted to get everything and pay
nothing. Then my sister told me — ah ! "
His anger choked him. and he stopped
with a gulp.

" She told you that he pursued her,
and that she did not care for him?"
Cousin Lucy's ideas of the business side
of the affair were doubtless of the haziest,
but she knew instinctively what must
have driven the boy and girl from the
white-walled villa on the green slopes
above Palermo.

"Care for him! She!" The bitter
scorn in Pietro's voice was music in my
ears. " But Signor Rocca is a great
man in Sicily. After she told me, I did
not leave her for a minute. It was un-
bearable— never to be safe, never to draw
a free breath, to keep her always behind
walls, to fear every one — servants, police-
men, the priest himself — ah, you Ameri-
cans, you do not know Sicily : you do
not know what power means."

" We can guess," interrupted Marsh-
field. " What did you do about it? "

" We fled. We had enough for our
passage, but we bought no ticket: When
the steamer came, we went out to her in
a small boat. There were many on
board — no one noticed us. After she had
sailed, I went to the purser and paid.

"I thought we were .quite_ safe. Our
old nurse was there. We went to her.
There was no reason why Rocca should
ever know what had become of us."

"How did he?"

" Ah ! " Pietro flung out his hands in
an eloquent gesture of despair. " He is
the devil incarnate. He knows every-
thing. I went out one morning, I was
trapped, lured to that den where you
found me. I had tried to sell my papers
to an Italian banker — Cagno was his
name — perhaps it was he — I do not
know. How did you find me? "

" Paget, here — " Marshfield began,
when I cut him off :

" We're wasting time. It doesn't mat-
ter how we found you. The question
is, where is your sister? "

Marshfield walked thoughtfully over
to the window and pushed aside the# cur-
tains. " That," he said slowly. " is the

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

755

question. Where is your sister? By-
Heaven ! " He twisted his head about,
pushing his nose against the glass in the
effort to follow some object along the
street.

" What is it? " I leaped for the other
window, but the street stretched empty
before me. " What is it? " I cried again,
for David's excitement was obvious.

" That cabman ! What the blazes is
he hanging about here all the time for?
He just drove by — maybe he'll come
back."

Together we rushed into the hall, tore
open the door, and dashed bareheaded
out upon the stoop. At the corner of
Fifth Avenue a cab was turning. Slowly
it came toward us, and I held my breath
as I watched. It was the carriage in
which we had driven from Barent Street,
and on the box was the stout, red-faced
driver, who two nights before had shaken
hands with me in the back room of the
obscure saloon and called me a square
man.

In the tumult of our flight from Barent
Street I had not stopped to examine our
driver, but there could be no mistake
about it. It was the same man. Though
his face was steadily averted, as he came
slowly down the street, I recognized the
heavy figure I had hurled myself upon
and the fat neck my hands had throttled.
He was the same man, and he was not
loitering in that street without a purpose.

Suddenly my hand shot out to grasp
Marshfield's arm. "Look!" I whis-
pered. " Look ! " The cabman was op-
posite to us now, his face turned studi-
ously toward the brown row of houses
across the street. But the whip in his
hand pointed ahead— pointed immovably
to the gaudy glass front of the saloon
which ornamented the corner of Sixth
Avenue.

In front of it the cab stopped; with-
out glancing behind him, the cabman
climbed down and entered. A minute
later, Marshfield and I pushed open the
swinging doors, passed the crowd around
the bar, and came upon him in the back
room.

For an instant his eye roved furtively
around the room, empty save for us ; then
he thrust his heavy face close to mine.

" You treated me white," he muttered,
" and I haven't forgotten it, either. Is

this a friend of yours?" He jerked his
thumb toward Marshfield.

" The best I've got," I answered as
David took a step forward.

" I'm David Marshfield," he began.
" Probably you've heard of my father.
He can make it pleasant for people
sometimes — when he feels like it."

" I ain't looking for graft, young fel-
ler." The cabman's voice was rough
and surly. " If I was, I wouldn't bother
with you nor your 'father — I'm too fond
of my skin for that. But this feller done
me a good turn when I was down, and
I'll do as much for him."

" What is it, man? For Heaven's sake,
speak!" The cabby's slowness and the
fear that was revealed in his furtive
glances and underlaid the gruffness of
his words were maddening.

" That girl you was with — you want
her, eh?"

" Want her! Do you know where she
is? Want her ! "

" Easy, man ■ easy. This ain't for the
whole city to hear. Yes, I know where
she is. They made me go and get her,
and they sent me down to Barent Street.
I didn't want to go, I tell you — no more
than I wanted to carry you and her down
there before. You don't think it's fun
for a white man like me to be taking or-
ders from a pack of greasy dagoes like
them, do you? "

I choked down my impatience and
waited.

" When I seen you and your friend
come busting out of that place," contin-
ued the cabby, " I knew jolly well that
wasn't what I was waiting for. All the
way up here I says to myself, ' this fel-
ler's lickin' 'em, and lickin' 'em good.
If he can do it, I can, too. He's a white
man. He treated me right, and I'll treat
him right. He's got 'em on the run, and
I'll help him.' That's what I said, and
here I am."

He stopped with an air of conscious
virtue that might have been ludicrous
had the stakes been lower ; at the moment
even Marshfield had no eye for the
humor of it.

" Where is she? " I demanded, and my
voice broke with the strength of the hope
that was in me.

The man was not there to aid us with
the comfort of his society. Probably he

756

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

did want to help us, and when he saw us
burst from the warehouse it must have
struck him that his hated masters were
getting the worst of it. If he was ever
going to change sides, this was a good
time to begin.

" She's across the bridge in Brooklyn.
I took her there. It's a house just above
the river."

" Well, you take us to the nearest po-
lice station. We'll be inside that house
in half an hour, Steve, and the business
will be done."

Marshfield was already at the door
when the cabman sprang after him and
dragged him back by sheer force.

" For Heaven's sake, no ! " he cried.
" Do you want to kill her? "

" Kill her ! " My face went white as
the words burst simultaneously from my
lips and David's. " Kill her ! " we
gasped again, and stood helpless before
him.

" That's what I said." He spoke with
a conviction that appalled us. " I've
heard of that house. Dead men tell no
tales — nor girls, neither — not when the
body can't be found, that is. And the
police won't find no body.

"You chumps!" he broke out with
sudden heat. " What do you think you^re
up against — a lot of chickens? I'm a
big man, ain't I, and I been driving
around the city like a yeller dog for the
last year doin' whatever I was told, and
not darin' to make a squeal. Why do
you suppose I did it? For my health,
that's why. Run for the police — run for
the undertaker."

"Then, what are we to do?" It was
like a child's cry for help. I had fought
Cagno, I had fought Rocca, I had fought
this cabman. I had done it gladly, and
would do it gladly again. But now it
was her life, not mine, that would be
risked. I had reached the end of my
rope.

" You'll have to dope that out your-
self." The cabman was speaking again,
but I hardly heard him. " I'll tell you
this, though. It's my idea that they ex-
pected to take some boy from Barent
Street to the house. Who was that guy
you made off with so fast? I sort of
think it was him they was after."

" You're right there. We've got to
think this thing out, Steve." Marshfield

walked over to a table and sat down.
" They took Maria there, and they want-
ed to take Pietro there. Now, what does
that mean? "

His brows met in concentrated thought
as he gazed across the dim, sordid room
to the blank wall opposite. He was sin-
gularly like his father, I thought, as my
brain toiled futilely with our overwhelm-
ing problem and my eye rested vacantly
on him. The half - cynical humor was
gone from the face now; all that was
left was Marshfield strength, and hard,
practical, Marshfield common sense.

I was weary and discouraged; for a
second I was tempted to fling my bur-
dens on his broad shoulders and sit down
to wait. Involuntarily, my own shoul-
ders squared themselves as I drove the
weakness from me. It was my fight, and
I would fight it. And in that instant of
determination there came a gleam of in-
spiration.

"It means that Rocca thought he had
won. He had the boy already, didn't
he? He knew where Maria was, and he
knew that his message with Pietro's
hand would bring her to him. He had
the Abyssinian stuff — I took it from his
desk — and he expected to do for me
down in Barent Street.

" When I wouldn't go, he tried for me
in his own rooms. He planned all this
after he saw Maria in Eleventh Street —
when he thought he had us licked. The
only thing he hasn't got is the key to
those papers. I've got that, thank
Heaven ! "

"You have, eh?" David looked up
at me with quick intelligence. " You
mean you think you have. You've hit it
all right, Steve. Rocca thought he was
on top, but he didn't miss that key. You
remember what they said in the Au-
vergne? They knew you had that book,
but they weren't going to touch }rou be-
cause they wanted to find out where
Maria Bigontina was. Well, they found
out; and what do you suppose they did
next?"

" Went for the key! " I cried.

" Yes ; and got it, too. A child could
bamboozle that fool of a doorman of
yours. There is no black book in your
desk now, Paget."

" What, then? " Slowly we were piec-
ing together the members of the puzzle ;

THE SPIDER OF PALERMO.

757

but we were getting no nearer our goal,
no nearer the prison of Maria Bigontina.

Suddenly Marshfield sprang to his
feet, his fist crashing down upon the
flimsy table in front of him. " By Jove ! "
he shouted. " Rocca's a scoundrel, and
there was never a scoundrel yet who
didn't think everybody else was, too ! "

I frowned impatiently at the excited
man. " What's that got to do with it? "
I demanded. This was no time for the
study of the psychology of crime. What
did we care what Rocca thought of the
world he stained?

" We'll send the governor to him.
He'll say you don't know what the
papers are worth ; but he does, and he
wants to make a deal. Rocca'll believe
him — it's his only chance to get any
money out of it — and he'll bite. He'll
put the governor down for a cur like
himself, and the governor'll fool him —
good and plenty, too." *

"Send Mr. Marshfield!" Of all the
wild ideas that ever entered a sane man's
mind, that was the wildest. " Send Mr.
Marshfield ! " I echoed, and the picture
of the cold banker who had practically
ordered me out of his office that morn-
ing rose before my eyes.

" Yes, my father ; he'll do the trick."

David sprang past me, through the
door, and to the telephone at the end of

(To be co

the bar. As hopelessly bewildered as the
red-faced cabby himself, I followed aim-
lessly, to stand dazed behind him, while
he called for his home number. It was
all pure folly, and David must be out of
his head to think of it. Mr. Marshfield
had nothing to do with the thing, cared
nothing for Maria or for me. He had
refused even to listen to a straightfor-
ward story when I had asked his help,
and now his son was. proposing to send
him on an impossible errand into the
very hands of our foes. The plan was
sheer delirium, raving —

David's voice rang clear and calm
through the noisy saloon.

"Hallo, father! That you? This is
Dave talking. I want you to come down
here at once, if you will — down to the
saloon at the corner of Sixth Avenue and
Eleventh Street. No, I'm not arrested;
but I need you right away.

" We'll wait for you. We? Steve and
I. Oh, I can't shout it to you over the
phone. We need you. A hansom will
be the quickest. You'll come? Good-by."

He hung up the receiver and turned to
me with a quiet smile.

" You don't know the governor very
well, Steve. He'll be here in twenty min-
utes. He'd go, anyway; but I wouldn't
ask him if there was any danger. No-
body'll touch old Peter Marshfield."
n eluded.)

RAILROAD SCHOLARSHIPS.

THE Frank Thomson scholarships have
become an institution on the Pennsyl-
vania, and their objects and provisions are
too well known to require extensive ex-
planation here. They were established by
three children of the late President Frank
Thomson, of the Pennsylvania, a sum of
one hundred and twenty thousand dollars
being. given to form a fund by which eight
scholarships, of six hundred dollars each per
annum, would be granted to sons of living
and deceased Pennsylvania employees.

The scholarships are awarded two every
year, the course extending four years. • This
year the successful candidates were Benja-
min M. Snyder, of Elmira, New York, and
Wallace Brockman Porter, of Youngstown,
Ohio. These two young men will make six
holders of the scholarships, two being yet to
be awarded next year and two a year there-
after, as each pair completes the course.

By securing sixteen points out of a pos-
sible sixteen, Wallace Brockman Porter en-
joys the distinction of having made the
highest mark in his examination ever made
by a candidate for a Thomson scholarship.
Young Porter is a son of James Porter, a
tallyman in the freight station of the Penn-
sylvania lines at Youngstown, Ohio. He
will be seventeen years old in October, and
has just graduated from the Rayen High
School of Youngstown. He has not decided
as yet what college he will attend.

Benjamin M. Snyder, Jr., is a son of B.
M. Snyder, engineman on the Elmira di-
vision of the Northern Central Railway.
He has been attending school at the Starkey
Seminary at Lakemont, New York. He is
nineteen years of age, and expects to enter
the University of Pennsylvania at the open-
ing of the college this fall. He will take a
course in civil enoineering.

The Railroad Man's
Brain Teasers.

What Distance Does a Man Ride When He Walks, If

He Walks When He Rides? Also the

How of a "Y."

RAIN teazers are still coming in, so we, happily
and perforce, are still giving them out. Encour-
aged by the example of Mr. Cook, Mr. Ernest
L. Way, of Wichita Falls, Texas, sends us the
following :

There are two stations exactly five miles apart. A train
of box cars, just one mile long, is in one of the stations ; or,
rather, the caboose of the train is even with the depot, while
the engine, of course, is one mile from the depot, or four
miles from the next station. "Now, just as this train pulls
out, a man comes from the depot and, climbing on top of
the caboose, walks toward the front end of the train. As
the train went faster than the man walked, the engine got
to the next depot just as the man had reached the front of
the train. The engine stopped even with the depot, which
we remember was exactly five miles from the one they had
started from. The train has only gone four miles, while the
man has gone five.

How far did the man ride ?

Also, we have received from Mr. C. L. Garrison, of
Elwood, Indiana, the following " Y " puzzle :

An engine northbound wishes to turn at " B." The
only means of turning is by the " Y ", and, to our disap-
pointment, we find the " Y '- in use. There is a car of stock
at chute on north leg and a car at grain door on south leg,
and merchandise-car on main line at house. We turn,
leaving all cars on spot as found, with no drops or stake-
outs allowed.

How do we do it?

758

ON THE EDITORIAL CARPET.

Side-Talks With the Man Who Sits in the Gab
of the Magazine and Watches the Signals.

TRUTH may be stranger than fiction,
but it doesn't make as good reading.
Furthermore, when we all get together un-
der the water-tank it doesn't make as good
telling. The hog-head who sticks to. fact
when he is telling of his heart-breaking ex-
periences with a green fireman, or the
shack who truthfully tells how many wheels
he didn't twist when his string broke in
two climbing a steep grade with straight
air, may be good railroaders, but they
will never be popular as yarn-spinners.

Not that we have anything against a good
true story. In fact, we believe that many
true stories sound almost as thrilling and
convincing as if they were of the good old
stove-pipe variety. Fiction is the spice of
life, and most of us like to help keep the
world in pickle.

Of course, we do not mean that we like
to sit around in the caboose and tell stories
that are not true, but, as Tennyson does
not say:

A truth that is half a lie,
Is easier to bite.

And this brings us, by very easy and ob-
vious stages, to the February number.
That's what made us think of fiction, and
when we think of a thing we always have
to feed it into the boiler or bust the in-
jector.

The February number is going to have
the finest fiction section we have run for a
long time. Spike Malone will be along in
an auto story that would burn up the ties
but for the fact that there are no ties on
a highway.

Our old and well-tried friend, Robert
Fulkerson Hoffman, will switch in and let
us into a secret. The secret is, " Why Ba-
yard Stayed." We are not going to give
him away, but anybody knows Mr. Hoff-
man's secrets carry " Special " markers.

Two distinguished writers in the persons
of George Allan England and Charles Bat-
tel Loomis have snapped some of their
high-class equipment onto our flier this run.
They're in good company — so are we.

" Barbed Wire Chivalry " is a story of a
lady by a lady, and both ladies have enough

steam and sand to carry them anywhere on
schedule.

Look out for that story, now. It's funny
and it's tragic, but it keeps on the rails and
finishes in first-class shape.

" The Calculator," by Calvin Johnston, is
as bright as a new baggage-car, and E. Flor-
ence is aboard with a new Duganesque yarn.

As we announced last month, it was our
intention to let "The Spider of Palermo"
run into the roundhouse in this number,
but we were so crowded with first-class
merchandise that we had to double the hill
with the " Spider," and run it in two sec-
tions.

But, although we are particularly strong
on fiction in the February number, we
haven't given the big hole to the special
articles by any means. We haven't even
made a service stop. The specials are run-
ning ' along just as merrily as ever.

Mr. Horace Herr concludes his reminis-
censes of " Being a Boomer Brakeman "
with some serio-comic experiences in Mex-
ico. Just confidentially we might whisper
in your ear that we have another series
coming along pretty soon by this same
Horace Herr, and we don't know when we
read anything so human, pleasant, and rail-
roady.

Anyhow, when you hear the nickname
"Almost," just you open your sand-valve
and your throttle-valve, and head right into
the newsdealers with your little dime and
don't be happy till you get the first number
of that series. We don't know exactly
when we shall begin it, but keep your head-
lights in this general direction and we'll
flag you in time to give you the meet order.

What do you think of the " Letters of an
Old Railroad Man and His Son," which
begins in this number? In the February
number Dr. Da Costa is just getting her
nicely warm, and she is making steam at a
great rate. Swing aboard !

Another article you'll be glad to pick up
is a story by Mr. Carter on " When Budding
Genius Has . the Right of Way." It tells
something about the beginnings of things.

Since some of these beginnings, motive-
in iwit and rolling-stock have advanced al-

759

760

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

most beyond recognition, but some day we
shall probably look back at the crude, inef-
fective toys of to-day much as we look back
now on those of yesterday.

Did it ever strike you that in spite of all
the genius and labor that has been expen-
ded, in spite of all the millions of dollars
that have been poured out, the only piece
of motive-power that is absolutely perfect
in design and operation, is the simplest
and cheapest of them all — the bent pin?

Brakes up for February !

IN THE BACK SHOP.

DID you ever notice how breakdowns of
a similar nature often come in bunch-
es, so to speak? Sometimes it's front
trucks, sometimes it's axle-boxes, sometimes
it's broken rails, and sometimes it's nothing
worse than the water-coolers in the day
coaches.

It's the same thing with earthquakes and
bad colds, and it's the same thing with
people getting tired of their jobs.

It's the prevalence of this latter disease
that prompts us to pound our editorial type-
writer with a few thoughts of gentle sand-
paper treatment.

Just lately we have received several let-
ters, not to mention lengthy articles, on the
general cussedness of being a railroad man
in general and a railroad clerk in particu-
lar.

One disappointed gentleman assures us
that a man who persists in getting his
daily bread by filling out forms or keeping
accounts in manners prescribed by the In-
terstate Commerce Commission or the
American Railway Association, is, in short,
worse than a fool.

He says that whatever good work a man
does, his superior hogs the credit for it,
and whatever mistakes his superior makes,
the clerk bears the burden thereof..

He_says he knows because he has been
there.

He says the chief recreation in a railroad
office, next to this " puss, puss, come to my
corner " game, is favoritism.

He says — well, he says many things — and
he says them with much emphasis. There
are others.

The experiences of our friends may be
true, or, on the other hand, it may be their
livers. We are inclined to think it is a
little of both.

We don't suppose that anybody will claim
that human nature is different in a rail-
road office from anywhere else.

Real men in railroad positions do not hog
credit nor shift responsibility any more

than do real men in any other calling,
and there are just as many real men.

Now, friends, don't be too serious about
this matter. You don't really believe that
because some little man camps on the trail
of your good work that he can keep you
from making good. A bit of credit doesn't
make any difference one way or the other
in the long run.

If you've got the goods, you can show
them at any time. If he hasn't, he can't
show them except when you or some other
fellow is around.

Honest, you don't have to have somebody
behind your chair patting you on the back.
This is too serious a world for us to take
it so seriously.

Perhaps you are doing first-rate work,
but then even that isn't so all-fired important.
Don't let what you do be more important
than what you are. What you do is an in-
cident; what you are is the force back of
the incident.

Your work is what you do. If you sit
around and weep because the Old Man
doesn't get to know that you did it— that
is what you are. It's all in the game.

Perhaps you haven't got as strong a
hand as you fancy. Perhaps you ought to
throw some of your cards into the discard
and draw some more.

Perhaps the other fellow isn't bluffing at
all. Never mind if he is.

Just get on your face the grin that won't
come off. Sit tight, and back your
hand with every chip of courage, skill, de-
termination, and, above all, cheerfulness,
that you have in your stack, and when
you've put in your last chip borrow some
more from your neighbor. Your credit is
good. Stay in the game and don't call.

You'll find it a real fine, enjoyable game,
and you'll find that .it's a game w'here«a bluff'
never wins a pot worth the winning.

Don't try it, and don't worry about the
fellow who is trying it.

Get a good hand— then stay— and smile.

"JIM BLAKE."

TTERE are the complete words of the
1A song "Jim Blake," which we asked
for in our November "Carpet," in response
to the request of a number of our readers:

"Jim Blake, your wife is dying;"

Came over the wires to-night.
'Twas brought late into the office

By a boy 'most dead with fright.
He came rushing into the office.

His face was pale and white.
Saying, " Take this to dad in his engine.

For mother is dving to-night. "

ON THE EDITORIAL CARPET.

761

Jim Blake was our oldest driver —

Had charge of the midnight express.
He'd handled the throttle lever

The most of his life, I guess.
And when I found this message

Was for my comrade Jim,
I made no delay, but hastened away

And took this message to him.

In less than half an hour,

An answer came back from him :
" Tell wife I'll meet her at midnight,

Tell her to pray for Jim."
I left his son in the office,

The message I took to his wife,
I found the dying woman,

With scarce a breath of life.

And when I entered her chamber

She took me at first for Jim,
Then fell back nigh exhausted,

When she found it was not him.
She raised her eyes toward heaven,

Her face was pale and white,
And said in a dying whisper,

" God speed the express to-night."

O'er hill, o'er dale and mountain

There rushes the midnight train,
Her whistling and her screeching

Resisting the mightiest strain.
But Jim sits there at the lever

That's guiding her dangerous flight,
While a voice speaks out in the darkness,

" God speed the express to-night."

In less than half an hour

The train will be along.
Hallo, here comes the signal

Stating there's something wrong.
It tells of a sad disaster —

The train is in the ditch,
The engineer lies dying,

Derailed by an open switch.

But still another message

From the engineer, I guess,
" Tell wife I'll meet her in heaven.

" Don't wait the midnight express."

J5
TRAFFIC RULES.

AS a rule we can give only six pages
to this department. If we were to
attempt to reproduce all the letters of our
friends and the songs and poems they send
us, we should need at least fifty pages a
month, and pretty soon the magazine would
look like the autobiography of a poet.

The editor would rather earn his bread
by twisting wheels on a Mexican jerkwater
road than produce a magazine that looked
like the autobiography of a poet. He would
rather try to haul perishable freight through
a snow-drift with a dying engine. He
would just as soon try to mend a snapped
axle with a barbed-wire fence, or — well.

never mind, he knows too many poets for
him to talk calmly on this subject.

Therefore, in view of the editor's strong
feelings in this matter, not to mention the
limitations of space, it is manifestly im-
possible for us to publish all the songs and
letters we receive every month. For this
reason, if any of our friends look in vain,
month after month, for an acknowledg-
ment of their always appreciated communi-
cations in this department, let them not
feel hurt or neglected if they do not see
one.

All letters sent to us, on whatever sub-
ject, if they contain a legible name and
mailing address, are answered by mail. If
you do not get an answer by mail, you can
conclude that your letter was either un-
signed or had no address.

We feel a keen personal interest in all
our readers. We are glad to advise them
in their perplexities, sympathize with them
in their troubles, and congratulate them on
their good fortunes, as well as contribute in
a general way to their amusement.

We want every man to feel that he can
write to us. His letter will be appreciated,
and we want him to clearly understand
that if he does not get an acknowledgment
it is through some slip on his own part,
or because the crowded condition of our
tracks prevents us from switching his pri-
vate car onto the main line.

A RAPID RAMBLER'S RIMES.

FC. WELCH, alias Penn, the Rapid
• Rambler, has turned his life-story
into a pretty deft piece of poetry — at least,
unlike the effusions of most of the wander-
lust brotherhood, it has the merit of being
brief. The Rapid Rambler has been a pro-
fessional tramp since May 4, 1894, accord-
ing to his own reckoning. Since that time,
he has traveled 539,122 miles, and has paid
but $11.07 for railway transportation, ferry
tolls, and street-car fares. He has circum-
navigated the globe three times. He keeps
a diary, and can tell where he happened to
be every day since he started out. The tear-
ful tale of Welch's method of hoodwink-
ing innocent conductors appeared in brief
in our October number:

PENN, THE RAPID RAMBLER.

The Rapid Rambler came to town,
And broke all records coming down.
From Smokyville is where he hails,
Where " Gay Cats " leave without their tails.
His monniker, inscribed as " Penn,"
On tanks you'll find it, now and then.
Trainmen, no matter where they go,
Are all acquainted with this bo.

762

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

not one even makes a holler.
But gladly hands him out a dollar.
The salve he hands you out is great,

, with most people, carries weight.
AH other bos are pretty shine
When "Penn" starts rambling down the line
To ride a rod. Oh, no ! not he —
He's not that kind of tramp, you see.
A pen-knife serves him as a punch,
Of hat-checks he has got a bunch,
And there you are. A little nerve
And gall, of course, at times will serve.
This Rapid Rambler has the knack
To spread the salve for con. and shack.
The history of his life you'll hear,
In every paper far and near.

FROM NEWFOUNDLAND.

AN old friend and brother in Lewiston,
>. Newfoundland, sends in the following
welcome letter. It comes from a part of
the continent where we have many readers,
and we would like to hear from them more
frequently :

With the Reid Newfoundland Com-
pany's lines, The Railroad Man's Maga-
zine is all the craze, but, like others, we
have a fault to find. In a recent issue you
dismissed entirely the brakeman. Well, he
cannot yet be done away with on some
roads — more the pity — but, eventually, we
expect to see the day when braking is a
position of the past.

There are some few names of old rail-
roaders who are still at it, which have yet
to appear in the " Roll-Call of Veterans."

Newfoundland is, no doubt, the greatest
country available for fish and game hunt-
ing. The railways passing through the fa-
vorite places for fishing and shooting af-
ford every access to them. Hundreds of
sportsmen" visit us every year, . and are
highly delighted with the sport obtained.

We are constant readers of The Rail-
road Man's Magazine, and here's that she
will always keep the main line to prosperity
and never run " over the points."

HARRIMAN'S FAMOUS SAYING.

MR. F. W. SAWARD, general man-
ager of the Coal Trade Journal,
writes us as follows about that famous re-
mark attributed to the late E. H. Harri-
man — " Not yet — but soon ! " — referred to
in our November issue :

Am afraid you did not get the Harri-
man answer in the insurance case just
right. I note in your current, number, you
quote him as saying : " Not yet, but soon."
His words were, as a matter of fact, " Not
yet." The whimsical emphasis that he
placed upon them prompted every news-
paper man within range to presume that
" but soon " was in his mind. It was this

form of reply that caused the comment to
attract the attention that it did.

RAILROADS AND FARMERS.

JOHN L. McLAURIN, formerly a United
States Senator from North Carolina,
now one of the largest cotton planters in
the South, said, most truthfully, in a recent
speech, " The diplomacy of the world has
resolved itself into a question of commerce,"
and, " The farmer will dominate the situation
henceforth, and the business man will not
fix the prices of farm products in the
future."

Both of these important statements have
a direct bearing on the railroads — the back-
bone of our nation's industries. Commerce
depends on transportation — that we all
know — but it is only of late that the rail-
road and the farmer were considered of
vital importance to each other. To-day,
every railroad is spending time and money
in a complete study of scientific farming,
and the closer relation of these two great
institutions is going to work to the greatest
advantage.

Our esteemed contemporary, The Rail-
way and Engineering Review, in its issue
of November 13, says on this subject:

The attention which is being given to
farming economics by railway officials
these days is notable. Mr. James J. Hill,
of the Great Northern Railway, has long
been known for his intelligent study of
the conservation of the fertility of the
soil, and other important questions touch-
ing the future of the farming industry in
this country.

Of late a number of other railroad man-
agements have been agitating better farm-
ing methods, both by public addresses and
by- assistance in taking demonstration trains
around the country. One of these trains,
equipped and manned by the Pennsylvania
State College, will be operated over the
Erie and Pittsburgh division of the Penn-
sylvania lines next week. The operation
of an experimental farm by the Long Island
Railroad was noted in our columns a few
weeks ago.

Demonstration cars exhibited at the Dry
Farming Congress, at Billings, Montana,
last month, are now being taken through
Nebraska and Iowa. The address made
by President Brown, of the New York Cen-
tral lines, at the banquet of the Railway
Business Association in New York City,
this week, goes into the statistics of the
average yield of farm lands, surplus for ex-
portation and kindred subjects, which indi-
cates^ grasp of the question b3r that gen-
tleman.

The efforts which railroad managements
are making to increase farm productivity,

ON THE EDITORIAL CARPET.

763

which in turn must augment the volume of
freight traffic, which is what the railroads
want, is not a little. The question is really
a mutual one between the railroads and the
farmers.

J*
A VALUABLE POCKET GUIDE.

«rp

HE STANDARD GUIDE FOR Lo-
comotive Engineers and Firemen,"
by Ed. Turner, is an illustrated pocket
manual for the convenient use of rail-
road engineers, firemen, and machinists,
covering breakdowns, quick repairs on
E T equipment, New York brake equip-
ment, compound engines, injectors, lubrica-
tors, etc., standard rules for engineers and
firemen, signals, and definitions of railroad
terms.

The work contains seventy specially
drawn illustrations, made under the super-
vision of the author, and a map with tables
showing points at which railroads' running
east or west change from one time to an-
other.t It fits in your vest pocket.

To engineers and firemen this handy
guide will be of incalculable value, as it will
not only enable them to give an intelligible
account of all the parts and workings of
the locomotive and its equipments, but will
furnish them with the necessary informa-
tion for the prevention and quick repair of
breakdowns of every description.

It costs only 75 cents a copy. The pub-
lishers are Laird & Lee, Chicago.

J*
THE CHATSWORTH WRECK.

ANOTHER old song-^that was called for
k. in our November number was " The
Chatsworth Wreck." The complete words
were supplied by Mrs. J. L. Carney, Chi-
cago, Illinois, and Elmer Bush, Ritzville,
Washington. They are published herewith:

From city, town, and hamlet,

They came, a happy throng,
To view the great Niagara,

With joy they sped along.
The maiden and her lover,

The husband and the wife,
The merry prattling children,

So full of joyous life.

Chorus :
But oh, how much of sorrow,
And oh, how much of pain,
Awaited those who journeyed
On that fated railroad train.

With hand upon the lever,

And eye along the track,
The engineer is standing,

While shades of night are black.

They pass the town of Chatsworth

And rush into the gloom;
Ah ! could some power have stopped them,

E'er they had reached their doom !

Repeat Chorus.

For see— the smoldering embers

That lie along the ridge !
Ah, God ! In pity save them —

It is the railroad bridge !
Too late to turn the lever!

Too late to stop the train!
Too late to soothe the sorrow !

Too late to ease the pain.

Repeat Chorus.

A mighty crash of timbers,

A sound of hissing steam,
The groans and cries of anguish,

A woman's stifled scream —
The dead and dying mingled

With broken beams and bars,
An awful human carnage —

A dreadful wreck of cars.

Repeat Chorus.

All honor to the heroes

Who flame and fury fought,
Ali through that night of horror —

A glory dearly bought.
As over land and water

This thrilling message crossed :
" The bridge was burned at Chatsworth ;

A Jiundred lives are lost."

Repeat Chorus.

OUR FRENCH FRIEND AGAIN.

FRANCE has a loyal son in one of our
correspondents, who, from time to
time, writes us interesting letters, in which
he tries to prove France's superiority in the
matter of railroading. Some time ago he
wrote us about train movement in and out
of certain terminals. He now writes us on
the subject of train speed.

We fear that our French friend, in his
enthusiasm, sometimes gets his figures a
trifle mixed. But while his records are
not always quite what he claims for them,
his letters are quite illuminating and very
welcome.

Here is the first part of his present letter:

Apropos of train speed, just coming back
from England and reading an article on
the subject, I think France is ahead of
America and England. On the French line,
the Nord line, a train leaves Paris at twelve
in the morning and arrives at Calais at
three twenty-five in the afternoon, stopping
only once, at Amiens, four minutes to take
coal and water.

The distance is three hundred kilometers.
That train makes the run in three hours

764

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE.

and twenty-five minutes, at an average speed
of one hundred and ten kilometers an hour.

We have not attempted to verify the
statements made above, but, obviously, three
hundred kilometers in three hours and twen-
ty-five minutes, is not equal to one hundred
and ten kilometers an hour, and the run would
certainly have to be made at near that speed
to equal the Darlington- York, and Camden-
Atlantic City runs, with which our friend
is making his comparisons.

In another part of his letter he says :

Lately has been built in the center of
France, the highest bridge in the world,
called the Viaduct of Fanes, which is situ-
ated at a height of 132 meters, above the
valley of the river Sioule.

The iron constructions used weigh 2,400,-
000 kilos. Seven years were employed for
the building of that bridge, but during two
years and a half the work ceased, the cause
being a landslide. The engineers were
obliged to dig at a depth of forty meters
to find dry and solid ground.

The entire cost of the bridge was $800,000.

At the present moment, as we are hur-
riedly going to press, we have|iiot the exact
figures of a recently built bridge over the
Grand Canon of the Colorado, but we are
of the opinion that they dwarf these fig-
ures, and we shall take pleasure in looking
them up and publishing further informa-
tion.

RUNNING EXTRA.

GAS bills are mounting in Oakland, Cali-
fornia, because of the popularity of
The Railroad Man's Magazine. Just as
we were getting into clear for our meeting-
place with the press department, the mail
carrier came along and handed us the fol-
lowing merit marks :

I have been a reader of The Railroad
Man's Magazine for the past two years.
I did not know what I was missing the
other year, or I would have taken it then.

We get it out here on the tenth of each
month. The only kick we have is that we
don't get it often enough.

When I finish with it, I give it to my
son. The other morning I had to get up
at two o'clock, turn out the gas, and
take the book away from him.

Could you kindly publish " The Face on
the Barroom Floor," and oblige,

W. H. K., Oakland, California.

We now recommend to gas companies
throughout the country that it might be a
good scheme for them to send in a few
thousand subscriptions to The Railroad

Man's Magazine and distribute the copies
broadcast.

As for " The Face on the Barroom
Floor," we must frankly admit that we
are not familiar with the classic. Judging
by the title, we hesitate to make any prom-
ises, but if any reader is familiar with the
poem, we shall be glad to take a look at
it, anyhow.

HELP FOR THE CRIPPLE.

OUR thanks are due to Mr. Bob Boswell,
of Glendive, Montana, for rigging up
a cylinder for a cripple we published in the
November number. Robert, you certainly
are some poet, and if there are one or two
flat places in your drivers, you've got a
pretty good roll on her, and she looks as if
she'll make it up the grade.

Besides the verses,. Bob sends us the fol-
lowing breezy little letter :

In your November number of The Rail-
road Man's Magazine, you published a
poem entitled, " Hobo, Where Art Thou Go-
ing?" That guy at Miles City blew out his
cylinder-head just out of the Glendive yards,
so we threw on the air, and with a little
difficulty managed to pick up a piece of it,
and here she is, in the back shops again.

Enclosed you will find a verse that after
a little patching will probably help her to
pull over the division :

Talk about the N. P. brakeman,

One thing I want to say —
Don't forget the U. P., where freights

Hold the right of way.

From Omaha to Ogden, the

Brakeman has his fun,
While the yard bull is kept busy,

Keeping hoboes on the run.

And when we get to Laramie,

Then we'll tie up for rest,
And in the lunch-room we will go,

Looking our very best.

And when Eagle Eye is read}- —
His clearance it says, " Go ! " —

We'll get our lantern in our hand,
And say this to the bo :

Chorus :
Hobo, just keep on going —

Did you say you're going to Chi?
Just climb in that empty box car,

And you'll get there by and \>y.
On the U. P. you don't have to pay,

And that you ought to know.
So get in warmest car or climb on the deck— «

Be sure you've got your right hat check—*
Hobo, just keep on going.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

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THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

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When I enrolled for the Electric Lighting and Railways
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drawing, I asked for and received a letter from the schools;
this I showed to the General Manager of the General Electric
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Dell Roy, Ohio.

At the time of my enrollment I was employed as dry goods
clerk on a small salary; am now holding a position as a
Licensed Stationary Engineer in the Wabash R. R. Shops at
this place. I feel it is the best money I ever invested, and
have spoken many good words for the I. C S.

(Signed) CHARLES HAGERTY,

Montpelier, Ohio.

Mark the

In answering this advertisement it is desirable that you mention The Kailkoad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

every month VOLUNTARILY report promotion from the "bunch" as the direct result of I. C. S.
training. During October the number was 308. YOU mark the coupon for similar success.

Believe in yourself. It is logical to believe that if thousands of men who could barely-
read and write when they enrolled have succeeded through I. C.S. help — you can. Read
the testimonials, then mark the coupon. Everything will be made clear to you. No
matter how long it takes you to qualify, the I. C.S. is always there and always ready.

Anyhow, it costs nothing to find out how the /. C. S. can help you, so why not
mark and mail the coupon NOW? Everything comes to him who gets after it

THE RANKS

I enrolled for the Complete Steam Engineering Course while a
fireman in a stationary plant. Two months after my enrolment in the
Schools, I was advanced to chief fireman, and one year later accepted
a position as Assistant Engineer with the Toronto Water Works. I
held that for five years and made application for my present position,
that of Chief Engineer for the City of Toronto, which I received after
a competitive examination, there being seventy-two applicants. I re-
ceived 97 per cent on same. I was the only Scranton School Student
in the lot. I have been able to increase my salary 300 per cent, since
my enrolment. (Signed) JAMES BANN AN,

69 Tecumseth St., Toronto, Canada.

I have found the Complete Architectural Course of great value to
me, although not having completed the Course. When I enrolled I
was a carpenter earning $1.50 a day. My earning capacity has been
greatly increased and my work is easier, and the best of all. Jam
practically mv own boss. I am now Supervising Architect of the New
Courthouse Building at Peru, Ind., and have full control of the work.
The building will cost $300,000. Besides this I am doing other work in
the designing and planning of buildings.

(Signed) H. P. FIKE;

30 Adams Ave., Peru, Ind.

SUCCESS COUPON

INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENCE SCHOOLS,
Box 1008 1>, SCRANTON, PA.

Please explain, without further obligation on my part,
how I can qualify for the position before which I have
marked X-

Coupon

General Foreman
K. R. Shop Foreman
S. R. Traveling Eng.
R. R. Trav'g Fireman
Locomotive Engineer
Air-Brake Instructor
Ylr-Uruke Inspector
Air-Brake Repairman
Mechanical Engineer
Mechanical Draftsman
It. R. Construction Eng.
Surveyor
Civil Engineer

Banking

Electrical Engineer
Machine Designer
Electrlcinn
Mining Engineer
Mine Foreman
Foreman Machinist
Chemist
Assayer
Architect
Bookkeeper
Stenographer
Ad Writer

Name —

Employed by
Employed as
Street and No..
City

In answering this advertisement it ;.-,• desirable that you mention Tub Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

JJa

The Iver Johnson is
the only revolver that is
worthy of the name
" Safety."

,;,.; It simply can't -go off v
until the trigger is de-
liberately pulled. •

It can be safely
dropped.thrown against
a wall, or you can

Hammer the
Hammer

Christmas

Time

be especially careful to guard
against inferior articles and
substitutes. To get the best, all-
around revolver, simply ask for the

It won't go off. When you
pull the trigger, it shoots
straight and hits hard.

Our Free Book, "Shots," tells
in detail why the Iver Johnson is
the best revolver for the pocket, the desk
and all-round use.- Handsome in design and
perfect in construction. Our catalogue, also free
shows all the mechanical details.

IVER
JOHNSON

Revolver

Safety
Automatic

And to be sure that it IS a
genuine Iver Johnson,
look for the Owl's
Head on the grip

Iver Johnson Safety Hammer Revolver

Richly nickeled, 3-in. bbl., 22 rim-fire, 32 $0
center-fire, or 3 ;4'in. 38 center-fire cartridge tl

iver Johnson Safety Hammerless Revolver

Riclily nickeled, 3 -inch barrel, 32 centre-
fire, or 3'., inch 38 centre. fire cartridge,

Sold by Hardware and. Sporting Good* dealers everywhere, or sent prepaid on receipt of price if
dealer will not supply. Look for the owl's head on the grip and our name* on the barrel'.

IVER JOHNSON'S ARMS AND CYCLE WORKS, 172 River Street, Fitchburg, Mass.

New York; 99 Chambers Street " ".Hamburg, Germany: Pickhuben 4

San Francisco: Phil. B. Wekeart Co.. 717 Market St.
Makers of her Jobnson Single Barrel Sfiolguns and her Johnson Truss-Bridge Bicycles

In answering this advertisement it is desirable that you mention The Railkoad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

The furnace fire
is poor and the
house cold.

Jack, too, is
cold — and cross.

Suddenly, the
door opens and
Mother comes in
with a "Perfec-
tion" Oil Heater.

You can read
the answer in
Jack's face.

PERFECTION

Smokeless Oil Heater

(Equipped with Smokeless Device)

The Perfection is the best oil heater made
from the standpoint of efficiency, simplicity
and durability.

It is the ONLY heater equipped with an

Automatically-Locking
Smokeless Device

Turn the wick as high or low as it will go — there's
no smoke, no smell — the device prevents either, and
permits instant removal for cleaning.

The Perfection has a solid brass font, holding 4
quarts of oil ; sufficient to give glowing heat for 9
hours. Solid brass wick carrier ; damper top, oil in-
dicator, "Alaska" cold handle.

Finished in Nickel or Japan in various styles.

. Every dealer everywhere. If not at yours, write for
descriptive circular to the nearest Agency of the

Standard Oil Company

(Incorporated)

In answering this advertisement it is desirable that you mention The Railboad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

WTIS •
SYSTEM ,

ON CREDIT

fy mi* m///s vj^k^v '

%«^ W^ ^57iw v7/fvw w ?7mx^

^w W ?ffiw « W\ ^m\? m\

For Holiday Presents

Use the Lof tis System. It enables you to make beautiful and valuable presents without the
outlay of much money. By givjng credit and lowest prices we make 85 or $10 do the work that
850 does in a cash store. Don't make the mistake of buying something cheap or trashy when
the same money would make the first payment on a beautiful diamond ring, stud, brooch,
locket, cuff buttons, ear rings, flue watch, or other article of high grade jewelry from our
enormous stock. A diamond is the ideal gift for a loved one — It lasts forever and every day
reminds the wearer of your regard.'

niimnndc ae an Snvocf m»nt Diamonds are a better and safer Investment than
UldlllUllUS da dll IIIVCMIIIKIIl real estate, banks, insurance or stocks. By the
Loftis System you have possession of your property while paying for it, the pleasure of its use
and the increase which is sure to follow. Diamonds have advanced in value 10 to 20 per cent
annually in recent years. Our prices lowest, terms easiest.

Make Your Holiday Selections Now. Pay as Convenient,

Bend for a copy of our beautifully Illustrated Holiday Catalog, and in the privacy of your own
home, select the articles you desire — we will send them to your home, place of business or
express office for your inspection. If you like them, if they are all and more than we claim
them to bj, pay one-fifth on delivery and the balance in eight equal monthly amounts. We
give a guarantee of value and quality with every diamond we sell; also
privilege of exchange. We take all the riskB and pay all charges.

THE OLD RELIABLE ORIGINAL DIAMOND

AND WATCH CREDIT HOUSE.
DEPT. 661 -92 to 93 STATE ST.. CHICAGO. ILL.

BRANCH STORES: PITTSBURG, PA. AND ST. LOUIS, MO.

vfm.

jpFTIS

Write
for
Catalog

OUR HOLIDAY
DIAMOND SPECIAL

Ladles' and Gentlemen's
14k Solid Gold Solitaire

Diamond Rings,

Any style mounting,
$5 A MONTH

TOBACCO FLAVOR
NOT PIPE ODOR

TURCO-AMERICAN GLASS PIPE

Smokes cool and sweet and clean. It has two
bowls. An inner one of fine meerschaum, from
which the smoke is drawn through vents into an
outer one of tough, annealed, non-absorbent
glass. Here the moisture and nicotine collect
and remain. Thafs why only cool, clean smoke
reaches the mouth — why the }i$e never bites.

Every grain of tobacco burns to a white ash.
No wet residue to throw away and the last whiff
is as sweet as the first. Easily cleaned and
leaves no offensive smell in rooms or clothes.
Send for one. Smoke it a week and if not satis-
fied money will be refunded.

Pipe, with handsome, durable case, $2.00.
Without case, $1.50, postpaid. State preference
for straight or curved stem.

Send for Free booklet, " History of Smoking'1''
TURCO-AMERICAN PIPE CO.
1 82 South Avenue, Rochester, N. Y.

Salesmen Wanted!

Traveling- Salesmen are the best paid class of men in
the -world. Thousands of them earn from $2,500 to
85,000 o? $10,000 and on up to as high as $25,000 a year.
Many of the richest most famous men in the United
States, such as Marshall Field, the great dry goods mer-
chant of Chicago; John W. Gates, millionaire stock
broker; Ex-Governor Black of New York; several of
Carnegie's millionaires and scores of others got their
start selling goods on the road. We receive calls for
thousands of Salesmen from the leading firms in the
United States and Canada, and have assisted thousands
of men to secure good positions or better salaries. A
great many of them who had no previous experience and
who formerly earned from $40 to $75 a month have
since earned from $100 to $500 a month and all ex-
penses, and some a great deal more than that. There
are over half a million Traveling Salesmen employed in
the United States and Canada and the demand always
exceeds the supply. No matter -whether you have ever
had any experience as a Salesman or whether you are
an old hand at it. a few -week's study of our Course in
Salesmanship by mail -will enable you to increase your
earning power from two to ten times what it now is and
our Free Employment Bureau will assist you to get a
position should you desire one. More calls for our grad-
uates than -we can supply. Hundreds of good positions
now open. If you are ambitious and want to get into a
profession where your earning capacity is unlimited our
free book, "A Knight of the Grip" will show you how ta
doit. Write for it today. Address nearest office. Dept 403

National Salesmen's Training Association

Chicago Kansas City Minneapolis San Francisco U. S A.

IOOOt^IO.OOOyear

IN THE REA1 ESTATE BUSINESS

We teach you by mail every branch of the Real Estate, General
Brokerage and Insurance Business and appoint you Special
Representative of the largest co-operative real estate and
i brokerage company. Excellent opportunities open to YOU. By
| our system you can begin making money in a few weeks with-
out interfering with your present occupation and without any
investment of capital. Our co-operative department will give you
more choice, salable property to handle than any other institu-
tion. A Commercial Lair Course FREE. Write for 62-page bo k-
THE CROSS COUPAXY, 3437 Reaper Block, Chicago

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Raileoad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

Smoke
This Box of

FREE

Nothing gives quite so much satis-
faction as a pipeful of good tobacco
' — a pipeful of Velvet.

You are the man we "want to con-
vince— you are the man we want to
smoke Velvet, and we want you to
begin at our expense.

To prove to you that Velvet is the
smoothest, cleanest, coolest smoke
that ever pleased a particular pal-
ate, we want to send you one of our
regular size 10c boxes free.

We know so well the result of this
trial — that you will be convinced that
there is no other tobacco as satisfying
as Velvet and become a steady con-
sumer,— that we are willing to send
you the first box iree.

Fill in the attached coupon and mail to us
today with 5c. in stamps to partially cover the
cost of mailing, and we will send you any-
where in the U. S. a regular 10c. box of
Velvet, the best smoke you ever had , by return
mail. This is an opportunity you cannot
miss. So send the coupon now.

SPAULDING & MERRICK, Dept. E, Chicago, III.

SPAULDING & MERRICK

Dept. E, CHICAGO, ILL.
Enclosed find 5 cents in stamps to partially cover
cost of mailing complimentary box of " Velvet" any-
where in the U. S. Good only 'till Feb. 1, 1910

MY NAME

MY ADDRESS.

MY DEALER

HIS ADDRESS.

EARN
$25.00 to $50.00 Weekly

IN AUTOMOBILE BUSINESS

Chauffeurs, Automobile Salesmen and Repairmen get
big pay for pleasant work because the demand for
trained men exceeds supply. We have taught hun-
dreds (without mechanical ability) and we can teach
you in ten weeks if you study a few hours a week. It
is interesting. Our simple mail course guarantees
thoro efficiency because it's personal. Ask our gradu-
ates who are earning $25.00 weekly or more in positions
we obtained for them.

Send to-day for first lesson— It's free.

Chauffeurs ami competent men supplied owners and garages.

Empire Auto. Institute, ll5c££?rT£

The Original Automobile School,

per month.

We will send for your
approval a genuine % Karat, com-
mercial white, perfect diamond,
in any style 14 karat solid gold
mounting, express prepaid, for
$30— $5 down and $3 per month;
or a 3$ Karat diamond of like qual-
ity for $60; $10 down and $5 per
I month.

If you are interested in a reliable
watch, we off er a gentleman's O. F.
, 12, 16, or 18 size, or lady's 6 size,
1° plain or engraved, 20-year guar-
anteed gold filled case, fitted with
genuine Elgin or Waltham move-
ment at $12.50; $3 down, $1.50
With hunting case $16.75.

Wrltn today for free rnlaln
or linve goods sent lij pi

■paid

Herbert L.Joseph£Co

C Diamond Importers- Watch Jobbers

2 1 7-2 1 9 (X87) State Street, Chicago

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAX'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

NEW INVENTION!

No More Wash Day!

NEW METHOD OF CLEANING CLOTHES

Cleans Family Wash in 30 to 50 Minutes — Woman's

Hardest Work Made Easy — No Rubbing,

No Motors, No Chemicals.

NOT A WASHING MACHINE

Does in One. Operation the Work of Wash Board,
Washing Machine and Wash Boiler.

CPE linW QIMDI F— DIFFERENT, EASY. Put on any
JEE nun OlmrUt stove— add water, then soap, then
clothes — move linob occasionally. In 5 to 8 minutes
first batch clean — next batch same way, same water— in 30 to 50
minutes family wash clean. No labor, no injury to clothes.

Over

100,000

sold

Cleans
woolens ,
flannel s,
blankets,

or colored
clothes, as well
as white goods,
finest laces,
curtains, bed
clothes.

Saves time,
fuel, labor.
EASV WAY
in SO to 50
minutes
cleans

W 11 8 ll i 11 K

-which b e -
fore took en-
tire rtay. All

metal, strong,
durable, sanitary,
light in weight.
Easily used, clean-
ed, handled —
always ready.
Child or weakly
woman can use It.
Saves washday
drudgery.

Users Praise

the
''Easy Way."

ite

lady

McGee, Teun
3:— "One your
cleaned day'

waskiny in o

with Easy Way— anothi

in Ao minutes." Mrs. T. Bui

len, Canada, writes:—" I washed

bedding, heavy quilts, curtain", etc., without

rubbing," Lauretta Mitchell, O.. writes : — "Done a big washing in is minutes

— sold 3 already." A. D. Poppleton, N. T. :— ''Gives perfect satisfaction.

Washed bed quilts, greasy overalls and fine clothes. Greatest thing on earth.''

F. E. Post, Pa., writes : —

TWO WEEKS WASHING IN 45 MINI TES

Clothes cleaned without rubbing." J. H. Rarrett, Ark., after ordering 39 Easy

Ways, says: — "You have the grandest invention I ever heard of." J. W.

Myers, Ga., savs: — "Find check for 12 Easy Ways. Greatest invention to

womanhood, forever abolishing miserable wash dav. Sells itself."

AGENTS GETTING RICH

It. O. Cowan, IV. V., placed 18 in 6 hours— {profit $30.00.)

Mrs. J. Brown sold 10 in 3 days— (profit $30.on». K. J. Blevlns, O., writes :
"Made 7 calls, sold 5 one day "—(profit $ir..oo>. R. H. Lati-
more, Pa., writes : "Sold 4 this morning. Never yet turned down." A. G.
Witt, Pa.: " Received Easy Way yesterday; sold 4 today— not out for orders.''
Mrs. Gerrish, Mont., ordered sample, then 1 dozen, then ion — profit over
>•.<«•■. Just made one shipment lOOO Easy Ways to
Knssian agent. N. Bouchor, Mass., orders 75 more, says: " Everybody wants
■ me, best business 1 ever had." A. S. Verrett, La., sold 8 in one day (profit S24.(jiii.

FREE SAMPLE to Agents

We want managers, agents, men or women, home or traveling, all or
me, to show, take orders and appoint agents. Easy Way new
article, not worked to death. B»st seller out. Every family wants one.
People glad to see it demonstrated; buy without being asked, and throw-
away costly washing machines to us.- it. Only S sales a day
means 936. OO a week profit.

Price only $6.00 ready for use. Pent anywhere. Not sold In
siores. (XTOrder one for mmruu-u use. VOCB MO\EV REFIADED
IF WOT SATISFACTORY. Send/or Free Sample <#«', special agents'
proposition, etc. Costs nothing: to investigate. Send name and
address anyway for full description. Write today.

Harrison Mfg. Co., 177 Harrison Building, Cincinnati, 0.

$1:25

for this
genuine

made of the highest grade
hard flue ostrich, selected
from the male bird.
Has a very glossy
fiber and is ex-
tra wide, with
heavy droop-
ing head
Let us send
you this
Plume on
approval.

17:=:

Ostrich
Plume

This magnificent French
Curl Ostrich Plume is full
1 7-inch in length.

Send us 15c. to pay express
charges, and we will send you
this beautiful Plume in black,
white or colors, to your express
office C. O. D. with privilege of
examination. If satisfacton', pay
the express agent $1.-95 and the
Plume is yours. If, however, 3'ou
do not think this the most marvel-
ous value you ever saw, tell the ex-
press agent to return the Plume to us
and we will refund your 15c. Or, if you prefer to send
the full amount, $1.95. we will send the Plume byre-
turn mail, postage prepaid, and if not satisfactory, we
wjll promptly refund your money. We take all the "risk.
For complete line of Ostrich Feathers, including bargains
in Willow Plumes, write for free catalogue.

CDET'IAI Full 18=inch Ostrich Plume
OlLLI AL Black and Colors

SOUTH AFRICAN IMPORTING CO., Dept. 122, 1841 Wabash Ave., Chicaco

$2^

first 3

I MADE $88.16

flays."' writes Mr. Reed of Ohio. Mr. Woodward earns
SI 70 a month. AGENTS all making money. Mr.
M. L. Smith turned out $301.00 in two weeks. Rev.
Crawford made $7.00 first day.

LET US START YOU

in Gold, Silver, Nickel and Metal plating.
Prof. Gray's new electro plating machine
plates on watches, jewelry, table.ware and all
metal goods. Prof. Gray's new
Royal immersion process, latest
method. Goods come out instantly
with fine brilliant, beautiful
thick plate ready to deliver
— no polishing or grinding.
Every family, hotel and res-
taurant wants goods plated.

AGENTS HAVE ALL
THEY CAN DO—

people bring it. You can hire boys to do the plating as we do.
Men and women gather work for small percent. Work is fine —
no way to do it better. No experience required — we teach
yon. Outfits ready for work when received. Materials cost
about 10 cents to do $1.00 worth of plating. ^W^ Demnnd for
filati?ig: is enormous. WE ARE RESPONSIBLE and
guarantee everything.

Call o>- write today: Otirnew plan, testimonials, circulars and
S.tMPlii; FREE. Don't wait. Send us vour address anyway.

GRAY & CO. PLATING WORKS

75 Gray Building, Cincinnati, Ohio

PATENTS

rmmv tznntf and l

SECURED OR
FEE RETURNED.

GUIDE BOOK and WHAT TO INVENT.

With valuable List of Inventions Wanted sent free.
ONE MILLION DOLLARS offered for one invention;
$16,000 for others. Patents secured by us advertised
free in World's Progress ; sample free.

VICTOR J. EVANS & CO., Washington, D. C.

in answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Railkoad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

• 114 IRt. Gem Solid Gold
Tiffany, $10.00

No. 103 lKt. li

Solid Gold Stud, 810.00

See Them Before Paying

Our Proposition— ^SU* S

illustrated— by express C. O. D. all charg-es
prepaid — with privilege of examination. If 3°ou
like it, pay the express man — if you don't, re-
turn it to him and it won't cost, you a cent. Fair
proposition, isn't it? All moutiied in solid sold,
diamond mountings. .^^Send for Booklet.

WHITE VALLEY GEM CO.

P.O. BOX 41 11 INDIANAPOLIS, IND.

029&SL

Flash Like Genuine

Day or night. You can own a diamond equal
in brilliancy to any genuine Stone at oue-
Ihirtieth the cost.

BARODA DIAMONDS
IX SOI.II> tiOLD RIXGS

stand acid test and expert examination. We
guarantee them. See them first, then pay.
Catalogue Free. Patent Ring Measure included
for P1VJE two-cent stamps.

TIIK It AItOI» 1 CO.
ltept. Z, 838 North Stale Sirret, Chlcaso, 111.

WHAT'S YOUR
OCCUPATION?

THE GRADEN SYSTEM makes successful rail-
road men by equipping: its students for g'ood paying
positions in railroad station work and GUARANTEE
EMPLOYMENT TO ALL GRADUATES. Railroads today
are seeking men trained by this system. Write for
Book "Wha* It Does." THE GRADEN SYSTEM OF RAIL-
ROAD TRAINING, 525 Srhofleld Bldg., Cleveland, 0.

tenr mount birds-

Taxidermist. Join our school and learn at

Mount Birds, Animals, Game Heads, Fishes,

is. Make Rugs, etc. Easily, quickly learned. Best

ds, expert instructors. Success guaranteed.

SPORTSMEN and NATURALISTS— mount your

own specimens. You can save hundreds of dollars

d beautifully decorate your home or your office.

FREE — Beautiful Taxidermy Books and full

particulars of this work. Write today.

" -niwestc-rn School of Taxidermy,

HOlElwood Bldg., Omaha, Neb.

KLEANSKIN cures them quickly. Also
Chilblains, Saltrheuni and all ailments of the
skin. Sent postpaid for 25 cents coin.
Agents wanted everywhere.

E. F. STOCKWELL, Dept. 4, Plainville, Mass.

Are you prepared for this call— no matter from which
department it comes? Just think what it would mean
to have constantly at your elbow for consultation, an
expert oh the very problems that puzzle you. That's
just what you would have in the

CYCLOPEDIA OF

Applied Electricity

Six Big Volumes- Bound in Half Morocco— 2,896 Pages

7x 10 inches— printed on special paper, in large,

clear type— 2,00) full page plates,

diagrams, formulas, etc.

Written by thirty expert Electrical Engineers, the biggest men in the
profession. It is a working guide for the student or practical elec-
trician, or a ready reference work for the expert.

Examine the Books at Our Expense

So confident are we that the books are just what you want,
that we will send them to you by prepaid express — you keep
the books 5 days— examine them carefully, test them, apply
them to your every -day work. If satisfied that the books are
the most complete and comprehensive work ever published
on electricity, keep them, send $2.00 within 5 days and $2.00
a month until you have paid $18.80, the special introductory
price— the regular list price is $36.00. If not suited to your
needs, notify lis. We will send for them at our expense.
Fill iu and mail the coupon to-day— the books will
he sent you at oiice.

— IMPORTANT SUBJECTS TREATED — i

Electric Wiring — Electric Telegraph — Wireless
Telegraphy — Telautograph —Theory, Calculation,
Design and Construction of Generators and Motors
— Types of Dynamos and Motors — Elevators —
Direct Current Motors — Direct-Driven Machine
Shop Tools- Electric Lighting— Electric Railways-
Alternating Current Motors— Single Phase Electric
Railways— Management of Dynamos and Motors-
Power Stations— Central Station Engineering— Stor-
age Batteries— Power Transmission— Alternating
Current Machinery —Telephony— Automatic Tele=
phone— Wireless Telephony— Telegraphone, etc.

short time we

.SO monthly, fnl

is a montlllj supplement, absolutely
I'ECHNICAL WORLD MAGAZINE.
entietli Century Scientific
s the latest discussions on

ely topi

etc.

FREE OFFER COUPON

American School of Correspondence

Chicago, U. S. A.

Please send me Cyclopedia of Applied Electricity for five
days' free examination. Also T. W. for one year. 1 will send
$2 within five days and $2 a month until I have paid $18.80;
or notify you and hold the books subject to your order. Title
not to pass until fully paid.

NAME ....

ADDRESS :

EMPLOYER

«————— R. R. Man's l-'lO — «— — — _n»

in answering any advertisement on this page it is dcsiraule that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

Brass- Craft

OUTFIT FREE

Let us send you this Complete outfit consisting of 1 Stip-
pling and Veining Tool, 1 package Polishing Powder, 1 pack-
age Coloring Powder, 1 Fine Sandpaper, 1 piece Polishing
Plush, and complete material for Handsome Brass-Craft
Calendar (see illustration) as follows: 1 Brass Panel, 1
Wood Panel, 50 Round-Head Brass Tacks, 1 Brass Hanger,
1 Calendar Pad. Furnished with stamped design and full
directions for making Calendar worth $1.00 — all in neat box.
FREE and prepaid, to anyone sending us 25 cents to pay
cost of packing, shipping, etc.

Ask for FREE CATALOG RR 64

THAYER & CHANDLER

737-739 Jackson Blvd.

CHICAGO, ILL.

FREE

WRITK AT ONCE

FOR GENUINE NATIVE

ARIZONA lil liY

RUBY

Remarkable Offer !
Don't Miss It !

We will send it to you absolutely FREE prepaid, to introduce our genuine
Mexican Diamonds. These Diamonds exactly resemble finest genuine blue-
white Diamonds, stand acid tests, are cut by experts, brilliancy guaranteed
permanent, and yet we sell at 1-10 the cost. Best people wear them.
SPECIAL OFFER— For 50c deposit, as guarantee of good
faith, we send on approval, registered, either % 01' I carat
Mexican Diamond at special price. Money back if desired.
Illustrated Catalog FRET). Write today and get Ruby FREE.

MEXICAN DIAMOND IMP. CO. Dept., ER. 1, Las Cruces, New Mex.

Cocoa

and

Chocolate

One Quality

THE
VERY BEST

Insist on getting

RISK 1 CENT-
MAKE * 2200.00!

jKorstad did it in 2 weeks. Hundreds making phenom-
lenal earnings the "Allen May." Stoneman. $2,300
Sin 60 days— Langley. $115 first day. — Reese saw
1 60 peop'e. sold 55; result, $320. WE STABT TOU--
{Experience don't matter — Credit given. Strange
lapparatus. Gives every home bathroom' lor f 6*

Energizes water. Cleanses almost automatically.

New, exciting business. Risklc.(apostal)f or proof.

THE ALLEN MFG. CO. 1607 Allen Bldg., Toledo, 0.

MINERAL WELLS

TEXAS.

Has best water on earth for the cure of Rheumatism,
Bright 's Disease, Diabetes, Constipation, Nervous,
Stomach, Liver and kindred ills. No malaria or fogs.
Average winter temperature 57°. 50 hotels and bath
houses. Write for testimonials of railroad men.

J. R. REGISTER, Secy.

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Railboad Man's Magazixh.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

Sectional Cut of Generator .

FREE FUEL

Most Wonderful Stove Ever Invented

BURNS AIR

Fuel Drawn. Principally From Atmosphere
HEATING OR COOKING

Air now burned in this
wonderful stove is free to
rich and poor alike. No
trust in control.

This Valveless, Wick-
less Automatic Oil-Gas
and Air-Burner Stove

automatically generates gas
from kerosene oil, mixing it
with air.

Scientific test proves
it uses 395 bar ■•els of
air to onejsallon com-
mon kerosene oil.

HIEAI'KST Fl'EL-INTENSK HEAT.
Heat concentrated under cooking vessels and absorbed by
articles being cooked or concentrated under Radiator and dis-
tributed throughout room.

NOT LIKE THOSE SOLD IN STOKES.
Ideal for roas ing, cooking, baking, ironing, canning fruit, etc. In
Winter use Radiator for heating houses, stores, rooms, etc. —
always ready. No mo e carrying coal, kindling, ashes, soot and
dirt. To operate — turn knob — oil runs into burner — touch a
match; it generates gas, which passes through air mixer, drawing
in about a barrel of air to every large spoonful of oil consumed.
Tlial's all. It is self-regulating, no more attention.

Same heat all day or all night. For more or less heat, simply
turn knob. There it remains until you come again. To put fire
out, turn knob, raising burner — oil runs back into can, fire's out.
As near perfection as anything in the world. Not dangerous
like gasoline. No dirt, soot or ashes. No leaks, nothing to clog
or close up. No wick — not even a valve, yet heat is under per-
fect control. D. t'ARJf. I>'I>.. writes: "It costs only 41-2
Cents a day for fuel." ii. MORRIS, VT.. writes: "The
Harrison Oil-Gas Generators are wonderful savers of fuel, at least
50 to 75 per cent over wood and coal." E. AilMM.n.
NEB., writes: "Saveil $4.25 a moiilli for fuel by
using the Hairison Oil-Gas Stove. My
range costs me $5.50 per month, the Har-
rison $1.25 per month." Win. Ksier-
iiijT, Inil., writes: "We warmed a room
when it was 10 below zero with one Radia-
tor." Rev. WM. TEAR.X. M.R.,
writes: "Ihis morning 16 below zero —
soon after lighting Harrison Oil-Gas
Stove temperature rose to summer heat.''

ALL SIZES,

PRICES LOW

$3.25 AND UP

Sent to any address

Absolutely safe
from explosion. Not
dangerous like gaso-
line. Simple, durable;
lasts for years. Saves
expense, drudgery
and fuel bills.

■ J IS

Heater and Cooker or Heating Exclusively

Give this stove a trial. Send no money— only
send your name and address. Write today for
full description, thousands of testimonials. Our
1910 Proposition. Circulars FREE.

EXCITING BUSINESS FOR AGENTS

SAEESMEX— MANAGER*— Men or Women at home
or traveling, all or part time— showing— taking orders — appoint-
ing agents, etc. MESSRS. II E.4.I) »V <;k A/KR, TEXAS,
writes: "Enclose order for $81 .00. RUSH. Sell' like hot
cakes. Sold SO stoves in our town." R. E. 1IEUS-
TEI>. .71 It'll., writes: "Keen out one day and sold
II stoves." This patent new. Nothing: like it. Demand
enormous. Agents reaping great harvest. Where operated people
stop, look, get interested, want to buy at once. Show dozen, sell
ten. Write today for special agents' new plan.
Send no money. World unsupplied. Get in early for territory.

THE WORLD MANUFACTURING CO.

135 World Rlug. CINCINNATI, O.

STARTL.

% Watch
Offer

-if »

The Great

Burlington

Special at an

Anti -Trust Price!

I "^^$W ^e wor'^'s masterpiece of watch

manufacture now sold direct ! —
The mc st amazing offer ever made in the whole history
of the watch industry— an offer which has absolutely
PARALYZED competition — the offer of the genuine
Burlington Special direct to the public at the rock-bottom
ANTI -TRUST PRICE, without middlemen's profits.

The Fight is On!

We will not be bound by any system of price-boosting contracts
with dealers. We will not submit to any "high profit" selling
scheme. We will not be dictated to by ANY Trust.
NO MATTER WHAT IT COSTS, we are determined to push our
independent line even if we should have to fight a combination
of all the Watch Manufacturers of the country!
And so we are making this offer— the most sweeping, astounding
offer ever made on a high-grade watch. The famous Burlington
direct and at the same price WHOLESALE Jewelers must pay.
And in order to make the proposition doubly easy for the public
we will even allow this rock-bottom price, if desired, on terms of
<CO Rffc a IWImi+W Don't miss this wonderfully liberal
^3/C.JKJ cl IVIUIIlll offer. Sign and mail coupon now.
Rock -bottom, anti-trust price, whether you t>uy for cash or time.

POST YOURSELF!.*

Be sure to get posted on watches and watch values, trust- - ^^ -<f
method prices and anti-trust prices lie fore you buy
watch. Learn to judge watch values 1

Get the Burlington GA^feto

Watch Company's f^W^A^^^'

FREE WATCH BOOK >>>

Read our startling exposure of the amaz-
ing conditions which exist in the watch
trade today. Read about the anti
trust fight. Read about our great
$1,000.00 Challenge. Learn how
you can judge watch values.
Send your name and address
for this valuable FREE- ▲ ..
BOOK now — TODAY. ^T J$* /^"^
Sign & mail coupon. A^ »0 \^\c^\<T

BURLINGTON 4^^\A<V^
WATCH 00. ^ V „ 6°V<^

Dept. llOt, ^P-ft'*' A* °

19th & Mai- - ▼ Va^V?"^
hullHlvd., * X> Mo*

Chicago,

•

V2^

In answering any advertisement on this page it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

THE RAILROAD MAN'S MAGAZINE— ADVERTISING SECTION.

A LIVING FROM POULTRY

$1,500.00 FROM 60 HENS IN TEN MONTHS
ON A CITY LOT 40 FEET SQUARE.

PHILO
SYSTEM

is adopted.

THE PHILO SYSTEM IS UNLIKE ALL OTHER
WAYS OF KEEPING POULTRY,

and in many respects just the reverse, accomplishing: things in poul-
try work that have always been considered impossible, and getting
unheard-of results that are hard to believe without seeing.

THE NEW SYSTEM COVERS ALL BRANCHES
OF THE WORK NECESSARY FOR SUCCESS

from selecting the breeders to marketing the product. It tells how
to get eggs that will hatch, how to hatch nearly every egg and how
to raise nearly all the chicks hatched. 'It gives complete plans in
derail how to make everything necessary to run the business and at
less than half the cost required to handle the poultry business in any
other manner.

TWO POUND BROILERS IN EIGHT WEEKS

are raised in a space of less than a squnre foot to the broiler almost
without any loss, and the broilers are of the very best quality, bring-
ing here three cents per pound above the highest market price.

OUR SIX-MONTHS-OLD PULLETS ARE LAYING
AT THE RATE OF 24 ECCS EACH PER MONTH

in a space of two square feet for each bird. No green cut bone of
any description is fed, and the food used is inexpensive as compared
with food others are using.

CHICKEN FEED AT 15 CENTS A BUSHEL.

Our book tells how to make the best green food vyith but little
trouble and have a good supply, any day in the year, winter or sum-
mer. It is just as impossible to set a large egg yield without green
food as it is to keep a cow without hay or fodder.

OUR NEW BROODER SAVES 2 CENTS ON
EACH CHICKEN.

No lamp required. No danger of chilling:, overheating or burn-
ing up the chickens as with brooders using lamps or any kind of
fire. They also keep all the lice off the chickens automatically or
kill any that may be on them when placed in the brooder. Our
book gives full plans and the right to make and use them. One
can easily be made in an hour at a cost of 25 to 50 cents.

TESTIMONIALS.

Bellefontaine, Ohio, June 7, 1909.
Mr. E. R. Philo, Elmira, N. V.

Dear Sir:— I just want to tell you of the success I have had
witii the Philo system. In January, 1909, I purchased one of your
Philo System books and I commenced to hatch chickens. On the
third day of February, 1909, I succeeded in hatching ten chicks. I
put them in one of your tireless brooders and we had zero weather.
We succeeded in bringing through nine ; one got killed by accident.
On June 1, one of the pullets laid her first egg, and the most re-
markable thing is she has laid every day since up to the present
time. Yours truly, R. S. LaRue.

DON'T LET THE CHICKS DIE IN THE SHELL.

One of our secrets of success is to saj-e all the chickens that are
fully developed at hatching time, whether they can crack the shell
or not. It is a simple trick and believed to be the secret of the
ancient Egyptians and Chinese which enabled them to sell the
chicks at 10 cents a dozen.

Valley Falls, N. Y., Sept. 10, 1909.
My dear Mr. Philo :— I want to tell you how pleased I am with my
use of the Philo System during the past year. The fowls laid
exceptionally well in the New Economy Coop, much better in pro-
portion than those in my old style house. The tireless brooder has
solved the problem for me of raising extra early chicks. I am going
into your methods more extensively this coming year. Wishing you
success, I am, sincerely yours, (Rev.) E. B. Templer.

Mr.E. R. Philo, Elmira, N. Y. South Britain, Conn., April 14, 1909.

Dear Sin— I have followed your system as close as I could: the result is a complete
success. It there can be any improvement on nature, your brooder is it. The first
experience I had with your System was last December. I hatched 17 chicks under
two hens, put them as soon as hatched in one or your brooders out of doors and at
the age of three months I sold them at 35c a pound. They then averaged 2 1-2 lbs.
each, and the man I sold them to said they were the finest he ever saw, and he wants
all I can spare this season. Yours truly A. E. Nelson.

Mr. E. R. Philo, Elmira, N. Y. Elmira N. Y., Oct. 30, 1909.

Dear Sir:— No doubt you will be interested to learn of our success in keeping
poultry bv the Philo System. Our first year's work is now nearly completed, h has
«iven us an income of over $500.00 from six pedigree hens and one cockerel Had
we understood the work as well as we now do after a year's experience, we could easily
have made 51000.00 from the six hens. In addition to the pronts from the sale ot
pedigree chicks, we have cleared over $960. 00 , running our Hatchery plant consisting
of 56 Cvcle Hatchers. We are pleased with the results, and expect to do better the
coming year. With best wishes, we are, very truly yours, (Mrs.) C. P. C-oodncn.

Send $1.00 direct to the publisher and a copy of the latest-
revised edition of the book will be sent you by return mail.

E. R. PHILO, PUBLISHER, 342 THIRD ST., ELMIRA, N. Y.

THREE POUND ROASTERS TEN WEEKS OLD

In answering tJiis advertisement it is desirable that you mention The Railroad Man's Magazine.

■■■■'lllIP

n:;i:![ii!.;:i:ii. ,

■'*

Hjli'j

'■■::■ ij !J'tiiiHr.|

ilffl-'. ijil 1 1 IPl

III

Fairy Soap

does not sail under false colors. It has

nothing to hide — -no dyes to deceive — no high

perfumes to delude the sense of smell — no sting

to worry tender skins. It is just a white, pure,

floating, oval cake of soap goodness, made from

edible products. Though it costs you but

5c, you can buy no better soap at

any price.

THE N. K. FAIRBANK COMPANY,
CHICAGO;

lilillijlllljjlllliliiiililliiiiilliilllilll

• ft

TRADE

MARK

FACE

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Extra Blades
10 for 50c

Each EVER READY Blade
separately wrapped in patented
package — keen— clean — sauitarv.
Exchange 10 dull blades for ten
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Sold by Hardware, Cutlery, Drug
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Refuse imitations. Mail orders
prepaid to any address.
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320 Broadway, New York

Blade;

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THE MUNSEY PRESS, NEW YORK.

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